Simone, Half and Half
- Publisher
- Playwrights Canada Press
- Initial publish date
- Oct 2022
- Subjects
- Women Authors, Canadian
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9780369103772
- Publish Date
- Oct 2022
- List Price
- $13.99
Library Ordering Options
Description
- First produced by Black Theatre Workshop, Montréal, in February 2020.
- Christine was commissioned by Black Theatre Workshop to write a play focused on a mixed-race character, and she ended up drawing from her own experiences to create Simone.
About the authors
Christine Rodriguez is the award-winning playwright of Dreaming in Autism, which earned third prize at Ottawa Little Theatre’s 72nd National One-Act Playwriting Competition. Simone, Half and Half, commissioned and produced in 2020 by Black Theatre Workshop, received five Montreal English Theatre Award nominations, including one for Outstanding New Text. Christine’s first short film, Fuego, an Official Selection of the 2021 American Black Film Festival, was written and filmed in English, French, and Spanish. She was nominated for Best Filmmaker of the Year by Montreal’s very own Gala Dynastie. Christine was also selected by the Rogers-Black Screen Office Development Fund to write the pilot for her TV concept Nina’s 80s. She holds an M.B.A. from McGill University and a Certificate of Professional Screenwriting from UCLA. She’s currently working on obtaining a major in Hispanic Studies from Université de Montréal. Christine’s work is largely informed by her mixed-race Afro-Caribbean heritage and her multicultural environment. She lives in Montréal.
Christine Rodriguez's profile page
Quincy Armorer has worked professionally as an actor, director, instructor, and administrator for over twenty years. As an actor, he has worked at the Stratford Festival, National Arts Centre, Centaur Theatre, Black Theatre Workshop, St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival, Geordie Theatre, Repercussion Theatre, Imago Theatre, Piggery Theatre, and Shakespeare by the Sea, among many others. An alumnus of both the Theatre Department at Concordia University and the Birmingham Conservatory for Classical Theatre at the Stratford Festival, Quincy is Adjunct Professor at Queen’s University, Associate Director of the Acting Program (English Section) at the National Theatre School of Canada, and was Artistic Director of Black Theatre Workshop from 2011 to 2021.
Excerpt: Simone, Half and Half (by (author) Christine Rodriguez; foreword by Quincy Armorer)
Miscegenation. Sounds like a science experiment... These are the words that have been used to describe people like me. But what's in a word or in these words or any words? What are the words that really say who I am? I am. I am. Here I am... Why do you need the words? What if there isn't one word? My mom can trace her family back to the 1600s to this one spot in the north of France. A name and a place. Daniel Parent, Tourcoing, Nord- Pas-de-Calais. But my dad can't do that. He can only go as far back as Trinidad and Tobago. A dark-skinned woman. Soledad Rouseau. My great-great-grandmother. An old woman who spoke little as she sat in her rocking chair watching the world change before her eyes. That's all my grandmother remembers. Was she a slave when she was a child? Or were her parents slaves? What did she see? What did she know? It's all gone now. We'll never know where she came from or what she believed or what cultural practices she had that came from her faraway homeland. Just an old black woman on a Caribbean island. To know and not to know. "Where are you from?" Everywhere. "What are you?" I don't know.