Edric Theatre is inviting you to an evening of Live Performance via Zoom featuring emerging Black theatre practitioners from London South Bank University

The evening features new works-in-progress by undergraduate theatre practitioners at London South Bank University—Millie O'Lionsigh Bailey, Bukola Folarin, Lia Gaynor, Cherene Harrison and Kady-Amy Turay. For the past three weeks, the collective has been working diligently in the (virtual) Edric Theatre with Theatre Interventionist—d'bi.young anitafrika—crafting new decolonial performance autoethnography using the Anitafrika Method. The performance event is a culmination of their three-week intensive. The practitioners will be sharing excerpts of their biomyth monodramas and launching an anthology of their work entitled Making Biomyth Monodrama Vol 1. The evening culminates with a Groundings Session Q & A where audience members are invited into conversation with the practitioners.

The Anitafrika Method is a holistic, critically-reflexive, decolonial praxis created by d’bi.young anitafrika. It is a practitioner-centred arts-based intervention that nurtures self-recovery, creativity & communityship. Fundamental principles of the framework are Self-Knowledge, Politics, Orality, Language, Rhythm, Urgency, Sacredness, Integrity and Experience, explored through the Energy, Spiritual, Mental, Community, Emotional, Exchange, Creative, Physical and Earth Bodies. Rooted in the emancipatory Dub Poetry & Dub Theatre that emerged out of Jamaica in the 1980s, the method is directly influenced by Anita Stewart’s 1985 Drama School dissertation entitled Dubbin Theatre: Moving Dub Poetry Into a Theatrical Realm. Practitioners move through an embodied process of self-reflection, using their creativity to catalyse personal growth while cultivating critical thinking and doing skills to enact personal and community change rooted in decoloniality. Biomyth monodrama is one of the creative outgrowths of the Anitafrika Method.

d’bi.young anitafrika is an African-Jamaican London-based international Dub Poet, Theatre Interventionist and Decolonial Scholar who is committed to creating and nurturing art that ritualises acts of recovery from violence inflicted upon the people and the planet. After receiving hxr Masters degree from University of London in 2019, London South Bank University awarded hxr a Dean's Scholarship in 2020 to conduct hxr PhD research on Decolonial Performance, Praxis and Pedagogy in Theatre. d'bi.young is currently facilitating a global artist residency in hxr Anitafrika Method with over 70 practitioners, in addition to teaching hxr decolonial framework at Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance and at LSBU, as well as working as Theatre Interventionist in the UN's Global Initiatives Fellowship. Hxr latest book Dubbin Theatre: The Collected Plays will be published summer 2020.