Tawiah M'carthy

Tawiah M'Carthy
BornAccra, Ghana
Occupationtheatre artist; actor, playwright, director, creator
NationalityGhanaian-Canadian
Period2008-present
Notable worksObaaberima

Tawiah Ben M'Carthy is a Ghanaian-born Canadian actor and playwright.[1] He is best known for his 2012 play Obaaberima, a one-man play about growing up gay in Ghana.[1]

Biography

Born in Accra, Ghana, M'Carthy moved to Canada at the age of 14, living first in Merritt, British Columbia and later in Scarborough, Ontario.[1] He studied theatre at York University,[1] writing his first play The Kente Cloth and staging it at Toronto's SummerWorks festival during this time.[1] Obaaberima had its roots in a poem that he submitted to the Young Creators Unit at Buddies in Bad Times theatre.[1] The play premiered at Buddies in September 2012, under the direction of Evalyn Parry.[2]

He garnered two Dora Mavor Moore Award nominations for Obaaberima in 2013, for both Outstanding New Play and Outstanding Performance by a Male in a Principal Role – Play, amid five other nominations for the play.[3] The show won three other Dora Awards, including Outstanding Production of a Play.[4]

In 2014, his plays Blue Bird, cowritten with Brad Cook, and Black Boys with Saga Collectif premiered as workshop productions.[5]

He has also acted in other plays, including productions of Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band, Kwame Stephens' Man 2 Man, Lanford Wilson's Balm in Gilead, D. D. Kugler and William Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Macbeth, and in Maxime Desmons' short film Au plus proche.

He was part of the 2014–2015 English Theatre Ensemble at the National Arts Centre,[5] and has also worked with Toronto's Tarragon Theatre and Obsidian Theatre companies.[5]

In 2016, he was cocreator with Thomas Antony Olajide and Stephen Jackman-Torkoff of Black Boys, a theatrical show about Black Canadian LGBTQ identities which premiered at Buddies in Bad Times[6] before undertaking a national tour.[7] Olajide, M'carthy and Jackman-Torkoff were collectively nominated for Outstanding Ensemble Performance at the Dora Mavor Moore Awards in 2017.[8]

In 2018, he performed a revival of Obaaberima at Buddies in Bad Times.[9]

In June 2020, M'carthy performed an excerpt from Obaaberima as part of the Buddies in Bad Times Queer Pride Inside special for CBC Gem.[10] In 2021, he performed on FreeUp! The Emancipation Day Special.[11]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f "Telling stories" Archived 2014-01-17 at the Wayback Machine. Xtra!, September 5, 2012.
  2. ^ "Interview: Tawiah M’carthy". NOW, September 20, 2012.
  3. ^ "Buddies in Bad Times leads troupes vying for Toronto theatre awards". CBC News, June 3, 2013.
  4. ^ "A Cinderella story at theatre's 2013 Dora Awards". The Globe and Mail, June 25, 2013.
  5. ^ a b c "Tawiah M’Carthy". National Arts Centre
  6. ^ J. Kelly Nestruck, "Black Boys is a timely mix of monologues, sketches and dance that resists cohesion". The Globe and Mail, December 6, 2016.
  7. ^ Michelle Jarvie, "Black Boys defies queer, black stereotype in unconventional theatre at High Performance Rodeo". Calgary Herald, January 22, 2018.
  8. ^ "Nomination Announcements: 38th Annual Dora Mavor Moore Awards". Intermission, May 30, 2017.
  9. ^ Karen Fricker, "Coming of age tale hits full stride". Toronto Star, December 1, 2018.
  10. ^ Peter Knegt, "This Pride, come inside for a digital queer cabaret unlike anything else". CBC Arts, June 22, 2020.
  11. ^ "FreeUp!: This Sunday, join artists across Canada to celebrate Emancipation Day 2021". CBC Arts, July 27, 2021.