Thursday, 14 July 2011 10:10

Andreea Kindryd : Slavery to Star Trek

Andreea Kindryd : Slavery to Star Trek Andreea Kindryd : Slavery to Star Trek

From a review of her show at the Adelaide Fringe:

"African American Australian Andreea Kindryd’s ancestors and relatives swum across the Mississippi to move back in to slavery to be with the people they loved; they had families of eight children, all of whom got an education in a time when many people didn’t; they shot men in the Ku Klux Klan and escaped to California; they wrote hit songs for Elvis. Her mother worked as a hairdresser for many stars, including Nat King Cole, and was distressed by Kindryd’s choice to show off her natural kinky hair.

Kindryd didn’t just live through the civil rights era: she spoke on the radio with Malcolm X; she was Martin Luther King’s PA (“okay, for a day” she admits). After college, she moved to New York and worked on a radio station in Harlem, and moving back to California, she was one of two African Americans hired to work for Lucille Ball’s production company Desilu Productions. There she worked on many shows, in particular the original Star Trek, where she worked for producer and inventor of Klingon Gene Coon, and kissed George Takei.

To hear these stories first hand (or second or third hand in a direct ancestral line) in any case would be a privilege, but Kindryd is a generous, funny, loving and exciting storyteller. She not only recounts the stories of her and her family’s lives, she takes on their characters, re-enacting their situations and conversations."