News isn’t always fit to print. But this is a tumblr. It can go on & on & on.

There was an introduction to this, but I’m sure it was ultimately snipped because of the flabbiness. Also feel like the Du Bois reference wasn’t properly sketched out: I wanted to illustrate how the Canadian black experience (Africville/Caribana/Afrofest/etc.) differs from the American.

I also might be including this because I really couldn’t part with the quotage. (Tayari Jones Fan Club, right here.)

“If February is Black History Month, is the rest of the calendar reserved for white people?” asks American writer Tayari Jones in a 2008 Believef essay, in light of black artists’ struggle with a working schedule that’s “frequently packed during February, but comparatively lean during the rest of the year.” While Black History Month may be split between celebration and marketing opportunity, Toronto’s theatre community are presenting works that not only challenge Du Bois’ “double consciousness” but thankfully, even include productions that run into the month of March. Indeed, many of the plays’ provocative, multinational aspects suggest theatre is not just “stuff white people like,” regardless of what Christian Lander, and the rest of the year, might suggest.

EDIT: Ok, so a Torstar techie forgot to include the introduction, which I later find out via print that it ACTUALLY made it. A huuuuge relief.

If you’re a working actress or model of colour, past experience has taught you to arrive on-set with a makeup kit in tow. Despite the raised awareness of ethnic beauty, hairstylist Ryan Reed and makeup artist Shauna Llewellyn still hear far too many stories of burnt hair and the wrong shade of red lipstick.

“Hair’s the big one,” says Reed ruefully. “You hear things like hairdressers going to touch people up with water bottles and you just don’t do that. Don’t wet the hair! It’s just been freshly relaxed.”

“Or people making the big key-rate money, and sending these actors to black salons on the weekend, [for hairstyles] that they basically maintain during the shoot week,” cuts in Llewellyn. “We hear it all the time: ‘We’re so glad to see you, we didn’t know who we’d get.’”