Stage Door News
Stage Door News
Celebrating the 10-year anniversary of BloodClaat, The Watah Theatre is pleased to announce the return of d’bi.young multi-award winning triptych - The Sankofa Trilogy. The Watah Theatre will be staging a reimagined, site-specific production of BloodClaat October 26th to November 20th, 2016 to open its Blk Bx Season. BloodClaat comes following rave reviews of anitafrika’s latest epic The Orisha Trilogy (which garnered a Dora nomination for Esu Crossing The Middle Passage, two Dora nominations and a Dora award for She Mami Wata & The Pussy WitchHunt and an Audience Choice award for Bleeders).
BloodClaat is the story of a 15 year old girl coming of age, through menstrual rights of passage and her courageous survival through childhood sexual assault. Using the intimate Watah Theatre Studio as the storyteller’s playground, BloodClaat is reimagined as an experimental site-specific production where anitafrika aims to deepen her monodrama-performer-audience-relationship for which she is known.
The Sankofa Trilogy is d'bi.young anitafrika's two-time Dora Award winning premiere triptych of solo-performance works. It features the monodramas BloodClaat, followed Benu & Word! Sound! Powah! The trilogy journeys through the extraordinary stories of three generations of powerful Jamaican womxn: Mudgu Sankofa, her daughter Sekesu and her granddaughter Benu and their resolute belief in blood, truth and r/evolution. As to be expected in anitafrika’s work, issues of equality, love, liberation are front and centre. BloodClaat was nominated for five Dora Awards including Outstanding Design, Outstanding Direction and Outstanding Production and won in the categories of Outstanding New Play and Outstanding Performance.
d'bi.young anitafrika is a queer Black feminist multi-disciplinary artist, United Nations speaker, Canadian Poet of Honor, InkTalks/TED speaker and YWCA Woman of Distinction. The internationally celebrated African-Jamaican dubpoet, dramatist, educator, director and dramaturge is also a 3 time Dora Award winning writer-performer. Her groundbreaking creative praxis - the Anitafrika Method - uses the Sorplusi Principles as an intersectional anti-oppression human development framework, which is studied and practiced globally by artists, instigators and policy-makers. d’bi is the founding Artistic Director of Watah; Canada's only professional theatre company that offers tuition-free artist residencies to 25 Black and diverse artist-leaders. She is also the founder and CEO of The Sorplusi Institute and Sorplusi Publishing, a research-based social enterprise with a micro press extension, which produces works by Black and diverse creators. Author of 7 plays, 6 dub albums and 5 books, d'bi has toured nationally and internationally. She is currently creating the first ever Dub Opera, tackling global environmental issues through a large-scale political musical entitled Lukumi, scored by her Afro-fusion-Reggae band The 333. dbiyounganitafrika.com.
BloodClaat features the multi-award winning performer d’bi.young anitafrika; Collectively Directed by the Creative Team; Set & Costumes by Rachel Forbes (How Black Mothers Say I Love You, Bleeders); Practical Lightning design by Brett Haynes (The Lovers, Breaking News); Spiritual Mentorship Raven Dauda (The Penelopiad, Doubt: A Parable),.
Press Reviews of BloodClaat:
Eye Weekly: “young is charismatic performer who channels her fierce intensity into each of the dozen sharply differentiated characters she plays.”
BloodClaat
Playwright/Performer d’bi.young anitafrika
Set/Costume Designer Rachel Forbes | Lighting Designer Brett Haynes
Spiritual Mentor | Raven Dauda
Oct 26 - Nov 20, 2016 | The Watah Theatre
ADVANCE TICKETS AVAILABLE bloodclaat.brownpapertickets.com
Photo: Miss Ellaneous. ©2016 MyView NT.
2016-10-04
Toronto: d'bi.young anitafrika's acclaimed "BloodClaat" returns October 26-November 20