Community spotlight: Conversation with dr.d’bi.young anitafrika
March 16, 2026
“Performing esu in 2026 is a ritual in listening to my artistic responsibility and accountability“
Across the street from The Theatre Centre in Watah Studio Theatre (32 Lisgar Street), Watah Theatre‘s esu crossing the middle passage has just concluded a run.
Our marketing and communications Intern, Eleanor Yuneun Park, watched and interviewed dr. d’bi.young anitafrika about the show!
The Orisha Trilogy is the second set of trilogies dr. d’bi.young anitafrika is exploring upon completing their PhD. The next plays shx mami wata & the pxssywitch hunt and lukumi dub opera will be held at the Watah Studio Theatre in May.
The Watah Studio Theatre is currently taking applications for the Black Theatre School.
Pictured d’bi.young anitafrika. Image courtesy of Black Theatre School, Watah Theatre
esu crossing the middle passage, the first of the Orisha Trilogy, is set aboard a slave ship, following a womxn’s journey into the Trans Atlantic slave trade while embodied by the spirit of Esu: the trickster God of Ifa. The show ran at Watah Studio Theatre in Tkaronto from February 17 to March 8, 2026 during Black Futures Month.
Photo by Nicole Brumley (Branded Lens)
The Theatre Centre (TC): What does it mean to you to perform esu a decade after its original creation?
dr. d’bi.young anitafrika: Performing esu in 2026 is a ritual in listening to my artistic responsibility and accountability — not only to myself but the community and to the world. I think of where the world was in 2016 and how the work addressed our collective anger at systemic racism, institutionalized oppression, the degradation of an entire people, while the world built and continued to build its wealth on the backs and with the blood of those people.
And when I look at where the world is today; we’ve moved beyond anger, beyond mourning, beyond grief and into something that I don’t quite recognize. I’m thinking about the Epstein files, I’m thinking about the potential World War Three, I’m thinking about the bold, unapologetic oppression that Donald Trump is unleashing onto the world, including bombing working class people in the Caribbean who are in fishing boats and bombing an entire people without any global community intervention.
The issue is about attempting to provide for myself and the community of people who come and sit in the small circle. It’s attempting to provide us with ceremony in order to metabolize the hopelessness that some of us may be experiencing, and to transform the emotions we are navigating into energetic nourishment and healing.
Photo by Nicole Brumley (Branded Lens)
TC: In a much more exaggerated form than in the past, everyone is now witnessing live everything happening in the world through their screens and social media feeds. There’s a level of proximity that’s removed from us witnessing history. Why is it different and important for people to collectively witness history physically in a space like the theatre?
dr. d’bi.young anitafrika: While we witness atrocities through our phones, we are nonetheless a social species and the impact of these distant atrocities on our beinghood is undeniable because we are ubuntu on this planet: I am because you are, because we are. We are in a symbiotic relationship with life so the impact of these atrocities on our individual and collective nervous systems is undeniable, so we are suffering.
Indigenous knowledge systems tell us that the way through is together: through ceremony, ritual, collective confrontation, collective accountability, collective healing. Storytelling has always taken place in Indigenous knowledge systems that presented a circle instead of a hierarchy. Unfortunately, colonization, white supremacy, and other forms of violence have co-opted storytelling to use it as a capitalist tool to condition us towards hierarchy, supremacy, and oppression.
But storytelling has always belonged to the people and has always been medicine. And that is where I am locating myself as a storyteller, because I am sick. I am sick and tired of this fuckery. So I’m asking myself as a storyteller: what is my accountability and responsibility at this moment? It’s not only to seek my own healing but to provide medicine for the healing of my communities.
“As a storyteller conducting the ceremony, the biggest medicine that I offer is my own breath.“
TC: Is there any moment at any of the shows in particular that stayed with you that you’re comfortable sharing?
dr. d’bi.young anitafrika: There’s a moment where our central character is broken down by their own amnesia, and cannot remember the teachings. A shift occurs, and they move towards the ancestral space where they sit and contemplate these questions. They pick up the lantern and rediscover the ancestral space — metaphorically, because it’s not there anymore at that point. It happens really slowly, and that moment is one of the moments of the play where I allow myself to be the storyteller to remember. I literally allow myself to rediscover through the artifacts on stage to rediscover who I am and what my role is.
Then the character finds the bowl of cowrie shells, which were used as money at one point in West Africa. But cowrie shells also come from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean where many of our ancestors jumped overboard. In the play, the shells are so spiritually significant and used throughout the show.
When she discovers the same bowl of cowrie shells which were used to symbolize the dead, she cradles it and lays in this metaphorical grave to properly bury the ancestors who jumped overboard. After, she steps out of the space they’ve been in for the whole show and into the space with the audience. Then they directly and deliberately break the fourth wall to offer the audience the bowl for them to each take a cowrie shell. That moment is where I begin to regain strength.
It’s also impactful to see people remain sitting in the theatre after the show, allowing themselves to be reintegrated.
TC: How has the show changed since its 2016 production?
Photo by Nicole Brumley (Branded Lens)
dr. d’bi.young anitafrika: There have been so many changes, that the folks who saw it in 2016 would feel like it’s a different show. The script is the same with some edits, but I’ve grown the show. The fact that the central character does not speak while dancing the Egungun Masquerade — a Yoruba spiritual, cultural tradition — is completely new. In 2016, I had spoken the lines you hear in the soundscape during the dance so that’s a huge poetic shift.
I did this because I needed to respect that, in tradition, the Egungun does not speak through words. The Egungun speaks through the body. So I knew I wanted to embody Egungun. And the huge cowrie shell mask that is centre stage now was the mask that I danced in in 2016.
TC: And have you observed a shift in audience reaction from that in 2016 and now?
d’bi.young anitafrika: There is. The 2016 show provided a medium for us to metabolize our anger felt at the atrocities that are becoming more transparent.
The show now is supporting us in reintegrating and recalibrating our nervous systems. Because our nervous systems are experiencing such activation and dysregulation, I find that what people say after the show is that they felt like coming back from a journey that allowed them to metabolize all the things they’re feeling while regulating their nervous system. So the audience members are co-regulating their nervous systems while participating in this ceremony that’s grounded in breath. As a storyteller conducting the ceremony, the biggest medicine that I offer is my own breath. Our relationship with the breath — the in, out, depth, length, and the practice of it — is centred in this show, and it also supports the co-regulation.
TC: The funds raised from the show are going towards building the Black Theatre School you founded. How does the focus of the show align with the school’s initiative?
dr. d’bi.young anitafrika: The Black Theatre School is an initiative I’ve been developing since 2007 and I’ve always run the programs out of my pocket. After repeating the cycle of running the program out of pocket, I came back after finishing my PhD last year and did a pilot out of my pocket. I think raising money, though, is also about developing an awareness around the project happening. I’ve trained hundreds and hundreds of artists in Tkaronto, in North Turtle Island, in the world, and I think of how I was raised and supported as an emerging practitioner. I continue to be supported and femtored by Djanet Sears for years.
So this role I’m playing is not new, but part of a kinship circle. I am, because you are, because we are. So the choices I’m making as an artist are ubuntu.
Watah Theatre specializes in the professional development of arts practitioners and was founded in 2008 by d’bi.young anitafrika. Arts-engagement sits at the core of Watah’s commitment to provide Black artists with the tools to self-actualize, create relevant art and uncover crucial skills for each one to teach one. Watah Theatre was recently announced as the first-ever Company in Residence at The Theatre Centre.
25 years in the making, Black Theatre School (BTS) is a legacy project rooted in a long lineage of concentric kinship circles* centering the transdisciplinary arts pedagogies of African-Caribbean Black womyn arts educators such as Anita Stewart, Vera Cudjoe, Amah Harris, ahdri zhina mandiela, Djanet Sears, Winsom Winsom, Alison Sealy-Smith, Rhoma Spencer, Lillian Allen and Itah Sadu. Featuring practitioners from the African continent, the Caribbean, Turtle Island and Europe, BTS is a bold blueprint for Black diasporic futures. Black Theatre School is presented by Watah Theatre.
Company in Residence at The Theatre Centre
In 2025 we announced dr. d’bi.young anitafrika’s Watah Theatre as our Company in Residence, with a 3-year commitment to the company’s overall organizational growth, including structural, fiscal, and artistic support. In the fall, we presented the 20th anniversary of the critically acclaimed Sankofa Trilogy, a Watah Theatre Production.
The Theatre Centre’s Residency Program is generously supported by:
