NEW ALL BLACK FEMALE PLAY OPENS AT FACTORY THEATRE
Virgin play for the virgin playwright By Stephen Weir The Caribbean Camera Inc. on April 20, 2023 Rarer than a church handing out money on Sunday to its congregation, the new play Vierge (virgin) is breaking ground with its black all-female cast and its Black female playwright. oh yes, its director is a Zambia-born Black woman. The city has a long history of White male dominated theatre, Vierge is making a huge racial and gender statement that, judging by the rousing Thursday night premier, rocked the standing-room-only Toronto audience. Etobicoke’s Shauna Thompson stars in Vierge, the new play recently unveiled at the factory theatre. The play features Thompson as Divine, a sixteen-year-old who feels like she doesn’t belong anywhere and whose only comfort is her rarely read Bible. However, when her family joins a Montreal Congolese church and she befriends three African Canadian girls in her newly formed youth group, Divine discovers that the world around...