Funnel Cake Flowers takes the plight of 'urban chameleons' to the stage

• HaJ
• Funnel Cake Flowers strikes a culturally sensitive pose

Remember all that jazz about the dawning of a post-racial America after Obama got elected to the White House? W.E.B. DuBois is probably still ROIHGLHAO (rolling over in his grave laughing his ass off) over that one.

It was DuBois, the social scientist and cofounder of the NAACP, after all, who coined the term "double consciousness" to describe, in part, the dual realities - one friendly, one foreign - inhabited by people of color in America. That was way back in 1903.

If anything, the existence of our nation's first black head of state has only heightened our national obsession with matters of race. But at least the last 110 years have taught us how to laugh at our own psycho-social mess.

Which is where contemporary urban chameleon reporter, Funnel Cake Flowers, comes in. Armed with a microphone and a bougie accent, the star correspondent of Tickles.TV makes it her business to expose the secret realities of code-switchers, or "urban chameleons," who regularly navigate between cultural extremes. The character Funnel Cake Flowers is the creation of Emmy-nominated writer/performance artist/producer and New York native HaJ, who initially became aware of her own code switching status while majoring in acting at Carnegie Mellon University. As the only black female in all of her classes, she regularly found herself "'chameleon-ing' in these different environments."

It became the foundation for a series of satirical skits mocking issues of identity and race, which she and her friends shot guerilla-style and posted online. This weekend, she takes Funnel Cake Flowers & the Urban Chameleons to the stage, where the show debuts on 7 Stages' mainstage in the lineup for the second annual Atlanta Fringe Festival. (There is still one show remaining, Sun., June 9, at 2 p.m.)

Presented in an interactive talk-show format with video clips interspersed, the show will expose the harsh realities faced by urban chameleons, like the female black professional steeped in the prim-and-proper cultural mores of the white corporate world during the week, who must then transition to ghetto-ology 101 when it's time get her beauty needs taken care of every weekend ("Traveling Back to the Hood to Get Your Haid Did"). Or the successful black college professor who climbs his way out of the inner city only to have his less fortunate nephew tell him he ain't shit without a BMW ("Without a BMW, I'm Just a Negro With an Opinion").

With all the "change" (Obama pun intended) that has occurred around the framing of race in America, I wanted to know if HaJ foresees a time when urban chameleons will be an endangered species.

In a lot of ways it seems like we're better able to laugh at our differences in the Obama era, but in other ways it seems like his being in office has brought a heightened sensitivity and awareness to racial differences. How do you process that?

HaJ: Well, you certainly see more commercials with black men.

(Laughs) Really? I hadn't noticed.

Yeah, my mom filmmaker Ayoka Chenzira, who directs the show and I, we laugh about that.