Trauma and the Black Body

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#wakandaforever I have been thinking deeply about trauma and the way trauma impacts our entire humanity, in fact our entire planet; the intersectionality of trauma & the necessity for trauma recovery approaches to be grounded in anti-oppression. Working with myself and artists over the past 20 years, the root that we always end up digging up is #trauma. Trauma is generally defined as ‘a deeply disturbing and distressing physical, emotional, psychological, sexual, and or spiritual experience that impacts a person or group long after the traumatic incident or period.’ Where does this definition leave us all in this world of interconnected overlapping & intersecting systems of oppression? Are we all traumatized? And if we are all functioning from a place of trauma and don’t know it, how do we begin to heal? This is what I am interested in, through theatre, through activism, through poetry & through academia. I look at my entire body of creative work & I see an ongoing conversation about the impact of trauma & our possibilities to heal. I look at the #anitafrikamethod & it’s application as a mind-body healing modality, & it too targets trauma recovery. I want to innerstand & explore the theories around trauma & the #black body especially #blackwomen & sexual trauma. #growth#spolrusie #mentalwellness #black #watah #traumarecovery#strongblackwoman #study #ptss #newbeginnigs #blackgirljoy #blacktheory

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d'bi.young anitafrika

d’bi.young is a playwright-performer, director-dramaturge and activist-educator, who creates, embodies and teaches decolonial performance praxis. Culminating their PhD in Black womyn’s theatre at London South Bank University (LSBU), their research centres on the epistemological, ontological, cosmological, ethical, aesthetic and somatic emancipation of the oppressed self, through theatre making. d’bi.young developed the Anitafrika Method—a nurturant Black-queer-feminist pedagogy of transformation—offering arts practitioners globally, an intersectional framework of knowing, doing and being. A widely anthologised Siminovitch Playwright Prize finalist, three-time Dora award winner, and founding Artistic Director of Watah Theatre, Spolrusie Press and Ubuntu Decolonial Arts Centre in Costa Rica, d’bi.young has authored twelve plays, seven albums, and four poetry collections. Currently, d’bi.young serves as lead faculty in Soulpepper and Obsidian's theatre training programs and as a lecturer in theatre at the University of Victoria, BC, where they guide practitioners in developing new approaches to theatre-making through Critical Dub Pedagogy.