Anti-Racist Theatre with Nicole Brewer, Sedina Fiati, and afrakaren

What does it mean to practice Anti-Racist Theatre, not just talk about it?
About this Event

Overview

What does it mean to practice Anti-Racist Theatre, not just talk about it?

In partnership with Why Not Theatre, Factory Theatre, and The Black Pledge, author Nicole Brewer is joined by Sedina Fiati and afrakaren for a dynamic and honest conversation on how we get freer, through the lens of Nicole’s new book, The Antiracist Theatre: Crafting Theatrical Collaboration.

Drawing from their lived experiences as multi-hyphenate theatermakers and industry leaders, Ren, Sedina, and Nicole will explore how they embody anti-racist practices in their work, what it takes to disrupt harmful theatrical systems, and how we can build more equitable, transformative ways of creating together.

Come ready for a conversation that is thought-provoking, practical, joyful, and rooted in possibility.

The conversation will be followed by a book signing and an opportunity to purchase copies of Nicole Brewer’s The Anti-Racist Theatre: Crafting Theatrical Collaboration, sold onsite by Another Story Bookshop.

ABOUT THE BOOK

A how-to guide for theatermakers who want freedom from white supremacy in their creative practices

The Antiracist Theatre offers readers the tools and foundational philosophy to create their own antiracist theatre ethos and delve into its three core principles: harm reduction, harm prevention, and relationship repair.

Nicole Brewer, faculty at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale and the originator of the Antiracist Theatre model, guides readers through self-reflection exercises designed to strengthen awareness of their own position, power, and privilege and uproot their racist practices. Brewer provides definitions of oft-used, but rarely defined terms like “accountability,” “racism,” and “abuse.” She welcomes BIPOC readers and lovingly and playfully calls in white theatermakers as she outlines methods to interrupt patterns of abuse.

All who believe the way forward for theatre is antiracist and anti-oppressive are welcome. We each have a role to play in liberating the stage, the classroom, and the performing arts.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nicole Brewer is a theater director whose work has been seen at theaters such as Long Wharf Theatre, Baltimore Center Stage, and Folger Theatre. She is an educator with more than 18 years of teaching experience. Brewer is notably known as the originator of the internationally recognized Antiracist Theatre (ART) model. A leading voice in the movement to transform theater culture through accountability, care, and liberation-centered practices, Brewer serves as acting faculty at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale.

In her debut book, The Antiracist Theatre, Nicole Brewer invites readers to consider the cost of business as usual and reclaim their power to challenge and shift extractive, exclusionary, and exploitative processes. Brewer creates space for readers to reimagine how creative spaces can function in healthier, more humane, and accountable ways. The book offers practical tools for building healthier creative environments where everyone can thrive.

For more than sixteen years, Brewer has developed and facilitated anti-racist and anti-oppressive training methodologies that challenge harmful industry norms and reimagine what collaborative artistic processes can be. Her work has been featured at conferences and institutions across the United States, Canada, and the UK, including workshops with Shakespeare's Globe and the University of Cambridge.

A dynamic speaker known for blending rigor, humor, honesty, and deep compassion, Brewer has taught at Howard University, her alma mater, the National Theater Institute, and the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, among others.

About Sedina Fiati

Sedina Ama Fiati is a multi award winning, Toronto based performer, producer, director, creator, facilitator and activist for stage and screen. Proudly Black, queer and femme, Sedina is deeply invested in artistic work that explores the intersection between art and activism, either in form or structure or ideally both. Since 2020, Sedina is a proud co-founder and collective member of The Black Pledge, an initiative to dismantle anti-Black racism in live performance. Sedina was also Artist-Activist in Residence at Nightwood Theatre and Program Facilitator for Generator’s Artist Producer Training Program. Sedina is also a frequent workshop facilitator and consultant. Recent work: Lead With Purpose - Workshop Series for Arts’ Leaders - Lead Facilitator, All Together Now - Workshop Series for Choral Leaders - Co-Facilitator & Co-Creator, Canadian Network for Racial Justice Conference - Facilitator, IETM International Performing Arts Network - Workshop Facilitator.

About afrakaren

Ren Niles a.k.a, afrakaren, is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, storyteller and community engagement strategist, whose work focuses on the dismantling of anti-black-racsim. She explores the intersections of narrative, embodiment, and womanist thought. Grounded in lived experience and guided by ancestral knowledge, her practice engages language as both medium and method—rooted in the philosophy of word/sound/power.

Her work interrogates anti-Blackness, coloniality, and the structures that shape whose knowledge is valued, whose labour is extracted, and whose voices are heard. Through her work as Community Engagement Strategist, with the Black Pledge Collective, Ren contributes to cultural strategy, institutional accountability, and collective learning within the performing arts, creating the conditions for difficult knowledge to be encountered, shared, and transformed. Guided by the principle of listening to Black/women, she challenges the extraction of Black intellectual and emotional labour, advocating for practices rooted in shared responsibility, relational accountability, and the recognition of Black women as knowledge producers and architects of change.

Ren constructs blueprints for the self determination of Blackfolk. Drawing upon womanist thought, African diasporic intellectual traditions, and ancestral knowledge she imagines and cultivates new ways of being, relating, and understanding the Black/body/politic. Her work moves between the intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and sensory registers of being, creating space for reflection, resistance, rest, and transformation. She understands her practice as both offering and responsibility—one that holds space for unseen narratives and supports personal and collective shifts.

Guided by her ancestors, she works as a kind of midwife—attending to what is emerging, to what has been silenced, and to the quiet, necessary revolutions unfolding within and between us.

Agenda

🕑: 06:30 PM - 07:30 PM
Conversation
🕑: 07:30 PM - 08:00 PM
Book Signing