My name is d'bi.young anitafrika and my preferred pronouns are she/her and they/them. I am a Black Jamaican-Canadian Theatre Practitioner. My focus is on African Caribbean performance aesthetics, specialising in Biomyth monodrama and solo-performance. I work internationally as a Dub Poet, playwright/performer and director/dramaturge, particularly mentoring emerging artists. I have garnered three Dora Mavor Moore Theatre Awards in Canada for my work as a playwright and performer and have nine Dora nominations including two for my work as a director.
I have written twelve plays (six of which are published), published four collections of poetry and seven Dub albums. Recently I completed my MA in Performance Making and am now applying for a PhD where my focus will be Methods of Performance Training and Making in the African Caribbean Diaspora. From 2008-2018, I was the founding artistic director of the Watah Theatre in Toronto Canada, a professional theatre company specializing in producing political theatre from a radical queer Black feminist lens. Watah offered tuition-free performance training to emerging and established BIQTPOC artists (2008-2018) using a decolonial performance training method I have been developing over the years.
My work addresses issues of gender, sexuality, race, class and the human experience. Most recently, three plays that I dramaturged and directed, using my method, were published in Canada. The book, Dubbin Monodrama Anthology 1: Black Masculinities in African Diaspora Theatre features the plays ‘Who Am I?’ by Webster McDonald, ‘speaking of sneaking’ by daniel jelani ellis, and ‘11:11’ by Samson Bonkeabantu Brown. These contemporary monodramas from Black male playwrights of Jamaican, Canadian and South African heritage are passionately crafted stories that speak to displacement, colonial legacies, identity, gender, sexuality, home, recovery, and coming into self, through the framework of the Anitafrika Method.
10+ years
Jamaica Nation Language, Spanish