Afrika Solo

Judith Rudakoff is an associate professor of Theatre at York University
and Literary Manager at Theatre Passe Muraille.

An informative, joyous voyage of self-discovery, Afrika Solo is a
monodrama that journeys through consciousness and country. Sears’s
personal account of her own quest to locate and define “home” (and
her relationship to it) moves through time and place from Canada to
various locales in Africa, from childhood to adulthood. Throughout,
music, humor, and constant self-evaluation provide a basis for
revelation about the nature of the playwright’s particular identity as
a black woman of Jamaican/Guyanese parents who was raised in England and
Canada. In the “sundiata form” of theatre (a traditional West
African genre that incorporates music, dance, and narrative), Sears
effectively weaves a personal yet accessible tale of recovering her past
and embracing her present.