Support LULU and the making of theatre for Black children.

Hi, my name is Sashoya Simpson and I’m a storyteller, writer and theatre practitioner. I founded The Walking Griot which is an artist collective, based in Toronto Canada, dedicated to producing work for Black young audiences across various art mediums. Creating stories for black children and youth is our purpose and passion. I started focusing on this work after noticing the lack of access to traditional cultural knowledge for many children of Caribbean heritage born within the diaspora. We tell stories and provide spaces where they see themselves on stage, so they know they are welcome in theatre and that there’s space for their stories in the world.

My first stage play LULU will be mounted this summer at the Hamilton Fringe Festival and we’re so excited to share this work! The show is a celebration of Caribbean folklore heritage, highlighting many of the traditional andcultural elements we hold dear. This includes dance, music, story characters and lessons from across the islands.

Hamilton Fringe is a new adventure for the creative team. However, we were recently notified by the Toronto Arts Council and the Ontario Arts Council that our grant applications for production funding for LULU were unsuccessful.

This is devastating news and puts our show in jeopardy. Our most pressing concern is being able to compensate our cast and creative team for their brilliant work and dedication to bringing African-Caribbean diaspora theatre for young audiences to life on stage.

We are asking for your support to fill a gap in Canadian theatre that centers Caribbean folklore heritage, specifically made for young Black children who rarely have the opportunity to see themselves reflected in live theatre.

Your contribution goes beyond funding. This is an opportunity to support a story that embraces coming generations while teaching them about cultural identity and how to pass it on and keep it alive.

Your support will directly:

Cover the artist fees of the cast for two weeks of rehearsal (July 4th - 18th), 1 day of tech and 7 performances (July 19th - 27th).

Support the cost of costume and set elements

Cover transportation costs to and from Hamilton

ABOUT THE SHOW

THE CAST

Playwright + Producer - Sashoya Simpson

Director + Lighting Design - d’bi.young anitafrika

Music Director + Musician - Waleed Abdulhamid

Performers - Savannah ‘TAYOW’ Taylor, Najla Nubyanluv, David Delisca, Jason Chung, Durae Mcfarlane

Co-Producer - Najla Nubyanluv

Set Design - Kareen Weir

Costume Design - Naomi Onah

Stage Manager - Lexi Sproule

Choreography - Kevin Ormsby

SYNOPSIS

Unbeknownst to Lulu, she’s about to embark on a life-altering journey she didn’t know she signed up for. With her ailing grandmother in the hospital and her estranged father back in town, Lulu finds herself in the company of Anansi, a mythic trickster who comes to life. With the goal of finding the key to save her life as she knows it, Lulu arrives in the mystical folk realm, a world on the verge of collapse, where she encounters beings she’s only heard about in stories and new lessons to be learned. But with time running out, will she discover the hidden secrets or will everything be lost forever?

To purchase tickets for the show, please follow this link:

https://hftco.ca/events/lulu/

Sashoya Simpson is a storyteller, writer and theatre practitioner, of Jamaican lineage, based in Toronto, Canada. Her artistic work embodies Caribbean folklore knowledge and cultural practices through theatre performance, visual and literary art. She has appeared in Known to Police by Nomanzland (Young People’s Theatre, 2012), Zero Visibility by the Artist Mentoring Youth Project (Summerworks Festival, 2013), To The Kid That I Was by Expect Theatre (Nuit Blanche, 2015), Bleeders by d’bi.young anitafrika (Summerworks Festival, 2016) and Lukumi (Tarragon Theatre, 2017). Her work has been published in Black Solo: Watah Anthology of Contemporary Canadian Monodrama Volumes 1, 2 & 3 as a playwright and in From The Root Zine as a storyteller/poet. She’s the award recipient of the ArtReach Pitch Contest (2016), Emerging Arts Finalist for the Premier’s Awards for Excellence in the Arts (2017), Simminovitch Playwright Protege Finalist (2023) and her work has been shortlisted in the CANSCAIP Writing for Children Competition (2023). Her voice work includes The Journey Prize Stories (Penguin Random House Canada, 2023), San Souci and Other Stories by Dionne Brand (Penguin Random House Canada, 2023) and The Love Booth and Other Plays (Gailey Road Productions, 2023). Her stageplay, LULU, will be mounted in the Hamilton Fringe Festival 2024 and her first children’s picture book, The Instrument Maker, is set to be release in 2026.