Lamesha Ruddock
16 Summers is funny, raw, and unflinchingly honest, allowing the audience to open up as Ayindé crafts a theatrical journey rooted in memory and musicality.
Ayindé blurs the line between memoir and performance, inviting the audience to co-create meaning alongside him.
When only memories are left you cannot help but relish in them. Between the happy, sad, cringey, painful memories, they all tell the story of a father and son that stretches and contracts, finding its way back home. Reckoning with ideas of masculinity, the realities of making it in the Big Apple and truly understanding what love is by knowing what love isn’t, Ayindé shows us that vulnerability in men deserves space on stage.
Ayindé has come home and eagerly steps through the portals through his life from 1992 to 2021, from coming of age (literally) to leaving home to meet-cutes to eventually finding his way back home where the little boy in him finally dies.
Stage right is a long table with black table cloth with a speaker and DJ controller accompanied by a mic and mic stand. Stage left is a whiteboard, written onto the board are seven key years in Ayindé’s life. From the very first line, Ayindé commands attention. His adolescent orgasmic revelations, the complicated yet loving relationship with his father, the mischievous cousins romancing big booty girls of Tacoma, each vignette pulses with humour and truth.
Ayindé is captivating. He playfully bounces his DJ controller, taking us across space and time in his timeline, conjuring beautiful beats and oral releases of his soul. A soft green wash melts over the stage during the poetry open mic, where Ayindé delivers potent, critical lyricism that is politically playful. Later, as he becomes a lover boy in New York, he hilariously gags the audience when love teeters into stalking, a huge red flag punctuated by flashing alarms, a red wash, and his glaring eyes. The comedic timing is perfect.
He pours himself into the audience and expects your allyship. He is in dialogue with us, shaping the performance, luring us into building the perfect man while critiquing the absence of safe spaces for men to be emotionally vulnerable.
16 Summers is a soulful, heartfelt mixtape of memory and love that centres male vulnerability without shame.
Performances of 16 Summers have now concluded at EdFringe 2025.
Image Credit: Chris Jon Photography
Jasmine Silk
Phoebe Bakker
