Playwright anitafrika celebrates tenth anniversary of Orisha Trilogy

By Neil Armstrong

After an impressive body of work in the arts in Toronto and completing a doctorate in the United Kingdom, Dr. d’bi.young anitafrika is revisiting all of her productions and is now restaging her play, “shx mami wata & the pxssywitch hunt” — the second work in the Orisha Trilogy — at the Watah Studio Theatre from May 12 to 31.

The 10th anniversary celebration of the play continues the theatre’s 2026 season and deepens anitafrika’s ongoing exploration of biomyth monodrama within an intimate studio setting owned by her.

Originally conceived as a two-hander, this anniversary production transforms “shx mami wata & the pxssywitch hunt” into a biomyth monodrama, continuing the formal experimentation initiated in the 2026 revival of “esu crossing the middle passage.”

“I wanted to experience the work from this creatively mature space. Because I chose to do the PhD after 20 years of practice, I wasn’t only creating new practice, I was studying the practice that I already established.”

This allowed anitafrika to see the work from new perspectives and get a clearer vision of what she has been trying to explore and the reason behind it.

Through this evolution, she has expanded her theatrical research in Intimate Ritual Dub Theatre as Ceremony, using movement, poetry, sound, and mask to draw upon African diasporic aesthetics of storytelling.

“Set in present-day Xaymaca/Jamaica, “shx mami wata & the pxssywitch hunt” centres on gender, sexuality, and the erotic through the lives of four friends — Niki, Michael, Everdon, and Kizzy — whose relationships are shaped by the enduring presence of colonial “buggery laws.” Raised within the intersecting violences of misogyny, homophobia, and religious conservatism, the characters must renegotiate their loyalties, desires, and identities as long-buried truths surface,” notes a synopsis.

Threaded through the narrative is the mythic presence of Mami Wata, the ancient African water spirit whose fluid power embodies erotic autonomy, transformation, and resistance. Like water itself, the spirit moves between worlds—church and body, shame and freedom, shadow and revelation.

Through dub poetry, ritual movement, and mask work, “shx mami wata & the pxssywitch hunt” unfolds as a theatrical ceremony — a gathering that invites audiences to witness the intimate tensions between desire and survival within Caribbean post-colonial society.

This anniversary production follows the acclaimed return of “esu crossing the middle passage,” which opened Watah Theatre’s 2026 season with a riveting run at the Watah Studio Theatre.

In that work, anitafrika transformed the original three-hander into a biomyth monodrama, establishing a new phase of her performance practice rooted in ritual intimacy and embodied storytelling.

Together, these productions mark the continued evolution of anitafrika’s Orisha Trilogy, which concludes with “lukumi pantodub opera.”

Across the trilogy, anitafrika advances her experimentation with dub theatre, African diasporic ritual aesthetics, and pantodub performance, expanding the possibilities of poetic theatre as ceremony, archive, and cultural intervention.

Restaging the Sankofa Trilogy last year and now doing the Orisha Trilogy is her way of making art because she chooses to and there are no external pressures to do so.

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