Toronto-based playwright and director ahdri zhina mandiela has discovered that being the founder of a protean arts group like B Current is a double-edged sword. She’s thrilled to see the work paying off – “so many of the young black artists you see in the city now have come through the B Current training programs” — but she’s also discovered that if she wants more variety in her own creative world, she has to go out and drum up the work herself. “People think I’m so busy with B Current — and I am — that they don’t call me. But they can call me,” she says with mock emphasis.
Which is not to suggest that mandiela isn’t in demand. She directed El Numero Uno, now playing at the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People (until February 25) and she’s presently in rehearsals at Factory Theatre working on who knew grannie: a dub aria (opening March 18), a play she wrote and is directing.
El Numero Uno, above, provides a great example of how mandiela’s work is bearing fruit. Former B Current intern Joan Kivanda also interned with LKTYP artistic director Allen MacInnis, who suggested that she stage a reading of an unproduced script that had been kicking around the company for some time. Written by Toronto’s Pam Mordecai, El Numero Uno is an allegory about honesty, teamwork and diversity that touches directly on mandiela’s own upbringing in Jamaica, specifically on the masquerade tradition of jonkannu: “It’s an ol’ time Caribbean story being told in a new Canadian context,” she writes in her director’s notes.
Mentoring the next generation is vitally important to mandiela even if it means she occasionally misses out on other opportunities. “The work I do with B Current is really essential, it feeds me, to a certain degree. It’s important to me that we develop work by young and emerging artists, for instance we’ve been doing the rock.paper.sistahz festival for nine years now. It’s very satisfying to see that my work with someone like Joan has had an impact in helping to get this show on the stage.”
El Numero Uno is the first production to feature LKTYP’s new theatre-in-the-round configuration. The format works brilliantly for this fast-paced show and helps keep the young audience engaged from start to finish. It’s not a coincidence that the show has been programmed to coincide with Black History Month, acknowledges mandiela.
“It’s challenging these days to sell shows in schools because of all the cutbacks,” she says, “so this became another selling point for the play. LKTYP wanted to attract teachers with the idea of an appropriate show for this time and I appreciate that they’re making the effort. Of course, I would love to see shows coming out of the black diasporic experience being performed at any time of the year, that are programmed not as ‘black’ shows but just as shows. That would be my ideal.”
Portrait of ahdri zhina mandiela by Christopher Jones; scenes from El Numero Uno by Iden Ford Photography
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