About the Play:

21 Black Futures: The Anthology presents 21 short plays responding to the question "What is the future of Blackness?"

In 2021, Toronto's Obsidian Theatre challenged Black playwrights in Canada to create twenty-one new stories about imagined Black futures. Twenty-one to celebrate Obsidian's twenty-first anniversary in 2021. Each playwright was tasked with scripting a ten-minute one-person play in response to the question "What is the future of Blackness?" To counter the intense isolation of a global pandemic and the trauma of witnessing heightened violence toward Black bodies, Obsidian Theatre's goal was to give as many opportunities to as many diverse Black artists as possible and to bring new voices together from both theatre and film. It was a grand experiment to create a rich tapestry of possibilities and to uplift Black artists in the process.

A radical offering in unprecedented times, the curatorial aim of newly appointed Obsidian artistic director Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu was to come together in this moment and create something communal, unapologetically Black, and with the Black gaze at its centre – art as the architecture for creating those futures. This anthology includes

The Death Doula by Amanda Parris

The Sender by Cheryl Foggo

Jah in the Ever-Expanding Song by Kaie Kellough

Beyere by Shauntay Grant

Madness With Rocks by Peace Akintade-Oluwagbeye

Witness Shift by Donna-Michelle St. Bernard

Sensitivity by Lawrence Hill

Special by Keshia Cheesman

Umoja Corp by Jacob Sampson

Notice by Luke Reece

Blackberries by Miali-Elise Coley-Sudlovenick

Emmett by Syrus Marcus Ware

Georgeena by Djanet Sears

Rebirth of the Afronauts by Motion

Cavities by K.P Dennis

40 Parsecs and Some Fuel by Omari Newton

The Prescription by Lisa Codrington

Chronologie by Stephie Mazunya

Yɛn ara asaase ni by Tawiah M'Carthy

Builders of Nations by Joseph Jomo Pierre

Omega Child by Cherissa Richards

About the Curator:

Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu is an acclaimed theatre creator and director raised in Kenya and Victoria, BC and based in Toronto. She is the Artistic Director of Obsidian Theatre, and is also the recipient of many awards including a Canadian Screen Award, a Dora Award, a Toronto Theatre Critics Award, a Pauline McGibbon Award and a Mallory Gilbert Protege Award.