The Obsidian Playwrights Unit is an intensive play development program that will support 2 to 3 Black playwrights through virtual group sessions and individual mentorship from November 2024 through June 2025. Facilitated by actor and playwright, Lisa Codrington, the unit will discuss and develop their plays culminating in a performance where each playwright has the chance to workshop an excerpt of their piece with actors and a director, and hear it read aloud at Obsidian’s annual Playwrights Unit Showcase in Toronto, ON.
Obsidian Theatre is interested in showcasing the richness and complexity of Blackness in all of its intersections so that our art can truly reflect the communities we serve. What stories do you want to bring to the stage and why? What does your idea/play bring to a Canadian stage that has not been seen before? These are just some of the questions we are interested in discussing and exploring as we begin the journey of developing new work.
Playwrights Unit Showcase
June 26th, 7:30pm
The Theatre Centre – 1115 Queen St W, Toronto
Free Admission, RSVP Required
Learn more about each play!
Inheritance…If You Want It
by Cameron Grant
Today the Penson Family gather to begin the process of cleaning up (or staking a claim on) a lifetime of their dying matriarch’s things. Tensions arise as assumptions, resentments and secrets begin to reveal themselves. Faced with an unexpected inheritance,the Penson’s must decide for themselves how they keep from falling apart even as they prepare for the loss of the person who has kept them together. Inheritance…If You Want It investigates entitlement, a family’s relationship to work and wealth, generational misconceptions, Toronto’s insane housing market and all the things a family inherits, expected and unexpected, with the loss of an elder.
Director: Natasha Mumba
Cast: Kwaku Adu-Poku, Allison Edwards Crewe, Arlene Duncan, Asha James, Cameron Laurie, Michael-Lamont Lytle
The Reunion
by Oprah Lemorin
Two former best friends. One reality show. Ten years of silence.
Willow and Talia were once inseparable, until a betrayal shattered their bond. Now, a decade later, they’re brought face-to-face on The Reunion, a flashy, drama-filled reality TV show that promises healing and closure for estranged relationships. But under the bright lights and fabricated sincerity of producers, old wounds resurface, new tensions spark, and the lines between truth and performance blur.
The Reunion is a messy, funny, and deeply vulnerable exploration of friendship, sisterhood, and the lasting impact of betrayal. Through the lens of reality TV, the play exposes the absurdity of manufactured reconciliation, the performativity of healing, and the complex emotions that come with trying to mend a bond that once felt unbreakable.
Will the cameras capture a heartfelt reunion or a final goodbye?
Director: Jay Northcott
Cast: Allison Edwards Crewe, Arlene Duncan, Asha James, Megan Legesse, Antonette Ruder, Emerjade Simms
Six Love
by Phillip Dwight Morgan
Six Love follows the lives of an all-Black carhouse crew at the TTC’s Wilson trainyard. These men work feverishly at night, while the rest of the city sleeps, cleaning subway trains for service the next morning. On their lunch break each shift, the men play dominoes; the game provides a thinly-veiled excuse for them to discuss masculinity, precarity, love, and more. They have these conversations while under constant surveillance and in an environment that carries risks of electrocution, amputation, PTSD, and even death.
Director: Andrew Moodie
Cast: Kwaku Adu-Poku, Cameron Laurie, Michael-Lamont Lytle, Araya Mengesha, Eric Miracle, Dante Prince, Savion Roach
Introducing our 2024/2025 Playwrights Unit!
Cameron Grant
Cameron Grant
Cameron has worked across Canada as an actor, director and playwright. As a playwright, Cameron’s first play Meet Chloe, received its premiere at Carousel Players in 2021 and continued to tour virtually for 3 years to schools across Canada. He has a strong interest in plays that focus on the lives of Black people in Canada. Other recent credit include: Acting: Controlled Damage (Grand Theatre), The Fiancée (Persephone Theatre), Kim Convenience (Thousand Islands Playhouse), 1851: Spirit & Voice (Soulpepper), Serving Elizabeth (Stratford Festival), and 4 season at The Shaw Festival. Directing: The Assembly (Crossroads Theatre), Twelfth Night (Theatre Erindale) as well as assistant directing productions at Bard of the Beach, Factory Theatre and Theatre Erindale. Cameron was the artistic director of Crossroads Theatre (formerly Shakespeare in Action) from 2022-2023. He is excited to continue development on his play Inheritance… (If You Want It) as part of the Obsidian Playwrights Unit!
Instagram: @camm_grant
Oprah Lemorin
Oprah Lemorin
Oprah Lemorin is a multifaceted theatre artist whose passion for the stage knows no bounds. A proud graduate of Concordia University with a degree in acting, Oprah is emerging as a dynamic force in the world of theatre, seamlessly wearing the hats of playwright, producer, and actor.
Oprah envisions herself as Theatre’s Pop Princess, a visionary artist with a mission to infuse the age-old art form with a contemporary vibrancy that resonates with today’s audience.
@Oprahlemorin
Phillip Dwight Morgan
Phillip Dwight Morgan
Phillip Dwight Morgan is a Toronto-based writer and editor of Jamaican heritage.
insta: @phillipdwightmorgan
twitter: @philldmorgan
Playwrights Unit Facilitator
Lisa Codrington
Lisa Codrington is an actor and writer based in Toronto. She has been nominated for the Governor General’s Award for Drama and is a recipient of the K.M. Hunter Theater Award and the Carol Bolt Award for Playwrights.
Selected writing credits include The Prescription – 21 Black Futures (Obsidian/CBC) The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God (Shaw Festival, Karamu House); Up the Garden Path (Obsidian Theatre); The Aftermath (Groundswell Festival, Femfest); The Colony – Opera to Go (Tapestry); Cast Iron (Nightwood Theatre & Obsidian Theatre).
Currently, Lisa is developing two new plays and is playwright in residence at Why Not Theatre.
To see Playwright Unit Alumni, click here!
For any questions you might have about the unit, please contact our artistic producer, daniel jelani ellis, at op@obsidiantheatre.com.