Young, Gifted, and Black is Obsidian Theatre’s arts training program dedicated to supporting Black theatre practitioners in non-performance disciplines. This four-month intensive explores Black diaspora theatre and performance aesthetics. YGB practitioners will benefit from mentorship, masterclasses, and apprenticeships, with the program culminating in a collective-creation devised, directed, and designed by the YGB cohort.
We are dedicated to empowering and elevating artistic leaders. We envision a future where Black production professionals are abundant and integral, significantly enhancing our theatre community with their expertise.
2025/2026 Program Goals
- Develop Black Production Specialists: Focus on training directors, designers, and stage managers for theatre.
- Explore African and Black Diaspora Theatre Aesthetics: Investigate and incorporate performance aesthetics beyond Western theatrical paradigms, emphasizing the unique and powerful traditions of African and Black diaspora theatre.
- Connect Established and Emerging Black Arts Practitioners: Facilitate mentorship and networking opportunities to build a supportive artistic community.
- Enhance Black Theatre Excellence: Encourage the development of unique perspectives and methodologies in theatre-making.
25/26 Cohort
Abigail Whitney
Abigail Whitney
Direction
Abigail is an international fashion model, actor, and award-winning theatre and film director and
producer. Named a “Rising Star” by The South Carolina Voyager and featured as a “Game Changer” on the cover of Canadian Ark Magazine’s “The Reset” issue for being an “innovative and fearless force changing Canadian arts as we know it.” New York’s Gritty Vibes Studios named her one of “8 Black Artists to Support this Juneteenth” in 2020 and 2024. In 2025, Abigail was honoured at the 2nd Annual Haitian Excellence Gala in Toronto for her remarkable leadership and dedication to Arts and Culture.
Abigail independently produced and directed the 2024 Canadian premiere English translation of the Haitian classic play The Noose at the Toronto Fringe’s Next Stage Festival. The production was featured on CTV News, CBC Arts, Now Toronto, Radio-Canada, and The More the Merrier with Donna G.
Her theatre directing credits include Eureka Day at The Coal Mine Theatre (Associate Director, 2026), the Canadian premiere of Macbitches at TMU Performance at The Creative School
(2025), American Dream Deferred at the 2024 Obie Award-winning “48 Hours in…TM Harlem”
festival in New York. She’s directed excerpts from three new plays for Obsidian’s Playwrights
Unit Showcase. Her early work, Les Frères and Father Figures, earned Best Director (UofT
Drama Coalition Awards) and Audience Choice (UofT Drama Festival) awards, respectively.
She was an assistant director on four out of 21 of Obsidian Theatre Company’s 21 Black
Futures anthology. The series, which aired on CBC Gem, received the 2022 Canadian Screen
Award for Best Web Program or Series, Fiction. She has assistant directed for The Theatre
Centre on Here Are The Fragments, earning a Dora nomination. With Volcano Theatre, she was
an Artistic Director Intern and assistant directed productions that toured to Rwanda, Edinburgh,
and the United States.
In film, Abigail wrote, produced, and directed Seule, which streamed on CBC Gem and won
“Best Film” at the Short to the Point International Short Film Festival and “Best Experimental
Film” at the Austin Micro Film Festival. Her debut documentary, Remembering Me, was featured
in the “Being Black in Canada” program presented by Netflix and is also available on CBC Gem.
It screened at the Vancouver and Montreal International Black Film Festivals and was an official
selection for the Regent Park, Breakthroughs, and CineFAM Film Festivals.
Ghislan Sutherland-Timm
Ghislan Sutherland-Timm
Set Designer
Ghislan Sutherland-Timm (they/she) is a multidisciplinary craftsman, media-based researcher, and cultural worker based in Tkaronto/Toronto. Sutherland-Timm volunteers at the8fest Small Gauge Film Festival and The ArQuives. They hold a BFA in Integrated Media from OCAD University and are an alum of the Independent Imaging Retreat: Film Farm (2024) and Black Women Film! Canada (2019).
Nála Simone Lendor
Nála Simone Lendor
Costume Designer
Nála Simone Lendor is a Toronto-based Costume Designer and Head of Wardrobe. She has
worked across all areas of wardrobe, from design to management, bringing creativity, collaboration, and attention to detail to every project. Passionate about pushing boundaries, she explores the
transformative power of art through immersive storytelling with textiles and the exploration of other materials.
She is a recent graduate of Toronto Metropolitan University’s Performance Production and
Design program with a minor in Fashion Studies. She continues to explore costume as both a
storytelling tool and a form of expression. You can also find her here @nalaslendor (Instagram).
Elsewhere: A Christmas Carol (Soupcan Theatre); Hero Dog, Freeman and Becky,
Newfoundland Rocks: A Cow Head shed party, Our Eliza (Theatre Newfoundland and
Labrador); People, Places & Things (Coal Mine); Lysistrata, Presence (in this chaos),
Light-Print/Astro Hive (Toronto Metropolitan University).
Stephon Smith
Stephon Smith
Sound Designer
Stephon Smith A.K.A Spliffon is an actor, rapper, songwriter, producer, and sound designer born in Toronto. Inspired by the sounds of Hip Hop, RnB, Reggae, and Dancehall music, he began writing songs at age 9 and later explored acting; writing scenes and performing in school plays before attending Humber College’s Theatre performance program.
Stephon has released 2 musical projects to the public. His first solo project “The Spliff Tape” (A collection of revised freestyles) was released in 2021. Prior to that, he released “The Remedy”. A collaborative mixtape with his brothers “Shaman Nostra” and “Von Blanco” released in 2020.
Stephon has created sound and music for numerous Theatre productions. He wrote and acted in Scadding (2019 Fringe) and Mandem (Paprika Festival 2021). In 2022, he designed 8 site-specific audio experiences for B Current’s Wheel of the Year Walks. He has since Sound Designed Speaking of Sneaking (Groundwork Redux/Buddies/Obsidian, 2023), Simone, Half & Half (Carousel Players, 2024), Tyson’s Song (Pleiades Theatre, 2024) winning the Dora Award for Outstanding New Play, Panoptikon (New Harlem Productions, 2025 Tremors Festival in Vancouver), and LULU (The Walking Griot, 2025) winning the patrons pick award at the 2025 Toronto Fringe Festival.
His most recent work was designing the staged reading of The Sankofa Trilogy for the 2025 Summerworks Festival, as well as the mainstage monodrama at the Theatre Centre in collaboration with Black Theatre School. Stephon continues to pursue new collaborations and expand his creative range.
Creation Residency Faculty
d’bi.young anitafrika
2025 Johanna Metcalf Performing Arts Prize laureate d’bi.young anitafrika, is an internationally acclaimed dub poet, playwright-performer, director-dramaturge, and activist-scholar, who creates, embodies, and teaches critical dub pedagogy. Culminating a PhD in Black womyn’s theatre, their research centres on the epistemological, ontological, cosmological, ethical, aesthetic, and somatic emancipation of the oppressed self through storytelling. d’bi.young developed the Anitafrika Dub Praxis (Anitafrika Method, the 3RProcess, Biomyth Making, & Dubography)—a nurturant Black-queer-feminist pedagogy & practice of knowing, doing, and being. A widely anthologised Siminovitch Playwright Prize finalist, three-time Dora award winner, and founding Artistic Director of Watah Theatre and Spolrusie Press, and Ubuntu Decolonial Arts Centre in Costa Rica, d’bi.young has authored twelve plays, seven albums, and four poetry collections. The 2025 Lehan Arts & Activism Lecturer served as lead faculty in the training program of Soulpepper Theatre, and recently completed a term in UVic’s theatre department They also staged the 20th-anniversary production and literary publication of their multi-award-winning classic, The Sankofa Trilogy, at the Theatre Centre. d’bi.young’s present initiatives include leading the national Black Womyn in Theatre Digital Archive Project and concluding the pilot year of the Black Theatre School.
Contact Details
If you have any general questions about Young, Gifted & Black, please contact our artistic producer danjelani ellis at op@obsidiantheatre.com.
Young Gifted and Black is generously sponsored by:
Obsidian Theatre’s Season Sponsor: TD Bank Group;
Program Sponsors: Catapult/Rideau Hall Foundation, Scotiabank, Toronto Arts Council Strategic Fund
Venue Sponsor: Factory Theatre, Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts (TAPA)
