PWM+MAI Joint Support for Artists Featuring Jamila 'Jai' Joseph

Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal and MAI (Montréal, Arts Interculturels) are thrilled to announce that the PWM + MAI Joint Support **for Artists will feature Jamila ‘Jai’ Joseph with her work Wild Roots.**

THE ARTIST

Jamila ‘Jai’ Joseph is a Montreal based interdisciplinary artist with her primary mediums being dance performer 20+yrs/choreographer 10+yrs, self taught emerging singer 15yrs/song writer 15yrs, emerging theatre artist 3yrs.

A past recipient of Black Theatre Workshop’s Victor Phillips award in 2002 Jamila has continued performing, creating, and learning, telling her stories, and sharing her expressions throughout her work. In 2015 Jamila started JaiDanse, a dance facilitation/dance performance company and has produced and co-produced shows both for stage and theatre at local venues around the city. Mothers Say I Love you, written by Trey Anthony (Black Theatre Workshop 2019) & Nicole Brooke’s a Cappella “musical odyssey” Obeah Opera (ASAH Productions 2019) in Toronto, with her first stage role being back in 2017 where she portrayed ‘Lady in Purple’ in the Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls… (McGill University’s Tuesday Night Café Theatre) and again in 2018 as an “Encore presentation…” produced by the cast (Les 6 Productions). As we all came to stand still in the last 2 years, Jamila used the time to study her crafts, sharpen her creative tools and has added some new skills to her toolbelt. Currently, she is choreographing for theatre (tba) and is also writing script and song/working on her own Performance Theatre piece entitled Wild Roots.

THE PROJECT

Wild Roots is a theatrical fantasy that glimpses into the journey of a young Canadian Caribbean woman as she explores spiritual connection to self through a unique series of events. Held within a dream, song, dance & folkloric customs set the tone for this learning session as she confronts challenging parts of herself that she must work through. Taking a deeper look at the differences in how one may go about questioning old belief systems, cultural and societal norms.

The modality of healing becomes the landscape on which this story roots itself, using an interdisciplinary approach and perspective to narrate the story further exploring how intergenerational traditions can lend itself to self-discovery and healing.

THE PROGRAM

The PWM + MAI joint support accompanies creators on their journey to develop a project and explore their practice. It is aimed at artists encountering structural and systemic obstacles to their full participation in the arts because of their claimed identity and/or perceived identity in society.

More details about the program available here.

We are so excited to support the development of Jamila’s project, and wish her a fulfilling creation process!