d'bi.young anitafrika Doctoral Researcher at London South Bank University, UK

Black Womxn Theatre! Decolonising Personhood, Practice & Pedagogy

Abstract

This study investigates the impact of colonial-hxstorical-systemic oppression on Black womyn theatre makers in Kanata (colonamed Canada) and how they respond to those experiences through story making. Furthermore, it examines how Black womyn theatre practitioners devise theatre and performance and the ways in which their devisings contribute to the decolonisation of personhood, practice, and pedagogy. Drawing on structured and semi-structured interviews with thirty-three Black womyn theatre makers, theatre and performance archives, and a national survey, as well as critical analysis of the author’s own twenty-five-year journey as a Black womxn playwright-performer-educator, the research explores the impact of anti-Black racism, misogynoir, sexual violence, classism, shadeism, queerphobia, transphobia, ableism and ageism on Black womyn's experiences, and how they create communities and institutions of belonging, resistance, and celebration that cultivate pedagogies of transformation in theatre, despite the fissures and tensions of colonialities that emerge within and outside of their kinship. Through the lens of  Black feminist thought, Ubuntu philosophy, performance autoethnography, and the Anitafrika Method, the investigation reveals the complex ways in which theatre and performance-making is a process of radical self-empowerment for Black womyn that extends to the wider society, enacting social change while catalysing radical paradigm shifts within the arts industry. The outcome of the study includes a website documenting Black womyn theatre makers and a toolkit entitled The Anitafrika Method: Towards a Decolonial Performance Praxis. The investigation aims to advance the critical studies of Black womyn’s theatre and performance in Kanata, and in so doing contribute to the decolonisation of the industry by foregrounding Black womyn's liberatory performance praxes as urgent contributions to the discipline of theatre and performance.