The Adventures of A Black Girl in Search of God
- Publisher
- Playwrights Canada Press
- Initial publish date
- Oct 2003
- Category
- Women Authors, Canadian
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781770914797
- Publish Date
- Oct 2003
- List Price
- $12.99
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780887547126
- Publish Date
- Oct 2003
- List Price
- $16.95
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Where to buy it
Description
From Governor General's Literary Award–winning playwright Djanet Sears comes a beautiful and deeply moving story set in present-day Negro Creek, a two-hundred-year-old black community in Western Ontario. Rainey Baldwin-Jackson, a country doctor, struggles to come to terms with the loss of her daughter, the disintegration of her marriage, and an eccentric elderly father on an astonishing crusade.
About the authors
Djanet Sears is an award-winning playwright and director and has several acting award nominations to her credit for both stage and screen. She is the recipient of the Stratford Festivalâ??s 2004 Timothy Findley Award, as well as Canadaâ??s highest literary honour for dramatic writing: the 1998 Governor Generalâ??s Literary Award. She is the playwright and director of the multiple Dora Award winning production of Harlem Duet (Scirocco Drama, 1997), which was workshopped at the Joseph Papp Public Theatre in NYC, where Djanet was the international artist-in-residence in 1996.
Her other honours include: the 1998 Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award, the Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award, the Harry Jerome Award for Excellence in the Cultural Industries, and a Phenomenal Woman of the Arts Award. Her most recent work for the stage, The Adventures of A Black Girl in Search of God (Playwrights Canada Press, 2003), was shortlisted for a 2004 Trillium Book Award and enjoyed a six-month run in the fall/winter of 2003/2004, as part of the Mirvish Productions season. Her other plays include Afrika Solo, Who Killed Katie Ross, and Double Trouble. Djanet is the driving force behind the AfriCanadian Playwrightsâ?? Festival, and a founding member of the Obsidian Theatre Company. She is also the editor of Testifyin': Contemporary African Canadian Drama, Vols. I & II, the first anthologies of plays by playwrights of African descent in Canada (Playwrights Canada Press, 2000 & 2003). She is currently an adjunct professor at University College, University of Toronto where she teaches playwriting.
Awards
- Short-listed, Trillium Book Award
Excerpt: The Adventures of A Black Girl in Search of God (by (author) Djanet Sears; afterword by Leslie Sanders)
"Perspective is nearly everything. I needed to write from my own perspective. And that is also Canadian. It's my wish for the theatre. I wish to see a theatre where the world is reflected—like a garden. When we are planting our gardens we do not just plant one flower, we do not even plant flowers that are only one colour. We love to see this kind of leaf, that kind of bush, these kinds of flowers. We just love the whole range. These kinds of herbs… That's what humanity is, that's what Canadians are. We all look so different and I love it."
Editorial Reviews
"Not to be missed. "
Jon Kaplan, Now Magazine
"A richly rewarding script. "
Richard Ouzounian, Toronto Star