Personhood Practice & Pedagogy in Black Womxn Theatre!

d'bi.young anitafrika Doctoral Researcher at London South Bank University, UK

Abstract

Personhood, Practice & Pedagogy in Black Womxn Theatre: A Black Queer Transfeminist Dubography, is an autoethnography rooted in the Anitafrika Dub Praxis, accompanied by a PhD dubography—a dub poetry album/treatise of the thesis and a PhD Dubumentary—a short documentary film of interviews, presented alongside the big book thesis. This project investigates how I, and other members of the predominantly African-Caribbean descended community of Black womyn theatre makers in Tkaronto, Northern Turtle Island, decoliberate personhood, practice, and pedagogy, meaning, to embody liberation through decolonial action, within concentric kinship circles of femtorship. As a hybrid dub memoir-monograph created by an insider-autoethnographer, this thesis: a) charts the hxrstory and development of  Black womyn’s theatre in Northern Turtle Island, b) investigates how colonial-hxstorical-systemic trauma affects Black womyn theatre practitioners, c) explores how Black womyn metabolise oppression through embodied playmaking, d) identifies recurring feminist performance aesthetics in Black womyn’s theatre; and e) theorizes my original methodologies, the Anitafrika Method, Critical Dub Pedagogy, and Dubography, as Black, queer, transfeminist technologies that decolonise theatre training.

This research emerges from a 25-year journey as a dub poet and theatre practitioner, drawing on qualitative and quantitative data that includes 41 semi-structured interviews with Black womyn theatre makers, a national survey, and archival materials including ahdri zhina mandiela’s visionary 1995 film on/stage/black/women. Using Practice-as-Research (PaR), Black feminist epistemology, Ubuntu philosophy, and intersectionality, I reveal how Black womyn theatre makers rupture colonial constructs of humxnity, catalyse radical paradigm shifts, and enact pedagogies of transformation through performance-based worldbuilding. The research shows how we conjure heterogeneous cultures of criticality, courage, and communion through our creativity, while also navigating the psycho-emotional and socio-political fissures within our kinship circles.

The PaR outcomes of this PhD include: a dub poetry album of the thesis (PhD Dubography), a documentary featuring interviews with selected Black womyn theatre makers from the study (PhD Dubumentary), and an Anitafrika Method Resource Compendium for decolonial theatre training. My original contributions to knowledge include the formulation of the Anitafrika Dub Praxis, a decolonial system that interweaves methodology, pedagogy, and performance through the Anitafrika Method, as well as Critical Dub Pedagogy, and Dubography. By theorizing Black womyn’s theatre, I offer transformative models of decolonial cultural stewardship, epistemic liberation, and living archival practice. This PhD affirms that Black womyn’s theatre is a space-place where “I am because you are because we are.” Ubuntu!

Dub Riddim by KennyMuziq