Afro-Atlantic Playwright Festival

Meet three playwrights from the African Diaspora, 
who make their narratives out of an Afro-Atlantic point of view. 
Storytellers and Griots creating intricate and expansive narratives. 

October 13-15, 2023

Click here for a photo gallery from the Festival weekend.

What:  New Plays from the Cultural Diaspora Project
Friday, October 13, 7:30pm - Opening Night of Illusion Theater’s full production of
We Take Care of Our Own by Zainabu Jallo (in performance until October 29), directed by Carlyle Brown

Saturday, October 14, 12N - Staged Reading of
MY SOUL IS NOT RESTED by Cassandra Medley, directed by Aaron Todd Douglas

and Saturday, October 14, 3pm - Staged Reading of
Red Dragon by Tonderai Munyevu, directed by Ansa Akyea
[MATURE CONTENT WARNING: Sexual assault]

Where:   Illusion Theater, Minneapolis, MN - Center for Performing Arts

Meet the Festival Co-Curators…

Carlyle Brown (Co-Curator, Director) is a sailor, an astute cultural observer, and a playwright. He spent years sailing in the Afro-Atlantic basin. While a sailor he reflected how the people of the African Diaspora carried their culture with them as they created new lives away from their ancestral homeland. The sailor-turned-playwright was fascinated by the creativity, mystery, and resilience of the people of the Diaspora. Can we see  the common, reoccurring elements that in the culture of the people of the African Diaspora? Is there a way to name the African-ness of the music, dance, songs, stories, and theater these people created as they migrated to other lands? Can we identify what is the “African-ness” of Theater Makers? Who better to explore and name this African-ness than other Playwrights of African Descent?

The sailor-turned-playwright shared his thoughts with others including his colleague and acclaimed theater director Chuck Mike. He also reached out to people he knew from the Camargo Foundation, a beautiful estate in Cassis, France which for over fifty years has offered residencies to artists, thinkers, and scholars. He talked about it with the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis where he is an honored Core Member. He shared it with Illusion Theater where he is the Andrew W. Mellon Playwright-in-Residence. Wherever and whomever he shared this idea, people knew “This was an idea whose time had come.”

With leadership from Camargo and support from National Endowment for the Arts, Jerome Foundation, Ford Foundation, and France American Cultural Exchange, Chuck Mike and Carlyle Brown co-curated two residencies in 2018 and 2022 at the Camargo. Eight playwrights of African heritage came to the retreat to discuss, write, and create without the veil of a white/western filter, without having to explain themselves, or having to represent an entire group of people. Instead, they were invited to explore the ways the African Diaspora was an influence and factor in their work, in what they wrote about, and how it had shaped them. For more information on the Cultural Diaspora Project click here.

Carlyle returned from France to the Playwrights Center (PWC), “Could the Center bring the plays that grew out of the residency in France to Minnesota for further development?” So the idea gained another partner. PWC with Camargo hosted the first Afro-Atlantic Playwright Festival in 2019 where three plays from Cassis were staged. Carlyle then spoke to his colleagues at Illusion, who had just supported the development and premiere of his A Play about Barb and Carl. As part of his Mellon Fellowship, he asked, “Could Illusion bring one of the plays written out of the Afro Atlantic Cultural Diaspora Project to full production?”  And Illusion agreed.

Click here for more about Carlyle Brown.

Chuck Mike (Co-Curator) was born in Brooklyn, New York and has lived in Nigeria since 1976. A practical disciple of Wole Soyinka and former MacArthur Foundation Fellow he is a distinguished actor, producer, director, and theatre activist of enormous energy. Producer of four festivals/seasons of theatre for CAFTAN (Collective Artistes Festival of Theatre Arts Nigeria) he is founding director of The Performance Studio Workshop (Nigeria) and Collective Artistes (Nigeria and UK). His forte is “devising” Theatre for Development. Spaces of work range from villages across Southern, Western, and Eastern Africa to The Kennedy Centre, Lincoln Centre (USA), West Yorkshire Playhouse, The Royal Court (UK), MUSON Centre, and The National Theatre (Nigeria). Some of his main stage credits include - The Gods Are Not to Blame, A Raisin in the Sun, Fences, Home, The Crucible, Makbutu (after Macbeth), Tegonni (after Antigone), and Death and the Maiden. His UK productions include Unsung, ZHE: (NOUN) UNDEFINED (co-authored by himself), The Meeting, The African Company Presents Richard III, The Lion and the Jewel, It’s Just a Name by Don Kinch (Birmingham Rep), Trojan Women/Women of Owu adapted by Femi Osofisan, (UK Tour), Sense of Belonging devised by himself with the Performance Studio Workshop (Arcola), Things Fall Apart (World Tour) and a Nigerian adaptation of Yerma (UK Tour) both adapted by Biyi Bandele. The latter went on to win the Barclays TMA theatre award for best supporting actor after a successful Edinburgh Festival run. Chuck also shares his off season time with teaching and has taught or conducted workshops at various institutions across the globe some of which include the Universities of Ife and Ibadan (Nigeria), Leeds, Oxford and The Royal National Theatre Studio (UK), Smith College, New York University (USA), and the University of Toronto. Currently he holds an Associate Professorship at the University of Richmond, Virginia, USA.

Meet the playwrights, directors and the plays…

• Friday, October 13 - Opening of Zainabu Jallo’s We Take Care of Our Own

Zainabu Jallo (Playwright) is a scholar, playwright, and portrait photographer. Her academic and creative works have been conveyed through Fellowships at the Sundance Theater Institute, The Institute for World Literature, Harvard University, Institute for Cultural Diplomacy in Berlin, Residenz Theater Munich, Chateau Lavigny, and House of Writers in Switzerland. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts England, and UNESCO Coalition of Artists for the General History of Africa. She is the author of award-winning plays - Onions Make Us Cry, Holy Night, and My Sultan Is a Rockstar. Jallo is post-doctoral researcher and lecturer at the University of Basel, Switzerland.  She is one of the 
Principal Investigators of the ‘Sacral Architecture Africa” Project. Her 
scholarly interests include The Afro-Atlantic, Iconic criticism, the 
history of Criminal Anthropology and Material Culture. 
 
Her play, We Take Care of Our Own, is a tale of migration and aging in the diaspora. Three elderly gentlemen in the twilight of their lives find themselves in a lavish nursing home somewhere in Europe poring over their existential anxieties. Away from family and homeland. they are all wondering, how the hell did we get here?

Visit Zainabu Jallo's website

Meet the cast and production team.

• Saturday, October 14 - A staged reading of Cassandra Medley’s MY SOUL IS NOT RESTED, directed by Aaron Todd Douglas

Cassandra Medley (Playwright) is a recipient of the 2023 Helen Merrill Playwriting Award.  Most recent works: Libretto for Fannie Lou Hamer Opera, 2022, The Trilogy Opera Company of New Jersey, March 13, 2020; Martha's Vineyard Theater, Celebrating Our Community, Gatekeepers Collective, 2020; Mrs. Palmer's Honey, Bread and Roses Theater; Cell, Playing On Air Website, 2018; Take My Advice, 2017; Survive, 2017; Cell, the full-length, Molelo Theater, San Diego, California; Theater-2015, American Slavery Project, 2012-13, NYC, Cell, the one act, Ensemble Studio Theatre Marathon 2011; Daughter, Ensemble Studio Theatre Marathon, 2009; Noon Day Sun, August, 2008, Diverse City Theatre Company; Relativity, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Ensemble Studio Theatre, 2004.

Relativity won the 2006 Audelco August Wilson Playwriting Award, featured on Science Friday, National Public Radio, published by Broadway Play Publishing. Relativity, online radio broadcast, Los Angeles Repertory Theatre –February 2008

Additional awards: 2004 “Going to the River Writers” Life Achievement Award, 2002 Ensemble Studio Theatre 25th Anniversary Award for Theatre Excellence. The 2001 Theatrefest Regional Playwriting Award for Best Play, the 1995 New Professional Theatre Award, and the 1995 Marilyn Simpson Award. She was a 1989 finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award in Playwriting, and won the 1990 National Endowment for the Arts Playwright Award.  She was 1986 recipient of the New York Foundation for 2 of 2 the Arts Grant and a New York State Council on the Arts Grant for 1987.

Cassandra worked as a staff writer for ABC Television: One Life to Live – 1995-97. Visit Cassandra Medlye’s website.

MY SOUL IS NOT RESTED by Cassandra Medley, newly arrived New York City undocumented refugees clash with the New York City homeless. Two desperate women struggle for turf in a New York City hotel room.

Aaron Todd Douglas (Director) is a theatre artist who acts, directs, writes and teaches.  Aaron Todd happily relocated to the Twin Cities and is currently the Director of the University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater BFA Acting Program.  He recently performed in the play 5 by JuCoby Johnson at Jungle Theatre.  Previously based in Chicago, Aaron Todd is a Founding Ensemble Member and was a Playwright-in-Residence, and longtime Associate Artistic Director of Congo Square Theatre Company.  In addition to his academic and leadership pursuits, he balanced a thriving career as a freelance actor and director in Chicago’s vibrant theatre community, working at its Regional Tony Award winning major stages (Goodman, Steppenwolf, Chicago Shakespeare, Victory Gardens) in Chicago’s signature storefront scene (Raven, Chicago Theatre Co, Eclipse, Silk Road Rising).  Aaron Todd made his playwriting debut with Upstate, produced by MPAACT Theatre.  He received an International Ibsen Scholarship from The Norwegian Ministry of Culture in cooperation with Teater Ibsen for his play, The Master Comic, also produced by MPAACT Theatre.  Aaron Todd is thrilled to return to PWC after directing Tigress of San Domingue by France Luce Benson in the inaugural Afro-Atlantic Festival and recently Pranayama by James Anthony Tyler.

Meet the cast and production team.

• Saturday, October 14 - A staged reading of Tonderai Munyevu’s Red Dragon, directed by Ansa Akyea.

Tonderai Munyevu (Playwright) is an award-winning writer born in Zimbabwe and raised in London. His play MUGABE, MY DAD AND ME opened at York Theatre Royal in collaboration with English Touring Theatre, and later became the debut production of the newly opened Brixton House Theatre. The play won the UK Theatre Awards Best New Play 2022 and was shortlisted for The Alfred Fagon Award. He has most recently co-adapted and directed Jane Austen’s MANSFIELD PARK at the Watermill Theatre. His debut play THE MOORS premiered at London’s Tara Arts Theatre. He is a salaried writer at Stockroom for whom he has co-written ALICE IN WONDERLAND at Liverpool Playhouse and the audio drama BLACCINE: FIRST DOSE which he also co-directed with Debbie Hannan. He is on commission to Hampstead Theatre, The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, The Royal Shakespeare Company and BBC Radio 4.

Red Dragon
(mature content warning: sexual assault)
A ship bound for Africa in 1607
A celebration of the same trip in 2024
A gathering in a theatre in London in 2024

Black British actress Prudence Thomas has agreed to perform in a special commemoration of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in Sierra Leone. This would be the celebration of the 425th anniversary of the ship Red Dragon’s arrival in Sierra Leone 1607, the earliest known performance of a Shakespearean text outside of the UK. Prudence has never been to Africa before. This is her first time there. Recently she has discovered through genetic testing that her people are from Sierra Leone. Her people – before slavery which brought them to Jamaica, before the Windrush which brought them to England —were all from Sierra Leone. She is thrilled that her work has brought her “home” where she believes her encounter with the locals will be beneficial and welcomed. These ambitions quickly fall apart as an incident on stage causes a series of events that clash the past with the present resulting in an emotional landmine that must be unpicked upon their return to London. Questions must be asked: What is “culture”?  Who gets to define it? Are art and subjugation actually interlinked? And how did we come to believe in what we believe in now?

Meet the cast and the production team.

• Sunday, October 15 - What is the African Diaspora? A Conversation about Afro-Atlantic Culture A roundtable discussion with playwright Zainabu Jallo and Africana Scholar Maboula Soumahoro, moderated by director and festival curator Carlyle Brown.

*Playwrights and Plays subject to change

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