Scholarship Meets Theatre and Art with Dienye Waboso Amajor
About This Episode:
In this episode of Stageworthy, host Phil Rickaby sits down with Dienye Waboso Amajor — a Dora-nominated Nigerian actor, writer, and interdisciplinary artist living and working in Ontario. With an academic background in theatre and performance studies and ongoing doctoral research, Dienye’s practice bridges performance, scholarship, and cultural storytelling.
This Episode Explores:
- Dienye’s journey as a Nigerian artist working in Canada
- The relationship between scholarship and performance practice
- Creating work grounded in lived experience and research
- The role of voice — personal, cultural, and artistic
- Balancing academic study with creative practice
- And much more!
Guest:
🎭 Dienye Waboso Amajor
Dienye Waboso Amajor is a Dora Nominated Nigerian Actor, Writer, Performer and Mother who lives and works in Ontario. Dienye holds an MA in Theatre and Performance studies from York University with a keen interest in Pre-Colonial African Theory, Performance and Development. Dienye is a published writer whose work can be found on the online publication She Does the City. In 2022, she developed and debuted a new visual and photographic work titled “Rest” which seeks to prioritize and localize the exploration and imagery of Black bodies in a state of Rest. Dienye is currently continuing her studies as a PhD student in the Theatre Dance and Performance program at York University. She currently works with Suitcase in Point Multi Arts company as the Associate Artistic Director.
Connect with Dienye
📸 Instagram: @sodiandtheboys
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Transcript
[Phil Rickaby]
Stageworthy is Canada’s theatre podcast and on stage worthy, I talk to theatre makers of all types, from actors to playwrights and directors to producers, stage managers and more if they’re make feet. If they make theatre in Canada, I’m talking to them. Some of the people I talked to our household names and the rest are people I really think you should get to know.
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Speaking of gratitude, if you are interested in helping me to make this podcast, I do have a Patreon which you can find at patreon.com/stageworthy. And I’m going to talk about that a little bit more at the end of the show before right before I tell you who my guest is next week. But this week, my guest is Dienye Waboso Amajor.
Dienye is a Dora nominated Nigerian actor, writer and performer and artist who lives and works in Ontario. She has an MA in theatre and performance studies and is currently working on her PhD. We had a great conversation and I cannot wait for you to hear it.
Please listen out to my conversation with Dienye Waboso Amajor. I always love like when I get to talk to people that I I haven’t met before that I don’t know. It’s super exciting.
And one of the things that I wanted to talk to you about is I was looking up some information, I was Google searching and like looking stuff about you. And there was an interview in I think it was it was in style magazine. It was a magazine and you were talking about yes, you were an actor, you’re a writer, but you’re an artist.
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
Right, right.
[Phil Rickaby]
Can you talk about can you talk about the some people like limit themselves and say I am this I’m this.
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
Right.
[Phil Rickaby]
But saying that you’re an artist leaves so much open. How did you come to that?
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
This is a really great question. And one I’ve already been asked today. So I’m set and I’m ready.
I’m ready for it. Here’s the thing. I am of Igbo descent.
So I’m from the southeastern part, the country that we colonially refer to as Nigeria. Now, it amongst the Igbo and amongst like Nigerians in general artistry isn’t something that you can package in like a four-year degree or three-year theatre school situation. Art is simply an expression of living and being and humanity.
So if you’re alive, and you can see trees, and you can see animals, and you can have interactions with people, then you can make song about it, you can draw about it, you can write about it, you can talk about it. So there isn’t this like rigid imperial distinction between like artist and person. Person is artist, artist is person.
So when I say that I’m an artist, it means that I am open to the beauty that is all around me, not only in nature, but also in people. And based on that, I am compelled to sing about it, to dance about it, to write about it, to be about it. And I’m really interested in that logic.
Because art is something that I think should be fluid and should sort of exist outside the confines of like imperialism and colonialism, and the strictures, the very tight, like strictures that those concepts place on art and being an artist.
[Phil Rickaby]
When it comes down to it, the systems that we have in place, say, for example, going to theatre school, and some schools are very rigid in the way that they teach. The teacher teaches the way that they were taught, they teach the way that they teach because of the way they were taught. But those are all things that are designed to focus, and limit.
Yes, absolutely. In some ways. Yeah.
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
Absolutely. Absolutely. It’s part of the dichotomy of like, kind of being westernized, which is wonderful, can be really great.
But there’s this sort of like polarized thing, subject, object, limit, confine. And it’s not to say that those things are necessarily bad. As human beings, we must find limits, we must define them, we must surpass them.
But I’d like to encourage people to claim artistry, to claim being artists. I think that there, if there were a little bit more of the artist in like people, and especially there’s somebody who comes to mind, the cheddar dude with the flippy hair, who like lived across the border. If there were more of an artist in that dude, who knows?
Right?
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting, you’re talking about limitations and limitations. Limitations can be good.
Yes. Right? Like, sometimes magic happens in the theatre, for example, when you have the limitations, you have the budget to do the world.
Well, it sometimes is less exciting as like, when you’re on a black box, and everybody’s just wearing like, like, like slacks and a t shirt, right? And just making magic happen. Because everybody is focused on believing and suspending belief and all that sort of thing.
Or suspending disbelief and that that sort of thing. But then, of course, you can go too far and say, No, there’s no way that we could do this because because of X. Absolutely.
So limitation is only useful up to a point.
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
Absolutely. Absolutely. And we, I think we should instruct and construct more outside limits than we do within limits, because I think we understand limits.
What we don’t understand is like, limitless hope, limitless faith, limitless love, limitless risk, limitless transparency, limitless vulnerability. Those aren’t things that we are trained to know. So what’s on the other side of the line?
[Phil Rickaby]
I want to actually speaking of like education and that sort of thing totes to have a rate that you are doing your PhD in theatre dance performance at York. I am. What drew you to want to get your PhD?
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
Oh, so my goodness, what a question. Nothing. Okay, let me tell you.
Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. I often joke that I’m an actor that cosplays as an academic.
And I very much feel that way. And I think it’s to my benefit. I had, I was an out of work actor because I had become a mom.
So my life had changed, my body had changed, my face had changed, everything that changed. And then I was like, Oh, wow, what am I going to do now? That I don’t look.
Well, not only do I not look quite like old DNA, I’m not even that person anymore. Right? Where do I fit into the theatre?
What’s my hit? As we say, right? Like when I go out, who am I going to play?
And I was wrestling with these ideas. At the same time, learning more about myself at the same time learning more about Africa at the same time learning more about blackness at the same time learning more about being in the trenches with my two children under five at that time. Right?
So I was ideologically, physically, socially in the trenches. And I had recently quit my job at the City of Toronto. That is a podcast for another day, my friend.
So I had left that gig and I was flailing a little bit. And a mentor, somebody who I love very, very much said to me, Hey, I’m in a class in a graduate studies class at York. And you have worked for the City of Toronto in museum and heritage studies for the longest time.
Why don’t you come out and give a chat about that to my class? And I thought, yeah, that’s something that I could do. I can handle that.
And I went and I did that. And after I was done, the professor said, Hey, is it okay if I get your phone number? I’d love to chat with you outside of like this, this scenario.
And I was like, yeah, great. And I did. She called me like an hour after we got off the Zoom chat, because this was in 2019.
So everything was happening online. We get off the Zoom, she calls me and she was like, Hey, would you like to come and take a master’s degree at York University? And I’m like, that sounds great, except two things.
One, I went to theatre school for three years, and then I was advised to go to York for two, to transit, to get a degree, like you go to theatre school, and you get a college diploma. And then they advise you to go to university for two extra years to upgrade to a degree, which I did. But then I was at York, like in the two year upgrade degree after being at Humber for three years.
And they had me like in the wings doing quick changes for actors. And I thought, WTF, like, what am I doing here? Right?
So I dropped that hot potato. And I took off and went to become like a Dora-nominated actor somewhere in the world. Right?
So I said to this professor, I was like, I dropped out of my BFA. And I can’t afford it. And she’s like, we don’t care that you dropped out of your BFA.
We want you at York. We want your ideas. We want your research.
You don’t have to worry about paying for it, because you can have a full scholarship, full fellowship ride the whole way through. And just think about it. And I thought about it.
And I felt like, oh my god, I can’t do this. I’m not smart enough. I’m not cool enough.
I’m just an actor. But what I figured out is that school is the new hustle, Phil. Right?
School is the new hustle. If you’re an artist, an actor, and you’ve been in the game for, you know, five to 10 years, and you have a point of view and a perspective, you can take all that experience and you can go to the higher institution and, and market yourself. And it is not only a profitable hustle.
I don’t mean to call it a hustle. I don’t mean hustle in a bad way. It’s like, as artists, before I was doing this, I was like working retail.
You know what I mean? Like I was working retail to do my art. Now I’m going to school to do my art.
So that’s how I landed in the MA. And then after I was done the MA, my sister was like, you better get your PhD while you’re in there, girl. Because once you get out, nobody’s letting you back in.
So then I applied.
[Phil Rickaby]
Here I am. Is there a particular focus of your PhD? Are you, is there a thesis that you’re working on that you could talk about?
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
Absolutely. Very broadly, I am really, really obsessed with the idea of reimagining pre-colonial performance methods, based in the tribe that I come from. And in all parts of Africa, really.
I’m really obsessed with this idea of theatre and performance as a divine language, as an opportunity for a performer to connect with a higher being, a higher understanding, a higher resonance. And I’m really excited about what performance can offer the performer, physically, emotionally, spiritually, that’s outside the confines of 5,000 people in the seats, box office, how much is it going to cost? Are we going to extend the show?
Like there are very many things, I think, in our industry that serve everybody else besides the performer. And I’m like really interested in a mode, a method of training and being that activates something life-giving within the artist. So that is my focus.
[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, that, I mean, again, that’s, that’s a huge question. And I guess it is kind of suited for a PhD, where you can like, take time and dig in.
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
Totally, like, yes. Like, how does this make sense? Like, I’m really understanding now, the thing people say about how, like really smart people can go crazy.
Not because I am really smart or anything, but because the focus and the self, like the self-questioning that it takes to parse through, like I was saying to my, my husband, like, I really just have to figure this out. Like, to make it make sense. It makes sense in my head, in my heart, but I got to figure out a way to package all of that up in academic speak and sell the idea.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, it’s really easy to have a solid idea in your head. And you, you understand it until you have to explain it to somebody Right. I’ve been doing like, is this?
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yes.
I think we all do it on some level. Like, we all have like, an understanding of like, oh, yeah, I understand this theory. And then somebody’s like, okay, tell me about that.
And you’re sort of like, freeze and be like, it made sense in my head. But as a PhD, as somebody doing their PhD, you have to parse that out and figure out how to talk about it. Absolutely.
Which I, I think would be no one, like, I think I would go a little bit like, yes, absolutely.
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
Absolutely. Absolutely. So my, my research, like my method is called the God space.
And anybody who follows me on any type of social media, or who knows me really well, knows or has heard or has seen quotes about me talking or writing about the God space, the God space is this magical ideological, performative, generative space for Black and Indigenous bodies, where they get to enact being outside of imperial acknowledgement, injury, discernment, etc. It’s a place where Black and Indigenous and diverse people get to kind of imagine not only what the future will be, but what the real past was, right? There’s a lot of propaganda about, about everything, about everything.
Part of part of 2019, for me was just unpacking all the bullshit. Sorry if I could say that. Unpacking all the bullshit I had, I knew about myself, I knew about being Black, I knew about being African, I knew about being Nigerian, like, 2019 was the year that I cast.
And out of that came this idea of building, building a way to train, perform diverse bodies in performance that actually serve them.
[Phil Rickaby]
It’s interesting, the, you know, I’ve been taken to church in the theatre, I think if you’ve ever had, I think a lot of us have had like those, those really rare moments where like, oh, oh, this is church, like those, you know, audience, when audience and actor breathe together, and it’s like a thing. I wonder, the thing that you’re talking about, though, is a little bit different. And I wonder if the God space is often found at Blackout Nights.
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
That is really interesting. No, no, no, no. Community is found at Blackout Nights, right?
The opportunity to just kind of be is found at Blackout Nights. Diversity is found at Blackout Nights, new ways of being are found at Blackout Nights. And those are all really wonderful things.
But the God space is more personal. It’s, it’s, and eventually it, like it, it iterates community, but it’s it’s for the performer. And it’s for the performer, it’s for the Black performer, it’s it’s a way to train that acknowledges heritage, history, active real history, not the bullshit we’re taught in school, right?
Like it’s, it’s an ideological space where the performer just gets to be outside of, like I said, imperial, like recognition injury, like the God space enables the performer of diverse background to act in excess of the archives of the Western Earth.
[Phil Rickaby]
You mentioned going to Humber and studying there. That’s sort of like a conservatory program. And then moving to York University to do the degree thing.
Where did these ideas start to form for you? Was it was it a reaction to the conservatory system? Or was it was it something that came when you were at university before something came after in some of your work as a performer and a writer and a creator and an artist?
This is such a great question.
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
Now I know that it started when I was at Humber, but it didn’t start as an idea. When I was at Humber, at Humber, it started out in reaction. It started out in reaction to feeling misunderstood, unknown, unseen, kind of all the things I think that a lot of like, Black folk deal with in the theatre school system.
I have to be honest with you. But at the time, I didn’t have the words, the agency, the balls, you know, the right to the bravery, the courage to do anything about it. I just understood that there was an experience I had gone through that didn’t really sit well in my body.
And I wished I could have done something about it. And then in 2019, I was working for the City of Toronto, and I left the City of Toronto because it was just not great. And there was a particular point, this question is a really, really great question.
And I feel like as I start to like develop, like my method, I’m going to get asked it a lot. So in 2019, my girlfriend and I were sitting outside on her porch, it was around Easter, and we were listening, like we weren’t even really listening, the radio was just on. And there was some like man of God speaking, like a really famous one, like Benny Hinn or something, right.
And Benny Hinn, I think said something about somebody named Simon of Cyrene, being at the site of the crucifixion. And Benny Hinn said it was a black man. And I was like, I said to my girlfriend, what do you mean a black man like 3000 years ago?
How did a black man get up to like Norway? Legit, right? It’s like, how did he get up to Norway?
Or is it Finland? Or Sweden? So I said, my friend, where did the story of like, Christ happen?
Like, where’s all this taking place? And she’s like, bitch, I don’t know. I’m not Google.
I’m Google, right? I asked Google. And Google said Cyrene is Libya.
I said, Oh my God, Libya? How did he? Why?
Well, and I started to like geographically, because in my life, I grew up Christian. But in my life, I had never in my 35 or 37 years of life as I was at that time, stopped to question where these stories in the Bible had happened. In my head, and based on the pictures of Jesus that I had seen, these were like Finnish or Swedish or something really, really, really, like European and super high up north.
But the reality is that these stories are happening in places like Libya and Syria and Egypt. And it really kind of it, it blew my mind, right? It blew my mind, because I understood in that moment that there were things that I didn’t know.
And I understood that I didn’t know them for a reason. Right? Okay, so I started to unpack and I started to like Egypt, I was stuck on Egypt.
For some reason, I was stuck there. I was like, what is it? What is it about Egypt?
Is Egypt in Africa? Yes, Egypt is in Africa. Oh, well, who are the Egyptians?
Oh, well, who are the precursor to the Egyptians? Oh, not pyramids in the Sudan. Oh, my goodness, not Kush and Nubia in Ethiopia.
Oh, my God. Oh, wow. Wow.
Not people from Greece coming to Egypt to go to school. Not Aristotle and Plato in Greece at the Library of Alexandria. Oh, you don’t say.
Okay, so now we start to unpack the real history of Africa. And I start to understand that Africa is like the navel of the world, meaning the nutrient-dense fodder. And then I started to rethink about how I thought about myself as an African.
And then I started to understand why I felt out of place at theatre school. And then I started to figure out that there were a lot of people like me who feel out of place. And then I thought, oh, shit, somebody’s got to do something about that.
Right? And I thought, oh, well, what am I doing for myself about that? You know, like, how am I changing it for myself?
And then I realized that my true strength came from the fact that I know a pre-colonized version of myself. I know that through my grandparents. I know it through my lineage.
I know it through my history, through song, through dance, through art, through literature. And that in essence, that knowledge affords me like a force field. If you’re into like Star Wars, right?
That knowledge is like the force. And I thought, there’s something here. And I thought, I got to look into this.
So then when I went to York, like my advisor at the time was like, yeah, you got to look into this. And so I did.
[Phil Rickaby]
That’s awesome. I mean, the story of Egypt is in many ways the story of Africa, because the Greeks stole the Egyptian heritage from the Egyptians, right? Egyptians were Black.
And then the Greeks came and claimed and put on the dress, the clothes. They put on the Blackness. And they claimed the imagery of the pharaohs.
It wasn’t theirs because the pharaohs were Black. And then this idea, because in the European culture, Greek equals European culture. Then it started, oh, we can claim that too.
That’s just like cannibalizing this. And then you get into the church of it all. And as a preacher’s kid, as somebody who grew up, listen, yes.
And then when you start to have to like really dig into it, and you get a preacher’s kid who went, a preacher who went to seminary. And everybody I know who went to seminary has a period of time when they’re just like, I don’t even know what I believe in anymore because it’s hell.
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
I know a lot but it’s still for real.
[Phil Rickaby]
Now I’m learning about where everything, the truth about the Bible, and I feel like I’ve been lied to my whole life. Yeah. And because once you start to unpack the what, you know, the Greek, the Hebrew, and all of that, everything changes.
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
Everything.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. It’s a brain explosion for sure.
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
Explosion. And here’s the thing. Not a lot of people know.
So the knowledge is not hidden. It’s just kind of dressed up. So I spent like my entire master’s degree with people looking at me like I was gone.
What is this bitch doing here? She don’t know her shit. And legit, I would ask myself, do you know what you’re talking about?
But then I would hold the books. I would hold the book and I would be like, no, I read this. I know what I’m talking about.
I’m not losing my mind. But it’s not common knowledge. So what system is it that packages this whatever it is we know and sells it to us?
That’s a system that we got to question.
[Phil Rickaby]
You know what I’m saying? It’s a system of control. And that’s the thing.
That is why when the church went out, listen, pardon me, I’m a preacher’s kid. I’m going to be on a pulpit for a second here. But the church went out and co-opted all of the things that people loved in order to make them love the church.
And the church realized that you can control people if you make the method of control of their religion.
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
Absolutely.
[Phil Rickaby]
Right. And once you start looking at the Bible and you start reading it, and then if you even go even further and like look at the Greek, the Hebrew, the Aramaic, then you really start to learn about it. And the thing about it is, is the truth is, is sort of sits under a tent formed by belief and indoctrination, which is so hard to break through.
And the people who are that you can find online who are talking about this stuff, I’m like saying, oh, here’s what it says in the Bible. Here’s what it says in the Aramaic. Here’s what it actually says.
Get fought with because they’re trying to break through.
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
Fought with, canceled, they call it canceled now. They get canceled. Before you know it, you lose your job.
Before you know it, you lose your funding. It’s really tricky. It is really tricky, which is why when I start teaching my method, the first thing I need people to do is research.
I need you to go back to who you were before you knew you realized yourself as this colonized person, because we all are, right? The world, wherever the colonizer has touched, it’s like they’re good. They’re good at what they do.
Nobody’s detracting from the brilliance and the genius of the colonizer. It’s there, right? But you need to really dig.
You need to dig a little bit, because I think they rely on the fact that nobody digs. Nobody really wants to know. If you got a job, you’re making like $120,000 a year.
You can pay for your kid to go to college. You can take two vacations a year. What do you want to know for?
What’s there to know? But for people in diaspora, for Africans in diaspora, for the people across the border, in the states, this is freedom. I got to the point, Phil, where I started to understand when Bob Marley said, you must separate yourself from mental slavery.
I’ve been singing that song my whole life, okay? But I never understood what it was he was talking about, till I started to dig. This is the mental slavery, right?
The kind of canopy that you’re talking about that nobody wants to sort of, it’s like the Truman Show, right? Nobody kind of wants to scratch at the globe to see what’s on the outside. There is freedom on the outside.
There is awareness, there is power, there’s empowerment, there’s hope, there’s love, there’s faith on the outside of the canopy. And I’m all about that.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. I mean, I remember my dad, when he was at seminary, has talked about having a class in theology. And there was a topic, I don’t remember what the topic was, but everybody was like, oh, this is so good to jump in around going, we’re going to blow the lid up.
It’s going to be so exciting. We’re going to like transform because we’re now learning the truth of this thing. And they get to the end of the class.
And the professor goes, of course, you can never preach that. And they were like, oh, they suddenly and they were like, wives, because people don’t want to hear it.
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
No, that’s not, you can’t preach that. That’s why it’s up to us. Okay.
Hi, artists.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, yes. Yeah.
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
Back, we’ve come, we’ve come 180, right? Back to the artist. Who is the artist?
My husband said something the other day, right? That blew my mind. And I’m about to blow yours.
Okay. Human beings are created to express the truth. Now, it doesn’t matter how you come at that statement.
It’s going to give you a pause for a thought. Whether you come at it physically, and you’re like human beings were created to express the truth. Oh, what’s who, what was the truth?
Human beings were created to express the truth. But we’re not doing that. Well, that’s why our world is in so much turmoil.
Like, everywhere you come at that statement from it hits you in the gut, right? It forces us to acknowledge that the reason why we’re fractured is because we’re not in the business of doing that anymore.
[Phil Rickaby]
No, no, we’re not. We’re encouraged to lie in some like every every day is a bit of a lie. Right.
Absolutely. Right. Yeah, it is.
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
Yeah, it is. And it’s a bit of a lie when we get actors and artists and performers, and we put them on the big stage, and we put 10,000 people at their feet, and they make the show and then they go home and they are empty. And they’re sad, and they’re burdened and overwhelmed and and and that and nobody really cares because the show did well, the box office numbers were met, the sponsors and the founders are happy, the management people.
So for me, it’s all about like, I’m really, really, really just obsessed with the idea of how performance can bring healing to the artist, how it can be this medium of expansion, how it can be an excess of colonization and imperialism, how, how, how it can be a tool like a tool for like radical change.
[Phil Rickaby]
Hmm. Yes, yes. Okay, I want to I want to step back a little bit because there’s a topic that I want to cover.
We’re going to cover near the end. Okay. But I wanted to ask you about, you know, you, you talked about going to theatre school, you talked about going, you know, do the master’s in York University and all this.
But before you went to theatre school, what was the thing that drew you to theatre? What? How did this become a thing that you discovered that you wanted to be involved in a thing that you wanted to do?
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
Oh, my goodness, storytelling. So storytelling is such a big part of Nigerian culture, like when we have nothing to do when when the power grid goes out, and there’s no light and no TV and nothing going on, you know what I’m saying? Because we have all the oil in the world that can get a power grid working as a country.
So when that happens, you go outside in the moonlight and sit on the mat woven with raffia on the floor with palm trees all around you. And you can hear the crickets. And you have your aunt or your grandma, or somebody older sitting on a stool, and you’re sitting on the mat around them.
And they start and they say story story. And you answer in chorus story. Once upon a time you answer in chorus time time.
And they start telling you these stories that just blow your mind about the turtle and how the turtle it’s really smart and beat the rabbit at the race, or about the mermaid that lives at the stream, or about the person who died in one city and appeared to their friend in another city even though they were dead already. Like these fantastical stories that stretch how you know what you know. I’ve loved that my whole life.
I’ve loved to tell stories. And when I was in school, so I was born here. I was born in London, Ontario.
My dad was getting his PhD at Western. And my mom was getting her nursing degree as well. But when I was eight months old, my family moved back to Nigeria where we lived till I was 13.
So I went to high school partially in Nigeria, and I became the storyteller. I became like the aunt or the grandma who like all the friends would gather around around lunch. They’d be like, tell us a story, tell us a story, tell us a story.
And I would just dive right in, right? I’d like recycle all the stories my aunts had told me, you know, the freakier and the creepier the better. And we would like people would just be spellbound, right?
Spellbound at my storytelling. And I started to realize subconsciously in many ways that there was a power there. There was a power of community.
There was a power there was belonging there. There was focus, you know, there was creativity. There was like, out of this world batshit silliness, you know, like, I could truly I think I found that I could truly be my true essence in those moments.
And I followed it. I followed it. I did ballet for a while, and I was really, really good at it.
But then I, through changing circumstances, didn’t dance for like a year. And then that was over, right? Ballet is like, in the moment type of art.
And so I transitioned from ballet to theatre and storytelling, because I found that as a theatre practitioner, I could still dance, right? I could still second sing, I could do all those things that I’ve been enamored of, like my whole life.
[Phil Rickaby]
And what point did you figure out that you could that this is like a career path?
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
Right? This is a good question. Well, I moved here.
And I went to, I went to high school. And then after high school, I had a really great guidance counselor who had seen me in all the plays at Laura Seacord, which is the high school I went to here in the Niagara region. And she was like, you know, you could go to school for theatre.
And I was like, what? You don’t say. And then I didn’t know then that I could make a career out of it.
But I thought I’m going to do it anyway, because I’m going to have a good time. And that’s kind of always been really important to me.
[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, listen, there are so many jobs that that sort of destroy your soul, you might as well do something that makes you happy, right?
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
Really, really, I thought, yeah, might never like I’m going to be the black sheep of my family. Everybody’s got a like a degree and my dad’s doctor, like my mom’s a nurse, but I’m going to go to theatre school, you know what I mean? And my parents are great.
They were like, okay, well, you’re the last born. Go and waste your life then. No, that’s actually not really true.
My mom was like, go and waste your life. But my dad, who had been an actor in the Nigerian Biafran War, in his youth, feel like secretly he was like, go girl, go do it, go do it. You know what I mean?
And yeah, and I happen to be good at it, which is kind of not the point for me. You know what I mean? I just wanted to do it and have a good time.
But I happen to have a knack for it. And then Diana Belshaw was like, you could probably do this professionally. So then I was like, okay, now I feel validated.
I’m going to get an agent and I did and I worked, you know, and I did really well. And then I met a guy and started having kids. Like, who does that, right?
[Phil Rickaby]
We’re parents. When you decided that you were going to go and get your master’s and then your PhD, did they? Was your mother happy?
Did she sing a hallelujah?
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
She is like waiting for me to graduate so she could rent a cube van and bring all her retired nurse friends and some aunties from Nigeria just to prove that I’m not a failure after all. No, she’s really psyched.
[Phil Rickaby]
She’s really pumped. I bet. Now, last question on that topic.
Have you considered that once you graduate, you could justifiably require that if you’re in a rehearsal hall, people call you doctor? Well, Phil, but see, here’s the thing.
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
I’m not trying to lose my street credibility. Okay, I’m not trying to lose my street cred. I’m a street cred guy.
Ask people who know D&D, they would tell you. I’m not I’m not interested in in the I’m not interested in in the hierarchical like, I want to be in the trenches. You want to say with my dogs?
No, yeah, no, I don’t want that. I don’t want people to call me doctor. I just want to have it in my back pocket and just keep being Daniel.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Now, before we started recording, you meant you you mentioned something and I said, we got to save this for the podcast.
You mentioned that you are rewatching the Die Hard series. And I want to start with what drew you to the rewatch of the Die Hard series.
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
I’m just tired of what’s on TV right now. Okay, like, I am tired. I am just I’m maxed out.
I’m I need something where the scenes are a little bit longer than like a third of a second. Just some good old fashioned. I don’t know what I don’t know what but I was searching for something.
And I was like, Oh, Bruce. Also, Bruce Willis is like going through some things right now. Right?
Yeah. Yeah. And and I thought to myself, wow, I want I want to see Bruce Willis.
Like what was he like when he was Bruce Willis? I’ve almost forgotten what he was like when he was like himself, right? Not to say that he’s not himself now just a different version.
And I saw Die Hard. Then I said to my husband, have you seen Die Hard? He’s like, yeah, all of them all 12.
And I’m like, well, I think they’re only there are five. But I really like to watch them. So we started watching them.
And so you know, I have to say this, I have to say this, I have to say that what the world is experiencing right now, like especially Americans, they’ve been putting out in films for a very long time.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
Yeah, it’s almost like the social conditioning has been leading up to this point. So that when the shit really started to hit the fan, people will be like, Oh, I seen that shit in Die Hard like, you know what I’m saying? Because the violence if there’s this one scene in one of these movies, and oh my god, they’re like beating this black man up.
Like it’s a it’s like a racial war. And and the the like the Aryan Lord is like, beaten on this black man and just like with a baseball bat like destroying his body. And I thought to myself, Oh shit, where have I seen that before?
Oh my god, I’ve seen that on the streets of where Minneapolis, New York City, like, this is something that I’ve seen before in real life. And I started to think about what they’re, the lines between politics and entertainment are really, really fuzzy. Like the lines between political control are and entertainment are really fuzzy.
And then it brought home to me how involved entertainment is with propaganda. Right? Yeah.
And I thought, Oh, wow, like it really offered me a perspective that I didn’t have before, because they don’t make those type of movies anymore. You can’t do some of that shit in movies anymore, right? Like the people will come for you.
But they were doing this type of shit in movies then. And now it’s happening in real life. Right?
So yeah, die hard. Like I kind of just sort of stumbled into it. But I’m now kind of like obsessed with watching these old films, these old American films, and sort of tracking the trajectory of degeneracy.
Like, you know what I’m saying? Tragedy, how it got up to the point where we’re at now. And it’s it’s in the movies.
[Phil Rickaby]
No, absolutely. Absolutely. It’s fascinating to look at it through the lens of die hard.
Because the first movie starts, he’s a regular guy, regular guy, regular guy. He’s doesn’t have like, he’s not particularly good at anything. He’s lucky he’s determined, but he’s pretty much a regular guy.
By the last movie, he’s basically a superhero who’s flying a car. Totally. Totally.
And it’s it’s kind of wild how, how, you know, it’s the things get like, how does that happen? Like, we’re talking, he was a normal guy. And now he’s like, making a car fly because he’s John McClane.
Yeah. But it’s like, you could look at that of the Rambo movies as well. Because in Rambo, he’s a guy like he’s a regular guy.
Yes, he’s well trained. He’s a he’s a guy who’s been through some great, but he’s not a America, America, rah, rah, rah, no guy. But by the time you get to the last one, again, he’s a superhero.
And he’s like, the most like rah, rah, America guy that you could probably find these. This is not an this seems to be like the trajectory that a lot of these movies take, right? Like, so what about your brain off?
What does that say? Oh, right. It’s a lot about how America sees itself.
Absolutely. Right. You know, you could like the fact that like regular guy to superhero, but also, he’s also Mr. America. He’s gotta be right.
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
Yeah. And it’s almost like if you stick with the plan long enough, you do enough of that old killing. Defending you’re defending you’re not a bad guy.
You’re not. No, you’re a bad guy. You’re, you’re the good guy that makes all that killing.
Okay, exactly. And if you just stick with the plan, if you let it happen to you, and you let the system, you know, if you if you let yourself be used, you will become Mr. America.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah, that’s, I mean, here I was about to I was getting ready to talk about how you know, the diehard the first movie is kind of perfect and how it goes into absurdity.
But you’ve like, nailed it to something like, even darker about the movies of the time. It happened with Rocky two, right? Rocky, rock, rock, John McClane, Rocky Rambo, they all sort of go through this same trajectory.
If there had been, like, I don’t know, a stand alive series with John Travolta have been like fighting Russians with the power of dance or something in life. So cool, too. It would have been very cool, right?
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
Now they would have been talking our language. You don’t have say, find it out on the dance floor, do get out on the dance floor.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, well, that I mean, the do it in every other like, you know, you got to do get out somewhere rocky in the in the ring and, and like so many, so many absurd things. Yeah. They they’re so good at manipulating.
I remember, I guess it was Rocky five when he goes to Russia, Rocky four when he goes to Oh, I should watch that again. And I remember because I’m an old man. So it was the set.
It was like the I was watching that in theory in the in the theatre at the time that it came out. And I remember, like, you know, watching the movie. And I you know, when when the Russians absurdly started chanting USA, I was like, yeah, they’re like, cheering along with like, like, and then afterward, I’m like, why would I be cheering on those guys?
But right wild? Who do you remember the Olympics?
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
I don’t know about you. But only up until 15 years ago, when it came time for the Olympics, I was I became American. Because did Canada even like I mean, besides like, that thing where they do the thing?
But if you were talking about the Olympics, yes, I was saying up until 15 years ago, when it came time for the Olympics, I became an American. Like all the track stars were American Jackie Joyner, Kirstie Carl Lewis. I mean, I’m an old girl, too.
So this is going to show my age. But like, Canada did curling and hockey and maybe some figure skating, right? And that was it.
Like America really was the team like they were the heroes. They’re Captain America. Right.
So we would cheer on like, and I’m not even really sure when that facade started to crumble. But it did.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, it’s a tough I mean, I remember, I think I remember being a kid and we didn’t have cables. We’re watching the Olympics on CBC, which does change a little bit. But also, the Summer Olympics were never our thing.
Oh, all right. Summer Olympics were like the, you know, Canada’s Canada is more of a winter Olympics, winter Olympics. Yeah, it’s true.
Family. Yeah. But, you know, you’re right, they’re so good at the propaganda of and they still do it like, you know, the Disney puts out like the Miracle on Ice, you know, it’s like the story of America beating the Russians in the hockey game.
And then they, they even take Canadian stories. And they transpose them so that they are American story. Really?
You remember, there was that bus crash, bus crash and the junior team. I think it was out in the prairies. I do remember that.
They’re making a movie about it. But it’s set in like, Minnesota or something like they’re an American team. Because of course they can’t tell a story that’s not America.
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
Oh my goodness in Minnesota. Somebody’s got to check what’s in the water in Minnesota. Somebody’s got to check what’s in the water in the Twin Cities.
And I don’t even I don’t know how to I don’t I don’t know if there’s space in my body to begin to try to like contextualize what’s happening in the States right now.
[Phil Rickaby]
No, no. And the difficulty about being somebody who was in Canada, who lives in Canada, who’s Canadian, is sometimes Americans are like, why do you care what happens here? It’s like, well, because we’re right there.
We’re like, we share, we’re right here. Share air, never mind the border. We share it.
Yeah, we share air, we share water, we share wind. Pierre Elliott Trudeau said that America is an elephant, Canada is a mouse. So what’s it like being Canada?
Everything’s fine with the sleeping beside the elephant right now. But if it rolls over, we’re gonna get squished.
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
Okay, yeah, we’re gonna get squished. And I, I’ve been encouraging people with ancestry to start to look into other ancestry, start to look into your Scottish, Irish, Zambian, Tanzanian palate, start to look into your ancestry and figure out what’s going on because Americans are not going to rest until they decimate this part of North America.
[Phil Rickaby]
Seems like it. Seems like it. And you know, it’s such, it’s one of those, like, it can be so oppressive.
The news, especially like in the last two years, it’s so oppressive. And it’s like, you can’t really escape it. If you scroll it all on your phone, it’s going to find you and there.
So you have to put like, the limits of like self care. It’s like, if you feel it, if you feel the anxiety risings, and you’re going to fall into a, I can’t stop but do a doom scroll cycle, you have to just turn it off and do something else because you will not not only just be able to live your life because you’ll be in an anxiety spiral. But if you were at all an artist, you won’t be able to do you won’t be able to do anything at all.
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
And it’s interesting, I taught at Brock this past summer, the summer intensive, and I was sort of introducing like four or five young artists to like my method and we start with something called the square. So everybody has a square, I’m obsessed with squares, squares are magical, they’re magical, magical shapes, you can fall down the square rabbit hole and never come back out. Okay.
So we start with building the square. And what the square is, is a gathering of all the parts of you. Right?
You gather all the parts of you meaning where you’re from, where your grandmother’s from where your grandfather’s from, you take the stories that you know, and and you, you draw them and you write them and you cut them out of books and you print them and you literally like we eke out like a square, each individual has a square, and you have to fill collage style, your square with yourself. Now, it sounds like really like rudimentary and basic, but you have no idea the things that people find about themselves when they are tasked to do so. I had one artist who discovered that her grandpa was at the Salem witch trials, but not on the side of the state, on the side of the women.
Now, what that did for that artist in that moment was give them the agent seat, like step fully into who they were, who they are, right? With this lineage behind them, something they had never kind of tracked before. So in response to self care, I think it’s imperative and really important and really like tender for people to start to build their squares.
Because what that does is offers you a sense of validation, a sense of purpose, a sense of drive, a sense of beauty, a sense of curiosity that exists outside the nine o’clock news, you know? And I encourage everybody, white, brown, yellow, to start to like, think about their pre-colonial selves. Just imagine it.
Saidiya Hartman, who’s like a really prolific academic and writer talks about something called critical fabulation. Now, critical fabulation is like when you don’t know something. So let’s say you know, this part of your history, you don’t know another part of your history, and there is a void in the middle that you use your imagination to fill that void.
And you do it based on what you know about the beginning and what you know about the end. And you create something like otherworldly in the middle that joins both those parts, right? And so at a time like this, when the world is the way it is, I’m encouraging all the young artists that I know to start working on their squares.
Start building your generator, is what I call it, right? Start building and stacking and knowing the things about yourself that inspire you. Because more and more, the inspiration is not coming from the outside.
What’s coming from the outside is turmoil and tragedy and hatred and war and fighting. So this is like in response to that, it’s like a thing to do to get away from that. And it’s really, it’s fantastic to things that people discover during this exercise.
So that’s for me, self care in 2019 became about, like knowing what I know about myself so that I could draw on those things for strength.
[Phil Rickaby]
It’s it’s so it’s that’s so important, because sometimes you can fall into a, with all of this stuff. How, how can I be an artist, like, I’m just making a stupid play, or I’m just doing this silly thing, like, and then, but I said to somebody just this weekend, like, people need entertainment, at darkest time, people need entertainment, they need stories, they need all this stuff. And which means that making art is an act of resistance.
Always, absolutely. And it is it is it is it is a way of not letting these oppressive things oppress absolutely, absolutely.
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
I read somewhere the other day that Audrey Hepburn was, was holding private ballet recitals during the war in Nazi Germany. And a lot of the money that was collected at these private clandestine recitals was used to, like help people who are surviving the war. So art is important, art, a barometer of humanity, it’s, it’s a reflector, right?
It tells us where we are, who we are, how we’ve come to be there, what we like, what we know, it’s so, so, it’s more important now than it is in times of peace. Right?
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, absolutely. One question that just occurred to me, and sort of, we’re sort of like running into the end of our time together. But I wanted to ask, because you were talking about art, but we’ve also been talking about, you know, you’re sort of like in this world of academia, totally.
And do you find those things at odds or in clashing with each other? Yes. As you sort of work through it?
Oh, tell me about that.
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
Yes, it, it, my biggest work, besides what I’m developing has been, like keeping my artist sane, and inspired and full whilst being in the halls of academia, because that’s not what they’re doing there. Okay? That’s not what they’re doing there.
Academia is about learning how to speak the language of academia, how to think like the academics, how to write like them, and how to contribute something to the archives, right? Ensconced within the language that’s been there, the imperial language, you can’t, you can’t step out of it. You’re like, they won’t let you step out of the imperiality of the situation, it is the bedrock.
So keeping my artist alive, has been a really, really big job. And thank God, I’m equal to the task. So it has meant, like introducing performance into like, what would otherwise just be regular seminars, you know, it has meant dressing up in my Igbo gear, my Igbo ceremonial attire to go to class, right?
And, and that, and and existing within that tension, right? And seeing what comes out of that tension of being artist and academic. It’s, it’s, it’s fraught with tension, those two things, especially within the context of like graduate school.
So it’s been challenging to have a really great supervisor. And everybody knows that I will bust shit down. Like I’m gonna have to do me.
So I think pretty much they just let me do it.
[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, that’s great. I mean, I was thinking as I was like, looking into into looking for information about you, and like the fact that you were doing a PhD in theatre, dance and performance, and that doesn’t see like, I’m sure that people do it, you know, obviously people do it. But you don’t hear about it that often.
And I think it’s because of that. It’s because of that dichotomy between the academic, the academic and the and the artists. And some people are just too like, no, I need my artists.
I can’t I can’t do that. Yeah. So it’s, it’s an extremely rare thing.
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
It is totally rare. And like I said, like, I probably wouldn’t be here either. But I needed a hustle.
And this is the one that I’m in at the moment. And it’s gonna pay off, it’s gonna mean that I get to contribute my ideas to the academy, you know, and I get to sort of chisel out a little, a little bit of stone so that there’s some light can get through, you know, and I’m also like, one of the only black people in my entire grad school situation. So I know that there’s a reason I’m there to make it accessible to make it doable, you know, artists have genius ideas, and, and we can flourish in academia.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yes. Yeah, no, it’s true. I’m thinking about, you know, you were talking about about your experience at Humber.
And I’m thinking back to my experience. Where’d you go? I went to George Brown, I went to George Brown theatre school back in the Oh, no, I know.
But anyway, but at the time, I there when I started in theatre school, there were two black brothers who were in my class. But they did not make stay in the room, we did not make it through. And that’s not an uncommon story for for black students in conservatory programs in a lot of the programs, because they are so often taught by white teachers who don’t understand black history of black art, like anything they don’t, they don’t understand it.
And so it’s like, trying to flourish in a foreign language of foreign activity, right? Because if the teachers don’t have experience and are uninterested in learning, then why would why would a student Why would a black student stick with that course?
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
And Phil, exactly right what you say, but also what is being taught is based in the very thing that we are pushing against. So I’d love me some Grotowski based improv. I love you some Stanislav.
Yeah, I love me some Brett. I love me some like all these great people that I learned about Shakespeare, like, I love Shakespeare, biggest Shakespeare buff ever. But what I have to confront is the fact that these methods are all part of the system, right?
These guys were developing these things at the same time as like, people are talking about eugenics in the same time as like black folk weren’t even considered to be human beings. And so, Ralph, can your method speak to me when you were creating it, creating it at a time when I wasn’t even allowed to use the same restroom? Right?
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
So So we need other methods. We need other methods. And I’m hoping to be a part of that conversation.
[Phil Rickaby]
We I think it’s so important for to have black, brown, Chinese, Japanese, like, ethnic, everybody needs to be a teacher at a school, right? You need to be able to have every person of color possibility in there because you need those you need the students to be able to contribute if we’re going to talk about about Canada being we’re talking about Canada being multicultural. Well, our schools and our art has to also be multicultural.
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
Absolutely, absolutely. It does. And and we just need we need other perspectives.
You know, we need other perspectives, not only for like, the diverse bodies, but for like, everybody, you know, everybody needs to be exposed to other perspectives. And we need Yeah, it’s just it’s it’s a thing. It’s a thing.
And it’s a thing that needs to be addressed. And it’s a thing that you know, and they say those who can, those who do those who teach can’t do but that’s a big lie. If you it is a big you do please hear me you must teach if you do and you do it well and you have a different perspective.
Please hear me when I say you must teach because if you do not if we continue whoever made that thing that says if you do you don’t you what how does that saying go those who those those
[Phil Rickaby]
who do can those who can do those who can’t teach right we
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
need to we need to put that on a big sign and burn it right and burn torch it if you are doing please understand that there is a responsibility to teach there have to be there has to be unless how does the knowledge get passed down? We just keep regurgitating the same shit right?
[Phil Rickaby]
Absolutely. Absolutely. And it is is regurgitating the same shit.
Well, we’re basically at the end of our time. I want to thank you so much for for joining me. This has been one of my favorite conversations.
So thank you so much. Thanks so much for being on the program. I really appreciate it.
[Dienye Waboso Amajor]
PJ, Phil, hope we get to chat another time. It was such a pleasure and thanks for having me.
[Phil Rickaby]
Thank you for listening to this week’s episode of Stageworthy. I’m going to tell you who my guest is next week. But before I do, let me take a moment to tell you about my Patreon.
I can’t do this show without the people who’ve chosen to back this podcast on Patreon. For most of the existence of this podcast, I paid for everything that’s necessary out of my own pocket. Although I give this podcast to you for free, there are costs involved with making it has to have a website to host the audio files and distribute them to other to the podcast platforms, editing software, transcripts, I have to pay for transcripts, and I’m working through the backlog to make sure that all the episodes, as many episodes as possible, do have a transcript.
So make sure you check that out. cost money to have the software to create the images that go along with every show. And all of that I’ve paid for out of pocket until now.
Because after my hiatus, in order to bring this podcast back, I asked who would be willing to help me to make this show and amazing people stepped up who wanted to become patrons and help me to make this show. patrons get early access to episodes, we have conversations about all kinds of things involved in theatre and the more people who join the pot, the more people who join the Patreon, the more I will be able to offer in the future. So if you like this podcast, and you want to help me to make it go to patreon.com/stageworthy and become a patron. I’ll be forever grateful and I would love to have you on the team helping to make this show happen. Make sure you tune in tune in next week when my guest will be acclaimed Canadian playwright Anusree Roy. I’m really looking forward to this conversation to finally get to talk with Anusree and you will get to hear that next week on stage.
