"BARBADOS. ." A CONVERSATION WITH DIVA ALEXANDER 15

 like Jeffersons. Moesha. I like Living Single and what's the other one?
 Friends. To me those are ok. Then I had another one. That soap opera
 Generations. That was nice. Most of the black comedies I don't watch.
 I think they are crappy. I love Are You Being Served. It is the ultimate.
 The English have a different sense of humor. They are different and
 they are very slap stick. I like slap stick in any comedy. It's funny.

"Abstract Is not my thing because I believe anybody can do that."

 Although Diva conceptualizes herself as a part of a tradition of
 transgendered performers in Barbados, she definitively distinguishes
 herself from that legacy through her assertion of the role her show has
 played in elevating that tradition. In terms of her self-conception as a
 performer, Diva differentiates her show, currently staged at a restaurant
 called Ragamuffins, from other such incarnations by what she terms as
 its "class." She has a strictly, and rather traditionally structured sense
 of cultural capital that manifests itself in her discussions of clothing,
 manners, speech, and other factors that for her are markers of
 sophistication and propriety.
 Diva is a multifaceted artist whose palette colors a multiplicity of generic
 canvases. She understands performance as a calling and her artistic
 production manifests itself as performance. Performance, in her
 conception, has tremendous agency and is inseparably connected to
 the imperative of catalyzing spiritual and intellectual understanding
 and transformation in others. The responses Diva generates from her
 various audiences are also potentially revelatory of the relationship
 between nationalism, popular cultures, and mimesis.
CG- Was yours the first transgendered show in Barbados?
DA- Well, not in Barbados. The first show of class. There were shows before
 in the city [Bridgetown]. Just little hush hush things on Baxter's Road.
 Yeah, they used to have these little shows when I was a child. They had
 all of these different shows in the city. They were not as classy. What
 I'm doing here is to desensitize the public and to show them that-hey,
 people who you all consider different contribute in good ways to make
 people happy Tourists come to Ragamuffins to see our show. We've
 been in several magazines outside the country. We've been in Hello
 magazine. We've been in Girl Talk in San Diego. We've been in
 numerous magazines and I believe we must be doing something right
 in order for this to be happening. It's the strength of God and my
 willpower that keeps it going. We've been to London and we did
 performances in London.
CG- So you do shows all over the Caribbean, the world?