Comedian, actress, director and playwright Rhoma Spencer will be premiering her Caribbean Comedy Album 6.0 to Trinidad and Tobago audiences at Kafe Blue, Wrightson Road, Port of Spain on October 19. This performance will be the TT premiere of her album, which has already been launched in New York.
While better known for her background in theatre, Spencer has a long history in comedy. Her first experience was in 1991, when the late Dennis 'Sprangalang' Hall told her Paul Keens-Douglas was looking for women to perform in his Talk Tent.
'Sprangalang gave me his number and I went to perform for just one show - and I was clearly a hit enough to stay there for eight years, (until) I migrated to Canada in 1999.
"My career there mainly focused on acting and directing in theatre, so comedy took a back seat, but people who knew what I used to do would still hire me to do shows, and that way I could still get that part of my performing-arts genre in.'
In 2018 Spencer was hired to appear at the International Multi-Arts RUTAS Festival, where she curated and hosted the event Word Up! An Oral Cabaret, which featured spoken word and comedy. She said seasoned comedians were so taken by her performance that they encouraged her to get onto the mainstream Canadian comedy circuit.
'That's when I decided to make the move from performing only for my Caribbean/Trini (compatriots) to the mainstream, performing for the whole of Canada. Once I did that crossover, performing at the Kenny Robinson Nubian Comedy Show, called the Nubian Disciples of Comedy, that's when I was being seen by the mainstream.
'I felt my comedy would only be appreciated by my Caribbean people, but the white people and the mainstream people got it. My accent also helped, as people marvel at that, and then my sense of comedy is also very different from what my other colleagues do.
"For me, comedy is storytelling. I'll take local and international trending news situations and turn them on their heads to the point of stupidity.
"I'm also not afraid to talk about myself - I deal with my aging process, menopause, senior moments, and that is what makes my work a little different from the others.'
Spencer said her style is heavily influenced by Sprangalang, and remembered that his brother, the late Tony Hall, had said it was mindblowing watching her, as their styles were so similar.
She performed at the first Black Women Comedy Festival in Detroit, headlined An Evening of Caribbean Comedy, the Black Women in Comedy Laugh Fest at the Gotham Comedy Club in New York in June 2022, and in Edmonton, Alberta with Jamaican/Jamaican-Canadian comedians Blacka Ellis, Gunta Na Laff and Keisha Brown. Her last performance in TT was in 2020 at the Little Carib Theatre and Folk House with Lisa Allen-Agostini and Louris Lee Sing.
Before the pandemic, Spencer was invited to work on the play Solitudes, based on Gabriel Garcia Marquez's book 100 Years of Solitude. The play was in development for two
