esi callendar
contemporary African art; theatre and drama; performance art; interdisciplinary art; activist art; queer and trans rights in Africa; Africa-diaspora relations; postcolonial theory; Black feminist; feminist research methodologies
esi callender is a theatre artist based in Tiohti脿:ke/Montr茅al. Their work tends to deal with family histories, race, sexuality, consequence, and play. esi co-founded the feminist theatre collective and documented its work in their chapter 鈥�ineffable dramaturgies: experiments in Black queer and trans liberation,鈥� in (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023). They have a masters in African Studies and won the 2024 for their thesis on collaboration and solidarity between Black artists of diverging backgrounds at the in Ghana. As a PhD student in 海角精品黑料鈥檚 English Department, esi researches queer and trans African and diasporic activist performance practices. They recently co-founded with Lydie Dubuisson, a collective that uses the Western theatre canon as a playground for the creativity of racialized artists who have been alienated by it. Through UnCanon, esi and Lydie will stage 鈥檚 2026 Shakespeare-in-the-Park production.
M.A. University of Bayreuth, University of Porto, University of Bordeaux-Montaigne, 2023
B.F.A. Concordia University, 2020
Book Chapter
callender, s. e. (2023) 鈥渋neffable dramaturgies: experiments in Black queer and trans liberation.鈥澛�Contemporary Black Theatre and Performance: Acts of Rebellion, Activism, and Solidarity, Bloomsbury Publishing. 85-104.
Conference Presentation
callender, e. (2023, Oct 1) African Alliances of Subversion Collaboration and Solidarity amongst Artists from Africa and the Diasporas in the perfocraZe International Artist Residency (pIAR), Kumasi, Ghana [Conference presentation]. 2024 Vereinigung f眉r Afrikawissenschaften in Deutschland (VAD) / Association for African Studies in Germany Conference, Bayreuth, Germany.
Master鈥檚 Thesis
callender, e. (2023) African Alliances of Subversion Collaboration and Solidarity amongst Artists from Africa and the Diasporas in the perfocraZe International Artist Residency (pIAR), Kumasi, Ghana [Graduate dissertation, University of Bayreuth]. .
Creative Outputs
As a co-founder of Sort Of Productions, I produced and collaborated on the following original plays:
Regarding Antigone by Banafsheh Hassani with dramaturgy by esi callender; co-produced by Sort Of Productions and The Sky is the Limit Theatre with financial support from the Conseil des Arts de Montr茅al (CAM); Artists-in-Residence at Infinith茅芒tre; performed in the St-Ambroise Montreal Fringe Festival and Toronto Fringe Festival; nominated for Most Promising English text, Outstanding English Production, and Most Promising Emerging English Producer at the St-Ambroise Montreal Fringe Festival; winner of Out Of Body Performing Arts鈥� Favourite of Fringe and Best Solo Performance (2025).
Synopsis: Taking its title from Susan Sontag鈥檚 study of war photography and the ancient Greek tragedy, Regarding Antigone is a one-act solo show by Iranian feminist playwright Banafsheh Hassani which allegorically portrays the brutality of state violence in contrast to the audience's passive witnessing.
Wine & Halva by Deniz Ba艧ar with performances by esi callender, Banafsheh Hassani and Corbeau Sandoval; co-produced by Sort Of Productions, Toronto Laboratory Theatre and Postmarginal, with financial support from the Canada Council for the Arts; developed with support from Playwrights Workshop Montreal and financial support from CAM (2020); nominated for Best Independent Production at the Montreal English Language Theatre Awards (2024).
Synopsis: How can friends do justice to each other when they have almost nothing in common? This is the question that award-winning Turkish playwright Deniz Basar takes up in Wine & Halva. Performers snap from narrators into characters, and swap roles as they jump from Berlin to New York to Istanbul to the fictitious New Stockholm in this intimate epic of unlikely friendship, intercultural possibilities, and impossible divides.
libation by esi callender; developed by Sort Of Productions; Playwright-in-Residence with Diaspora Dialogues; performed as a staged reading in the TOK Toronto Symposium (2022).
Synopsis: In Act One, a white girl and aspiring author, moves into a freshly gentrified neighborhood where a splash of champagne opens a metaphysical portal to the life of a Black woman living there a generation ago. In Act Two, a Black PhD-dropout-now-barista, drunk in the bathtub after sending their newest play to an unresponsive mailing list, is confronted by a too-good friend about their failed attempts at narrative revenge.
ineffable by esi callender; produced by Sort Of Productions with financial support from Concordia University鈥檚 Sustainability Action Fund, the Concordia Student Union鈥檚 BIPOC Committee and Community Action Fund, the Concordia Council on Student Life, and the Fine Arts Student Alliance; performed in the Revolution They Wrote Feminist Theatre Festival and published by the Fine Arts Reading Room (2019); translated to Turkish by Deniz Ba艧ar and published in Between Enthusiasm and Cooperation鈥擜 Critical Collective Book from Mitos Boyut Publishing (2021).
Synopsis: ineffable is a work of narrative theatre telling the winding falling-in-and-out-of-love story of two queer characters from Haiti and Ghana with different life trajectories, experiences of immigration, and relationships to their genders and sexualities, their cultures, and their families, encased, as the title suggests, in both pain-fueled and tender silences.
bite your tongue by esi callender and oli v; produced by Sort Of Productions with financial support from the Fine Arts Student Alliance; performed in the Rose Festival, an annual queer arts festival, and the St-Ambroise Montreal Fringe Festival (2018).
Synopsis: Using brechtian techniques, absurdist comedy, and poetry, bite your tongue explores the insecurities and dilemmas of young people trying to live their feminist politics and their queer identities in the face of possible rejection from their families.
- Vereinigung f眉r Afrikawissenschaften in Deutschland (VAD) / Association for African Studies in Germany Young Researcher Award for Thesis Writing, 2024
- Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters Degree Scholarship, 2021-2023