Finding Fanon—Artist, Healer, Activist: An Arts-Based Investigation Day 3
When and Where
Description
July 2025 marks 100 years since the birth of revolutionary theorist Frantz Fanon. Soldier, Psychiatrist, playwright, and activist Fanon’s influence on the liberatory movements, during his lifetime and beyond, throughout the world cannot be overstated. His books (Black Skin White Masks, A Dying Colonialism, The Wretched of the Earth) are foundational readings for those who continue to devote their lives to anti-colonial struggle in an ongoing effort to facilitate a radical shift towards a just society wherever Peoples are oppressed.
To commemorate this historic anniversary, Roy Moodley (APHD, OISE) and Jill Carter (CDTPS, TYP, INS) have curated a celebratory performative intervention, which will run over 3 nights in October 2025.
On each evening, a selection of short plays, written by scholars, activists, and artists from the University of Toronto and beyond. These works call Fanon into the future, imagining encounters between this legendary activist and anti-colonial theorists and philosophers whom Fanon may have influenced but with whom he never had the opportunity to commune during his lifetime.
Our students are not entering a world ruptured by racial and ethnic tensions, escalating oppression, and war. They already live here. Too many carry the trauma of centuries of colonial violence in their bodies. This project offers them intensive engagement in arts-based research methodology. It opens up a space for Indigenous, Black and People of Culture across the generations to engage with Fanon—artist, activist and wordsmith—within an embodied investigation; to hail an historic call to action; and to discover just how that call hails them and informs their navigation of this historic moment.
The Company
Project Curators: Roy Moodley and Jill Carter
Playwrights: George Elliot Clarke, Sophie Li, Roy Moodley, Naseem Rine Reesha, Shari Thompson, James Yuan, Abdollah Zahiri
Epistolatory Performance: Jorge Vallejos
Stage Directors: Jill Carter and Kemi King
Performers
Tahsina Akhter
Mikhail Burke
Teodora Djuric
Ashton D’Silva Marcon
Bradley Georges
Japneet Kaur
Mashreka Mahmood
Sharai Masanganise
Wayne Mulrain
Izuu Nwankwo
Naseem Rine Reesha
Shadi Sadat
Sheilah Madonna Salvador
Dhanela Sivaparan
Jorge Vallejos
Brenda Wastasecoot
Christian Wraxall
James Yuan
This event is free; however, seating is limited so we ask that you register.
Sponsored by the Jackman Humanities Institute's Program for the Arts, the Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies
Accessibility Note: Unfortunately, the Luella Massey Studio Theatre has not yet been rendered accessible to those with mobility challenges.