Refractions: Scenes

Edited by Donna-Michelle St. Bernard & Yvette Nolan
Subjects: Middle Eastern Canadian Playwrights, Asian Canadian Playwrights, Scenes & Monologues, Indigenous Playwrights, Anthologies, African and Caribbean Canadian Playwrights, Latinx Canadian Playwrights, Jewish Theatre

This collection can be used both as a source for actors and students, or as a primer on diverse Canadian theatre and an entry point into new works. Refractions: Scenes includes work by Michaela di Cesare, ...

Black Boys

By Virgilia Griffith, Stephen Jackman-Torkoff, Tawiah M’Carthy, Thomas Antony Olajide, and Jonathan Seinen
Subjects: Ontario Playwrights, African and Caribbean Canadian Playwrights, LGBT/Queer Theatre
Casting: 3 m
Duration: 90 minutes

In a society where the Black male body is both vilified and sexualized, Black Boys uncovers the complex dynamics of the queer Black male experience. Text, movement, and design portray the rhythm and vulnerability ...

Other Side of the Game

By Amanda Parris
Subjects: African and Caribbean Canadian Playwrights, Women Writers, Ontario Playwrights
Casting: 3 f, 2 m
Duration: 90 minutes

I don’t think you can expect society to change if you’re not ready to take the first step.

In the 1970s Beverly walks into an office of Black activists, wanting to join the Movement, and has to prove ...

Cake

By Donna-Michelle St. Bernard
Introduction by Nikki Shaffeeullah
Afterword by Kern Albert
Subjects: African and Caribbean Canadian Playwrights, Women Writers
Casting: 1 f, 3 m
Duration: 60 minutes

A man earns. However little, however nefariously, he earns.

Oba, a middle-aged businessman, is torn between his pride and dignity. He’s obsessed with making deals in unidentified substances to stay ...

The Flood

By Leah Simone Bowen
Subjects: Ontario Playwrights, Women Writers, History, African and Caribbean Canadian Playwrights
Casting: 5 f, 2 m

“I bore him fourteen children and he had me down here faster than lightning.”

In 1887, women were property and could be imprisoned for any reason. Jail was considered a place for the criminal, the ...

How Black Mothers Say I Love You

By Trey Anthony
Subjects: Family Life, Siblings, (Im)migration, African and Caribbean Canadian Playwrights, Women Writers, Death, Grief & Loss, LGBT/Queer Theatre
Casting: 4 f

Claudette still can’t forgive her mother for leaving. For six years of her childhood, Claudette and her sister Valerie were left with their grandmother while their mother, Daphne, moved from Jamaica ...

Up the Garden Path & The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God

By Lisa Codrington
Subjects: Family Life, Anthologies, Award Winners, Community Theatre Picks, Large Cast, Ontario Playwrights, Women Writers, African and Caribbean Canadian Playwrights
Casting: 4 f, 3 m | 3 f, 5 m

In Up the Garden Path, Rosa, a young Barbadian seamstress, offers to pose as her brother to go to the Niagara Region in Ontario to work. There, she meets an aspiring actress obsessed with Joan of Arc, ...

Twisted

By Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman & Joseph Jomo Pierre
Subjects: African and Caribbean Canadian Playwrights, Ontario Playwrights, Women Writers
Casting: 1 f, 1 m
Duration: 80 minutes

Growing up, Nancy believed in magic despite a hand-me-down life in a small town. So it’s no wonder the buzzing excitement of Toronto and its allure of freedom was a likely choice for her new home, the ...

A Man A Fish

By Donna-Michelle St. Bernard
Subjects: Environmental Issues, African and Caribbean Canadian Playwrights, Women Writers, Ontario Playwrights, Family Life, Marriage & Divorce
Casting: 1 f, 3 m

Prosper is a fisherman trying to get by in the face of everyday problems: there’s the spectre of the baby his wife desires, the ghost of his dead mistress, his wife’s secret admirer, and the overwhelming ...

$Refractions: Solo$

Refractions: Solo

Edited by Donna-Michelle St. Bernard & Yvette Nolan
Subjects: South Asian Canadian Playwrights, Anthologies, Jewish Theatre, Theatre Studies, Acting & Technique, Indigenous Playwrights, African and Caribbean Canadian Playwrights, Scenes & Monologues, Asian Canadian Playwrights

A collection can be used both as a monologue source for actors and students, or as a primer on diverse Canadian theatre and an entry point into new works, many of which are not yet widely available.Includes ...