Beyond the Canon’’s Plays for Young Activists: Three Plays by Bipoc Women

A first-of-its-kind anthology, Beyond The Canon’s Plays for Young Activists combines plays, toolkits, and an online guide to empower young people into activism.

With award-winning plays from the UK’s most revolutionary female writers of colour, as well as bespoke multimedia learning guides, this collection offers young global activists aged 16+, as well as teachers and creatives at any level, the opportunity to diversify their education and enhance their understanding of politically driven plays, world politics and social justice.

Unique in how it amplifies these selected award-winning plays by incorporating learning guides that accommodate different learning styles (be they visual, auditory, reading/writing and kinaesthetic), Beyond The Canon dares readers to take a deeper dive into the world of the play, be inspired by the themes and provocations and use the anthology to evolve into the ultimate activist.

The plays include:
Muhammad Ali and Me by Mojisola Adebayo
A Museum in Baghdad by Hannah Khalil
Acceptance by Amy Ng

With resources like top tips on creating a safe space, practical drama challenges and games, interviews with the writers, research guides and activism test sheets, Beyond The Canon’s Plays for Young Activists will spark the imagination of any and all readers, likely inspiring the next Mojisola Adebayo, Hannah Khalil and Amy Ng.

Amy Ng is a British-Hong Kong playwright. Her plays include UNDER THE UMBRELLA (Belgrade Theatre Coventry - UK tour), ACCEPTANCE (Hampstead Theatre) and SHANGRI-LA (Finborough Theatre). Radio plays include TIGER GIRLS (BBC Radio 4) and KILBURN PASSION (BBC Radio 3). She is under commission to the Royal Shakespeare Company and ice&fire, and is developing her play THATCHER IN CHINA at the National Theatre Studio. She is also part of the inaugural Genesis Almeida New Playwrights Big Plays programme. Her new adaptation of Strindberg’s MISS JULIE will be produced at Chester Storyhouse in February 2020 and for TV she is working on original projects with BBC Studios and Merman.
Amy trained as a historian with a research interest in multinational empires, imperial decline, and nationality conflict, and is the author of ’Nationalism and Political Liberty’ (Oxford University Press). She is fluent in English, German and Chinese and regularly translates contemporary Chinese plays into English.
Hannah Khalil had her first short play, Ring, selected for the Soho Theatre’s Westminster Prize and her first full- length piece, Leaving Home, staged at the King’s Head, London. A commission for Rose Bruford at Battersea Arts Centre followed, and she subsequently received support from The Peggy Ramsay Foundation to write Stolen Or Strayed, which received a Special Commendation in the Verity Bargate Award. Further work includes Plan D (published by TCG in their volume Inside/OutsideSix plays from Palestine and the Diaspora), which was produced at Tristan Bates Theatre, London, and was nominated for the Meyer Whitworth Award. She has worked with the National Theatre Studio, Royal Court Young Writers’ Programme and Tinderbox Theatre, Belfast. Most recently, her play Bitterenders won Sandpit Arts’ Bulbul 2013 competition and was produced at Z Space, San Francisco, as part of Golden Thread’s ReOrient Festival, and was published by . Her monologue The Worst Cook in the West Bank was performed as part of an evening of short plays about Arab women in the Arab Spring at the Old Red Lion and the Unity Theatre as part of the Liverpool Arabic Arts Festival. The Scar Test was commissioned by Untold Arts and was performed in a scratch performances at the Arcola Theatre in June 2015 and is going on tour in the UK in June 2017.

Mojisola Adebayo is a playwright, performer, director, producer, workshop facilitator and lecturer. She has a BA in Drama and Theatre Arts, an MA in Physical Theatre and her PhD is entitled Afriquia Theatre: Creating Black Queer Ubuntu Through Performance (Goldsmiths, Royal Holloway and Queen Mary, University of London). Mojisola trained extensively with Augusto Boal and is an international specialist in Theatre of the Oppressed, often working in locations of crisis and conflict. She has worked in theatre, radio and television, on four continents, over the past 25 years, performing in over 50 productions, writing, devising and directing over 30 plays, and leading countless workshops, from Antarctica to Zimbabwe. Her own authored plays include Moj of the Antarctic: An African Odyssey (Lyric Hammersmith and Ovalhouse, London), Muhammad Ali and Me (Ovalhouse, Albany Theatre, London and UK touring), 48 Minutes for Palestine (Ashtar Theatre and international touring), Desert Boy (Albany Theatre, London and UK touring), The Listeners (Pegasus Theatre, Oxford), I Stand Corrected (Artscape, Ovalhouse, London and international touring and The Interrogation of Sandra Bland (Bush Theatre, London).