TIGER TV ONLINE REPORTER
A typical hair salon plays host to gossip and product while locks of hair fall to aluminum floors.
Now imagine a hairdresser who is also a voodoo queen. Gossip and snippets of hair could be the key to her craft.
Perhaps the most renowned hairdresser is the 19th century voodoo queen from New Orleans, Marie Laveau.
“Her name has sort of become famous in terms of voodoo history,” said Brandon Nicholas, first time director of the upcoming play “Voodoo Queen”. “She’s become a legendary iconic figure.”
“Voodoo Queen” which opens Wednesday night at HopKins Black Box Theater explores what makes Laveau so unique.
“She certainly wasn’t the only one [voodoo practitioner] of her time,” Nicholas said. “There’s something about her name and the stories that follow her.”
But Laveau’s power didn’t lie solely in magic.
“She was very well connected and knew a lot of big, powerful people,” Nicholas said. “She knew a lot of secrets and probably did a lot of black mailing, extortion type stuff.”
But Nicholas’s “Voodoo Queen” doesn’t just focus on Laveau.
“It’s also about voodoo in New Orleans as a city and it’s sort of a series of different scenes that highlight all these different aspects and looks at a lot of things in depth,” he said.
Multiple characters represent separate myths and aspects of Laveau’s life.
“It’s kind of like looking through a peep hole,” Nicholas explained. “You can’t see everything, but you can see parts.”
Nicholas said a journalist who kept a diary during Laveau’s time first referred to seeing voodoo through a peep hole.
“He talks about watching a particular voodoo ceremony as though through a peep hole, seeing parts but not the whole room,” he said.
While dolls come to mind when most people think of voodoo, it’s actually a mixture of Catholicism and native African religions the slaves brought to North America.
“Voodoo is a religion that honors and worships ancestors so they use things like voodoo dolls and gris-gris bags in a sort of similar way that Catholics use rosaries,” Nicholas said.
Voodoo is a splash of different religions, said Juan Mejia, a manager at Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo in New Orleans.
“It’s an earth based religion that encompasses all the earth and life that can form and feed a belief system,” he said.
Gris-gris bags contain talismans, good luck charms, herbs and powers that help promote energy for protection, love, luck or money, Mejia said.
“So many people come in [the House of Voodoo] wanting to poke voodoo dolls or do negative stuff, but a lot of them aren’t aware that what you put in the universe comes back three fold,” he said.
Mejia said the House of Voodoo tries to refrain from negativity and doesn’t perform rituals, hexes or curses.
The store mainly carries supplies and offers readings. Also, the House of Voodoo has an altar for people to leave prayers, devotions and wishes.
“I am not aware that Laveau did anything negative,” Mejia said. “She was more of a feminist.”
Mejia explained that women would come to her looking for protection from abusive or cheating husbands. Laveau made them gris-gris bags.
However, when Laveau’s first husband mysteriously vanished, many people thought she killed him though no evidence supports this claim.
“I’ve personally seen it’s more of a Hollywood thing that gave voodoo the aspect of negativity,” Mejia said. “Hollywood showed voodoo as bad because of the pins and needles and the stabbing of dolls and that kind of scared people.”
Mejia said the dolls originated to help cure ailments.
Herbs comprised the dolls’ stuffing. Users then poked needles into the areas where they experienced pain or needed healing.
“Voodoo isn’t all about putting X’s on everyone and stabbing people,” Mejia said.
The south’s culture may foster voodoo’s popularity.
“The south versus the north or west or east is that it slowly changes,” he said. “You still have family values and family cultures that are so fresh down here and stories get passed own.”
Stories possibly include superstition, Mejia said.
The House of Voodoo follows Elvis Presley’s former home, Graceland, as the second most visited site, Nicholas said.
“I’ve taken several tours,” he said. “Most of them have tour guides who have some connection with people who practice voodoo currently.”
“Voodoo Queen” will run Wednesday through Sunday at HopKins Black Box. Show times Wednesday through Saturday are 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 p.m.
The cast began rehearsal in September.
PHOTOS BY BRANDON NICHOLAS
