2 Halifax playwrights share their visions of the future of Blackness msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Posted: Feb 16, 2021 4:00 AM ET | Last Updated: February 16
Obsidian Theatre s artistic director Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu recently launched her first project with the company, 21 Black Futures.(Craig Chivers/CBC)
Playwright and artist Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu was hired as artistic director of Toronto s Obsidian Theatre Company in January 2020 with a full season of shows scheduled.
But by the time she took over in July, COVID-19 restrictions had cancelled or postponed them all. Tindyebwa Otu said she was left not only staring at a blank calendar, but also at daily news stories about protests against police brutality and a widespread reckoning with racism perpetrated against Black people.
Still from Beyoncé s Black is King.(Disney+)
We don t envy CBC Arts columnists Amanda Parris, Peter Knegt and Anne T. Donahue having to regularly try and make sense of this strange year with words. It was hard enough just to exist in 2020, let alone publicly reflect on said existence through the many, many words that came via Amanda s Black Light, Peter s Queeries and Anne s Anne-iversaries. We asked each of the columnists to look back at the year (mostly in horror, we assume) and pick their top five editions.
Amanda Parris
2020 was a perpetually bleak year, but one site of persistent joy for me arrived in the moments where I was able to utilize my platform to share and amplify critical stories, histories and voices. My favourite editions of Black Light enabled me to do that through interviews, listicles, oral histories and exposing forgotten histories.