Lyn Gardner talks to Paula Varjack about Nine Sixteenths
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Growing up in the 1990s, theatre maker **Paula Varjack** was a huge fan of **Janet Jackson**. “She was a real icon for me,” says Varjack, whose ensemble show [*Nine Sixteenths*](https://www.londontheatredirect.com/musical/nine-sixteenths-tickets) opens at Brixton House in next week following an acclaimed out-of-London tour. As indeed she was for a lot of young black women. It was not until Varjack saw Jackson perform at Glastonbury in 2019 that she started wondering why Jackson had fallen off her radar.
What she discovered was that **Jackson** had had a considerable output between 2004, when she was the first black woman to command the Super Bowl halftime slot, and 2019, but somehow Varjack had remained unaware of it. Was that the case for others too?
“It was so strange, as if she had lost a sense of her own narrative. She had been huge, and then suddenly she wasn’t. She didn’t stop making music, but it just wasn’t heard widely. I wanted to know what had happened?"
Intrigued, and with support and a grant from Complicité, **Varjack** began to investigate further. What she discovered has fed into *Nine Sixteenths*, a show which is both a coming-of-age story about the icons who shape our thinking but which also digs beneath the surface to explore representation and pop culture and asks who controls which and whose narratives.
In 2004 **Jackson** was at the height of her fame; hence the invite to perform at the Super Bowl. All was going well during the performance, and towards the end she invited a young **Justin Timberlake** to join her on stage.
During their brief performance together, **Timberlake** ripped her top away in a rehearsed move. **Jackson**'s bustier was supposed to remain in place, but the costume malfunctioned, and for nine-sixteenths of a second, **Jackson**’s nipple was exposed on live TV. This fleeting, unplanned exposure happened when the internet was still in its infancy, so it was not shared in the way it would be now, but the impact on **Jackson**’s career was catastrophic.
The young **Timberlake** came out of the incident unscathed, and he went on to perform at the Grammys the following week, but **Jackson** had her invitation to perform at the Grammys rescinded, and for five years her music did not get airplay on radio stations and MTV.
“Her output was blocked; effectively, she had been cancelled,” explains **Varjack**. “Her career did eventually recover, but I wondered what it might have been if she had not been cancelled.” She points out that it was 10 years before another female black artist—**Beyoncé**—headlined the Super Bowl.
For **Varjack** there are many things that make the incident and its fallout—which **Jackson** has only glancingly ever referred to in public—interesting. One is the silence around it and what that says about who wields power in the media, which remains largely dominated by white male multimillionaires.
**Varjack** reckons that attitudes towards female sexuality, particularly when it comes to older women, have changed considerably in the 20 years or so since **Jackson**’s wardrobe malfunction, and in recent years “there has been a resurgence of older women in fashion and within pop culture. But I think back then being a pop icon who was a 38-year-old woman who was really owning her sexuality in her lyrics and on stage and who was an ally for the LGBTQ+ community was thought to be offensive by some who decided she had to be policed.”
As a black artist herself and an older one, **Varjack** is also interested in how black female bodies are read on stage by audiences, her own included, and “how my representation sits". To that end, *Nine Sixteenths* has an ensemble of black women all over the age of 40 as it reclaims Jackson’s power and asks some pointed questions around who benefitted from her humiliation and silencing.
For **Varjack**, whose output is always deeply thoughtful and unexpectedly funny and entertaining, working with a large ensemble of black women is a homage to **Jackson**, the woman whose music was so influential on her own girlhood and who always works with a large ensemble. But it also springs from a desire as a hugely experienced artist “to create in a room I haven’t experienced, one full of black women creating together.”
*Nine Sixteenths* offers a reminder that while British theatre showcases plenty of black talent on stage, it doesn’t always offer that creative power in the rehearsal room. **Janet Jackson** may have lost control of her own narrative, but Varjack and her ensemble are creating a new one. For the singer and themselves.
The response to *Nine Sixteenths* on its tour across the country has been warm but also sometimes unexpected.
“Lots of older black women have come and really connected, white women too, because there is so much about feminism and solidarity female friendship. But there have been lots of gay men who have very strong feelings about righting the injustice which was done to Janet Jackson too.”
There have been lots of younger audiences who weren’t even born when the wardrobe malfunction happened.
“I think there is something interesting and maybe nostalgic to them about a period before the internet because they are often worried about getting something wrong online and finding themselves cancelled. Seeing these older women on stage doing this very physical, passionate show lets them know that life is not going to end when they are 25. So many people find unexpected connections to the show, which I guess is because when you lean into something specific like this story, you accidentally land on something that has a universal truth."
[Nine Sixteeths](https://www.londontheatredirect.com/musical/nine-sixteenths-tickets) plays at [Brixton House](https://www.londontheatredirect.com/venue/brixton-house-theatre-london) from 19 to 30 May 2026. Book your tickets today.