Last year Sharae Robinson went on an open casting call for a music video in Manhattan. While she was there, she spotted a flyer announcing auditions for the MTV reality show Room Raiders.The whole process started in July 2003. Many months and several auditions and interviews later, Robinson, 21, had a role on the show.
“I didn’t really take it seriously until they started taking me seriously,” says Robinson, a Jersey City resident who is a senior at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark.
Room Raiders follows one lucky contestant as he or she searches the bedrooms of three prospective dates. At first, Robinson was tapped for a role as one of the raidees – she’d sit by while a guy rummaged through her stuff – but the producers liked her so much that she was upgraded to a leading role as a raider.
“My thing, as a central character, was to make witty inferences about the three guys from what I found during my raid of their rooms,” Robinson says.
The episode filmed over several days in January. Robinson had the pleasure of rifling through the belongings of three guys, all of whom lived with their parents in northern New Jersey.
Skeletons in the closet?
So what did she find in the guys’ rooms? Guy No. 1 had a Barbie CD-ROM and a red dress hanging in his closet. Among the finds in the room of Bachelor No. 2 were drawers stuffed with cash, gambling stubs, and a racy home video. In the third guy’s room, she found DJ turntables and a film-school brochure.
Based on the evidence, I think we can all agree that Robinson chose wisely when she went with Guy No. 3.
“I thought, given that we have similar interests – I like music and film, too – we’d click,” Robinson says.
But alas, there was no connection.
“His room seemed so extroverted and he was so shy,” Robinson says. “He was this really short Asian guy, and I, with my high heels on, towered over him. I’m sure he was thinking, “Who is this black chick towering over me?'”
Ulterior motives
But Robinson didn’t go on the show to get a date. The Jersey City native is a spoken-word artist who’s had a knack for performing since childhood. Robinson hopes to land a job as a VJ on MTV, and she says that while filming Room Raiders, she met MTV employees who first got a foot in the door by participating in similar shows.
At the very least, the program has given Robinson some exposure. Her Room Raiders episode first aired in March, and more recently it’s been in frequent reruns. Now Robinson says people recognize her on the street. Last Friday, a woman spotted her in a club in New York.
Robinson began performing spoken word during her freshman year at NYU. (She later transferred, in part so she could save money by living at home.) These days, she has a talk radio show on the Rutgers student station through a cooperative arrangement with NJIT. Robinson spins all kinds of music – everything from Elton John to OutKast, she says – interviews guests, and discusses her celebrity encounters with the likes of Laurence Fishburne and Erykah Badu.
Recently, Robinson has appeared in spoken-word gigs at the Dancing Goat in South Orange, at Richard Stockton College in Pomona, and at Luna Stage in Montclair. She has also performed as an opening act at comedy clubs in Manhattan – including Boston Comedy Club – presenting a poetry set. Robinson hopes to appear soon at Maxwell’s in Hoboken.
“BoycottBET”
Robinson’s signature piece is “BoycottBET,” a critique of Black Entertainment Television. (Or, as Robinson calls it, “Backindatassup unEntertainment Television.”)
“We should not accept being portrayed one way, all day, everyday,” Robinson says on her Web site, members.blackplanet.com/boycottbet. “As respectable people of the diaspora, we have more to offer the media than such god awful one-sided, mindless garbage.”
When she performs “BoycottBET,” Robinson says her message is well received.
“The piece is making a real impact on the ideas and opinions of my listeners,” Robinson says.
After she graduates in December with a degree in history and a minor in theater, Robinson plans to pursue a career in entertainment. This summer, she is sending in a VJ audition tape to MTV, and another to Def Poetry Jam, the HBO series.
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