Testifyin’: Contemporary African Canadian Drama, Volumes 1 and 2

Abstract

Djanet Sears’s Testifyin’: Contemporary African Canadian Drama, volumes 1 and 2, proudly proclaims the viability and variability of African Canadian drama. While Sears, in her introduction to volume 1, praises the resiliency of African Canadian theatrical production, she also remarks on the poor funding available at present for contemporary Black theatre companies and the limited recognition that African Canadian drama has garnered within the annals of Canadian theatre history. To rectify this absence, Sears has collected ten plays in volume 1 and nine additional plays in volume 2 – plays by a total, in the two volumes together, of some twenty different playwrights. (Some of the works are co-written, and three playwrights, including Sears, appear in both volumes.) Together, these works boldly announce the diversity of contemporary African Canadian drama in form and content. These nineteen plays speak imaginatively to the multiple ways that Blackness and African Canadian identity have been constructed and repeatedly reconstructed in Canada, past and present.