Black Womxn Theatre PhD Dissertation and Digital Archive Project Launch

On March 9, 2026, the Watah Theatre launches d'bi.young anitafrika's Black Womxn Theatre PhD Dissertation, "Personhood, Practice, & Pedagogy in Black Womxn Theatre: A Black Queer Transfeminist Dubography", alongside the Black Womxn Theatre Digital Archive Project.

Black Womxn Theatre PhD Dissertation and Digital Archive Project Launch

March 9, 2026 | 7:00–9:00 PM | Watah Studio Theatre

Toronto, North Turtle Island — On Monday, March 9, 2026, from 7:00 to 9:00 PM, Watah Studio Theatre will host a landmark evening celebrating the publication of d’bi.young anitafrika’s Black Womxn Theatre PhD Dissertation and the official launch of the Black Womxn Theatre Digital Archive Project. This public event is a long-overdue recognition and championing of Black womyn whose labour, brilliance, and leadership have shaped the theatre industry across North Turtle Island.

The evening will centre the launch of anitafrika’s doctoral dissertation, Personhood, Practice, & Pedagogy in Black Womxn Theatre: A Black Queer Transfeminist Dubography, a critical autoethnography that identifies and addresses a profound gap in the archival documentation, institutional recognition, and herstorical visibility of Black womyn in theatre. Building from this research, the event will also formally launch the Black Womxn Theatre Digital Archive Project, a nationally funded initiative supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.

In addition to the academic and archival launches, the evening will honour Black womyn who have shaped and sustained the theatre industry in North Turtle Island, recognising their enduring artistic, pedagogical, and cultural impact and affirming their rightful place within the national theatre canon.

Anchored in the Anitafrika Dub Praxis, Personhood, Practice, & Pedagogy in Black Womxn Theatre is a hybrid memoir-monograph that investigates how Black womyn theatre makers of African-Caribbean descent decoliberate personhood, practice, and pedagogy within concentric kinship circles of femtorship in Tkarón:to and beyond. Drawing on twenty-five years of professional practice as a dub poet and theatre maker, the research combines Practice-as-Research, Black feminist epistemology, intersectionality, and Ubuntu philosophy.

The dissertation charts the herstory of Black womyn’s theatre in North Turtle Island, examines the impacts of colonial-historical-systemic harm on practitioners, explores how oppression is metabolised through playmaking, and identifies distinct feminist performance aesthetics within Black womyn’s theatre. It introduces the Anitafrika Dub Praxis as an original, decolonial, Black queer transfeminist technology for theatre training, integrating methodology, pedagogy, and performance through living archival practice.

The PhD includes qualitative and quantitative research drawn from forty-one semi-structured interviews, surveys, and rare archival materials, including Anita Stewart’s unpublished manuscript and ahdri zhina mandiela’s 1995 documentary on/stage/black/women. The Practice-as-Research outcomes include an Anitafrika Method Resource Compendium featuring a Decolonial Praxis Deck, seven Principle Lectures, and an Anitafrika Method Workshop video series.

Building directly on the doctoral research, the Black Womxn Theatre Digital Archive Project is a national initiative that responds to the historical erasure of Black womyn in theatre by offering a long-overdue, intentional, and expansive celebration of their creative legacies. The project centres the work of 100 Black womyn theatre makers from 1970 to the present, ensuring their stories, methodologies, and cultural contributions are preserved with care and integrity.

While the PhD research uncovered and celebrated many foundational artists, the archive's scope encompasses many womyn whose lives and work could not be fully included in the dissertation. This two-year project is the first internationally accessible digital archive dedicated exclusively to Black womyn’s theatre in North Turtle Island.

The archive features biographies, interviews, and artefacts from theatre makers who have made indelible contributions to the Canadian cultural landscape, creating a vital resource for artists, scholars, students, and communities who are coming after us and deserve to know the space that was created for them to exist fully.

The project is guided by a Council of Stewards comprised of six Black womyn theatre and multidisciplinary artists who will support the archive’s vision and deliverables. Council members include Ngozi Paul (Emancipation Arts), Sashoya Simpson (The Walking Griot), Raechele Lovell (DiverseDance Works), Carla Chambers (Embers Lab), and multidisciplinary artists Behbeit Burrell and Najla Nubyanluv.

What: Black Womxn Theatre PhD Dissertation & Black Womxn Theatre Digital Archive Project Launch

When: Monday, March 9, 2026 | 7:00–9:00 PM

Where: Watah Studio Theatre

32 Lisgar Street, Studio 14

Toronto, Ontario, M6J 0C7

For Media Inquiries: [email protected]

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