Welcome to Equity in Theatre

The Storefront Arts Initiative and The Watah Theatre announces
Esu Crossing The Middle Passage
Part one of the Orisha Trilogy by
d’bi.young anitafrika

Esu Crossing The Middle Passage
Part One of The Orisha Trilogy
Playwright | Performer: d'bi.young anitafrika
Sound Designer: Waleed Abdulhamid
Composer | Musician: Tuku Matthews
Composer | Musician: Amina Alfred
Choreographer: BaKari I. Lindsay
Set Designer: Rachel Forbes

Producer: Brett Haynes
www.watah.org

SHORT DESCRIPTION
Esu Crossing the premiere play in d'bi.young anitafrika's new triptych entitled The Orisha Trilogy. She is Esu, the Orisha Godd3ss who crosses the middle passage. They say as an enslaved African. We say as a trickster mythic womxn.

LONG DESCRIPTION
Globally acclaimed Dora award-winning storyteller, d'bi.young anitafrika returns home to the Toronto stage.

The Storefront Theatre Arts Initiative in conjunction with The Watah Theatre is pleased to announce d’bi.young anitafrika’s return to the Toronto stage with her new triptych – The Orisha Trilogy. The premiere play in the trilogy, Esu Crossing The Middle Passage, will be gracing the Storefront Theatre’s stage from April 1-17, 2016.

Set aboard a slave ship, Esu Crossing The Middle Passage, voyages a womxn's journey into the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, embodied by the spirit of Esu – the trickster God of Ifa, who sits at the crossroads. Esu Crossing the Middle Passage is story-told through other-worldly movement, poetry & sound juxtaposed with contemporary crossings of Black bodies.

The latter two plays in The Orisha Trilogy are She, Mami Wata & The Pussy WitchHunt (May 2016 at Theatre Passe Muraille) and Bleeders (August 2016). anitafrika continues her exploration of blood, Black identity and divinity, setting the trilogy in the past, present and future while reinterpreting the triangular journey of Black folks, voyaging from Africa to the Caribbean to North America under the influence and protection of The Orishas.

The winner of two Dora awards, a KM Hunter Theatre award, a Mayor’s Arts award, a Vital People award, Canadian Poet of Honor, Toronto Leadership Lab fellow and YWCA Woman of Distinction in the Arts, d’bi.young anitafrika is an internationally celebrated African-Jamaican dubpoet, playwright-monodramatist, arts-educator, artistic director and scholartist, whose trans-disciplinary work (dubpoetry, theatre, music, dance, writing, storytelling) explores themes of identity, gender, sexuality, divinity, the erotic, race, class and the human experience. She is the creator of the human development framework – The Sorplusi Method – which has been employed by The Stephen Lewis Foundation, The Banff Centre, U of T, MaRS, Women’s College Hospital and other institutions globally. Esu Crossing The Middle Passage collides these worlds into hypnotic poetic-sound-movement on stage.

Guiding d’bi through this provocative journey is COBA founding member, Co-Artistic Director and choreographer, BaKari I. Lindsay (Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre, Danny Grossman Dance Company, Artcho Danse Repertoire (Haiti), Toronto Dance Theatre) and the magical singer-composers Tuku Matthews and Amina Alfred along with d'bi. long time mentor Waleed Abdulhamid who is sound designing.

Esu Crossing The Middle Passage
Written & Performed by d’bi.young anitafrika
April 1-17, 2016 | Tues to Sat at 7:30 pm | Sun at 2:00 pm
The Storefront Theatre | 955 Bloor Street West
$20.00 - $25.00 | Advance tickets available at www.thestorefronttheatre.com
Press contact: Brett Haynes | producer@dbi333.com