To say that Rotimi Agbabiaka is an in-demand actor would be an understatement. Although he performed less in 2023 than in years past, he knew he’d eventually be back onstage in December.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a Christmas season off since becoming a professional actor, except during COVID lockdown,” he says.
The need to join the fun is what helps Agbabiaka relate to his character, Hernia the Witch, in Panto in the Presidio’s holiday production of “Sleeping Beauty” opening this week in San Francisco after its successful 2022 world premiere. The evil Hernia puts a curse on the title character as revenge for not being invited to a party at the palace.
“As someone prone to FOMO, I can certainly relate to someone who wonders if everyone else is having a fabulous party that she hasn’t been invited to,” he says. “It’s quite satisfying to play someone who finds out that that is indeed happening and has the power to punish the perpetrators for being so rude.”
The sort of flamboyant performance demanded by Hernia has become stock and trade for the Nigeria-born, Texas-raised performer. When not working with Bay Area groups including California Shakespeare Theater and the Marin Theatre Company, he performs under the drag persona of Miss Cleo Patois. He’s also explored race, gender and sexuality in acclaimed solo shows “Type/Caste” and “Manifesto.”
With “Sleeping Beauty”’ being a rare kids’ show that embraces queer themes, it’s a perfect fit for Agbabiaka.
After all, he used to perform in “Beach Blanket Babylon” (also a remixed classic children’s tale with the outlandish setting of San Francisco) and was cast as Frank N. Furter in American Conservatory Theater’s planned 2020 production of “The Rocky Horror Show,” which was canceled due to the pandemic.
“I love that queerness in ‘Sleeping Beauty’ is so matter of fact and so seamlessly woven into the fabric of the world onstage,” he says. “The show does what theater does best, which is to display the humanity of people — and, in this case, talking animals — with various shades, proclivities and expressions.”
Despite recent headlines about conservative attacks on drag performers who work with children, Agbabiaka returns to Hernia because of the warm reception he gets from audiences. He jokes “Kids and their parents seem to adore Hernia, which probably doesn’t bode well for society.”
Yet the teaching artist in him isn’t one to take a passive role in educating audiences. In addition to history lessons embedded into “Type/Cast” and “Manifesto,” his 2023 performances included Magic Theatre’s incendiary world premiere of “The N- Lovers” and portraying James Baldwin in Lorraine Hansberry Theatre’s “In the Evening by the Moonlight.”
He plans to make one of his boldest projects to date in 2024, when San Francisco’s Cutting Ball Theater will premiere his play “The Soul Never Dwells in A Dry Place,” an esoteric piece inspired by the work of artist Romare Bearden.
“Romare Bearden placed no limits on where he drew inspiration from,” Agbabiaka says. “His quest to perfect his skills led him to study European painting, Chinese traditions, African art, and his work has such a personal vision with a universal and timeless dimension. He inspires me to be a fuller artist.”
He continues, “I love learning how artists I admire have approached the question of how and why to make art and ‘The Soul Never Dwells in A Dry Place’ is giving me the chance to be in a theatrical conversation with Romare Bearden, and to follow that conversation wherever it may lead.”
It’s a conversation he’s been eager to continue in the past few years, since 2020’s supposed reckoning of theater’s institutional racism and inherent hierarchies. Having worked both onstage and backstage throughout the industry, Agbabiaka thinks dismantling those hierarchies is a work in progress.
“I’ve seen lots of changes, particularly in the realm of HR practices,” he says. “Bay Area companies seem to be genuinely trying to move forward in a more equitable way. Theater will continue to improve if we don’t forget that it is an artistic endeavor, and that art requires freedom, openness, and nuance.”
As for what all theaters and troupes should offer to marginalized artists, he looks for “commitment to telling a great story and freedom to play.”
He certainly finds that freedom in playing Hernia, whose wardrobe is as outlandish as her proclamations.
To tap into Hernia’s outrageousness, he says, “I try to find my character’s essential need and then dial everything she does to satisfy it to 11. Then I put on the magnificent, larger-than-life costumes designed by Alina Bokovicova and the elaborate, horned wig designed by Tim Santry and I can’t help but be off the wall.”
Given the similarity between Panto’s “Sleeping Beauty” and “The Wizard of Oz”-inspired “Beach Blanket Babylon,” it begs the question who would win in a showdown between Hernia and the Wicked Witch of the West.
“Hernia, obviously,” Agbabiaka insists. “As she says, ‘No one is stronger than me.’”
Panto in the Presidio’s “Sleeping Beauty” runs Nov. 25 through Dec. 30 at the Presidio Theatre, 99 Moraga Ave., San Francisco Presidio. Tickets are $20-$60, with discounts for groups of five or more. For information, visit https://www.presidiotheatre.org/show/.
Charles Lewis III is a San Francisco-born journalist and performing artist. He has written for the San Francisco Chronicle, KQED, San Francisco Examiner and more. Dodgy evidence of this can be found at The Thinking Man’s Idiot.