Lamesha Ruddock
We can all hear the masquerade calling, we just don’t know in what tongue to speak back in. So just move.
Jj Fadaka invites you through an opening made of the hard and soft parts of their body into a shared ritual rooted in dance, sonic and film. She uses the role of the masquerade to honour her past self as an ancestor.
The Masquerade is an embodied, captivating and movement-inducing creation held with such bespoke care. A triumphant testament to the healing power of collective witness, and the radical act of choosing joy and shared liberation. After the storm settles comes lush life.
So you’ve got the degree, you’ve done the DNA test, a proud family tree has been etched. But are you equipped to carry the lived ancestral knowledge in a body that colonisation tried to disconnect from it?
There are a series of traditions we are mourning and Jj facilitates the diaspora to move through that grief of our cultural inheritance into self-reclamation. This begins with a major sense of self-love so you remain recognisable to the ancestors and the masquerade as they piece us back together across soil, stories and minds.
The tone is set the moment Khadea Santi (Producer) names the intended audience and the experience as rooted in real, specific pain, and drawing a line between witnessing and voyeurism.
You enter through beaded curtains and draped red fabric curtains, soft and flowy. The recorded poetry and African electronic soundscape reclaims a severed ancestral connection, mixed live by DJ ALADJI and layered with repetition that builds like incantation. The visuals start domestic and urban before dissolving into lush green, tracing a route home. Jj vibrates and weaves through the crowd, commanding the attention of strangers off the street outside Waverley, refusing to let anyone stay a passive spectator. Jj is a marvel. Offerings are handed out. By the end, the whole room is on its feet, dancing a closing ritual with new friends.
In a year stacked with grief, climate collapse and everyday violence, the Masquerade is the cathartic release all African diasporans need.
Recommended Drink A tall cup of Zobo.
Performances of The Masquerade have now concluded at EdFringe 2026.
