Ernesto Tomasini

He’s the man of a thousand masks: meet Ernesto Tomasini, one of the most intriguing and fabulous performers in London and Europe. 

Tell us a little bit about yourself. 

I was born in Sicily in Palermo, the capital of the mafia. When I was 15 I was lucky enough to win a scholarship to go to Walt Disney’s school for drawing in California, and there you had to learn clowning and expressions as skills useful for cartooning. I did a show as a young clown there. Back in Italy I put the two things alongside each other: with the drawing, I was working for a national newspaper, and at the same time I was performing my little cabarets around town and then Italy, before coming to London at age 20 to train. I was going to stay here for a year, but then job after job after job came, I got the West End, I was able to work on my own writing and material, and taking over the world… [Laughs] I never stopped!

How would you describe yourself sexuality-wise?

I’ve stopped wondering about my sexuality and that of other people, I don’t think it’s really relevant. I fought and was extremely gay in the 80s when I thought there was a need for it. Now I’m very disillusioned. Even the word LGBT I feel uncomfortable with, it sounds like a sort of exotic disease, or a dodgy drug. But there’s a huge chunk of it that seems to want to become legitimate and dull and boring and be like Mum and Dad and have kids and get married – all the things to me that are sick and are evil. We should be getting straights out of that frame of mind, of 2,000 years of religious oppression. Monogamy is unnatural and gay people were the most beautiful expression to show that to everybody else and now they want to be ‘for life, forever!’ Gay lawyers are so busy since this marriage thing exists, because they’re divorcing after 3 days, or a week. Gay society is so fluid. If you want to be together all your life, I’m not saying that’s wrong, but I don’t think we should order our society around that.

Do you think your thinking about religious oppression is influenced by your Catholic upbringing?

I was very lucky because I’m an only child and I had very understanding parents. But I did feel isolated by society. In those days, we’re talking early 80s, there was no image in the outside world of another gay anything, let alone person. I rejected the Catholic Church and spat on it. My first rebellion happened when I was ten in the Church choir, when I insisted on singing mass like a girl, with a female voice. I was meant to sing a boy treble and then after watching Mary Poppins, I repeated what Mary Poppins does to the mirror, and I was kicked out of the choir. My parents were called and it was a big, big thing for me. Literally, all these faces were so shocked. Everyone was like ‘a boy should never sing like that’, but that’s exactly what they should tell you to make you want to do it more!

You’re also involved with the party Kaos? 

Lee Adams, who’s the guy who runs Kaos, he called me to perform and I was like ‘I’m doing Chicago but fuck it, I could come at 2am’. So, I went straight from the show. I’d written and developed a sort of 15-minute electronic opera with a Japanese musician. At the time Kaos was only a salon des artistes, there was no club as such. People would just stand up and someone would do an aerial thing in the middle of the room, and I’d do my opera thing and people would dance to Jewish traditional songs and music, it was really weird. But it’s where I met Othon (my sometime collaborator), and some people I met there have literally become my London family. Because it’s mainly people who are not from England, they come from all over the world, in need of some family substitute. It’s very Jean Genet Our Lady of the Flowers: some are called ‘Auntie’ and ‘Mother’ and ‘Daddy’. I haven’t been to the new venue at Electrowerkz because I’ve been away working, but whenever I’m in town I always go.

And what’s next for Ernesto Tomasini? 

I’m very excited, because I’m working with the producer Man Parrish (Gloria Gaynor, Klaus Nomi). I have a new record coming out based on Georges Bataille’s Madame Edwarda, and I’m doing promotion for it I guess more in Germany but who knows, maybe here as well. And then on the 7th December I have my debut as DJ on the Ship of Fools – it’s the only thing I haven’t done!

• Read the full ‘In Conversation With’ transcript with Ernesto Tomasini online at: qxmagazine.kinsta.cloud/blog-event/in-conversation-with-ernesto-tomasini/

• www.ernestotomasini.com

Advertisement

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here