Featured Playwright — Rachel Mutombo
Each month we interview member playwrights to share their work, stories and inspiration with the community. We recently spoke with Rachel Mutombo, an award-winning actor and writer. An acting graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada, Rachel has had the great pleasure of acting on screen and stages across the country. As a freelance writer, Rachel has had essays and articles published by CBC and Intermission Magazine.
Rachel’s first full length play Vierge was shortlisted for the 2024 Quebec Writers Federation Prize for Playwriting. Vierge is set to to be co-produced in early 2025 by Black Theatre Workshop and GCTC. She has various other projects in development with theatre companies across the country. Most recently, Rachel was awarded the Young Canadian Playwright Award from the Jon Kaplan Legacy Fund.
How did you get your start writing plays?
The beginning of my professional career as an actor was working on new plays. I had such respect for these playwrights who were creating something new right before my eyes. I definitely thought about writing plays, but I had convinced myself that there wouldn’t be an audience for the stories I wanted to tell. In 2019, I was lucky enough to be in the Canadian premiere of School Girls; Or the African Mean Girls Play by Jocelyn Bioh and it was the production that gave me the final push I needed. It was the first time I felt like the character I was playing was tailor made for me as an African woman. And I thought to myself, how cool would it be if I could write characters that allow other Black women to feel like this? So, I ended up applying for several playwright’s units in Toronto to try and figure out how to write a play.
You’ve written in different genres, including Theatre for Young Audiences and the more general “drama” category. Does your writing process change depending on the type of play you’re writing, and if so, how?
My writing process is the same chaotic journey no matter what type of play I’m writing. The genre and the stories can be vastly different, but it all comes through me in the same way. However, when I write for Theatre for Young audiences, I’m more mindful about leaving space for hope at the end of the play. It’s not to say there isn’t any hope at the end of my other work, but it’s often a bit more ambiguous.
You split your professional time between Toronto and Montreal. How do you find that this influences your artistic practice?
So much about my life involves me being in two worlds simultaneously, and I have noticed that that shows up a lot in my work. I often have characters who are being challenged by what it means to feel at home in multiple places (metaphorically and physically). Beyond being exhausted by the constant travel, I also embrace the chaos and the richness that comes from bouncing back and forth between cities. There is a different rhythm to each city, from the language, to the way of life, to the sound of the streets — both those rhythms live in me. That definitely colours the way I see the world we live in and then in turn makes its way into the worlds I create. Both cities have such a rich culture and unique perspective when it comes to storytelling so it’s a privilege to belong to both theatre communities.
Your play Vierge, for which you received Infinitheatre’s Write-on-Q playwriting prize, will be seen again on stage in Montreal in February 2025 and later in March in Ottawa as a co-production between Black Theatre Workshop [BTW] and Great Canadian Theatre Company [GCTC]. Can you tell us about the creation of this piece, and the experience of bringing it to the stage for a second time?
I joined Factory Theatre’s playwright’s unit at the end of 2019 with nothing but an impulse about 4 Congolese girls meeting in a church basement, and a title, Vierge. And every week, Nina Lee Aquino would give us prompts, encouragement and strict deadlines and we just kept turning up with more and more pages. When I started writing the play, I was just exploring ideas about faith, religion, girlhood and father-daughter relationships and the strange ways in which those intersect. I never imagined that in less than a year I’d have completed a full first draft. Much less during a global pandemic. Vierge was my saving grace in those early days of the pandemic. I’d lost my joe job and had a bunch of acting gigs cancelled and I had nothing to do, but drown in despair or write. I did a bit of both, but mostly, I wrote.
I’m incredibly excited to see Vierge on stage again. I can’t wait to see how this new groups of artists approach this story. I’m so grateful that BTW and GCTC are giving this play an opportunity to reach new audiences. BTW is an especially important company to me, I was in the first cohort of their artist mentorship program like a hundred years ago, so it feels like I’m coming home — but as a completely different artist. It’s a beautiful thing.
Vierge was also just recently shortlisted for the Quebec Writer’s Federation Prize for Playwriting along side some amazing playwrights and it’s always such an incredible honour to have your work recognized in that way.
You’ve shared some of your personal playwriting goals, including diversifying the narrative of African stories on stage. How does this goal inform your writing? And where did it come from?
I write what I know — and I fight to stay true to the story that is on my heart as much as possible. And that can be challenging, because we are accustomed to seeing one type of narrative on stage when it comes to African stories.
So many plays that center African characters depict a war-torn and struggling Africa with characters trying to survive violent atrocities. I’m not saying it’s wrong or right, I’m just saying it’s all that we’ve been given for decades. It’s important to me to add to the canon and represent a different perspective. And fortunately, there are many other incredibly African-Canadian stories coming to our stages. In the same season as Vierge, Fatuma Adar premiered her musical Dixon Road along with Maanomaa, My Brother co-created by Tawiah M’Carthy. All three plays were authentically African and so completely different from each other from content to style to country. That’s the kind of diversity I crave to see on our stages.
What are you working on next?
I wrote 5 first drafts of plays from 2020–2021, so the last few years I have been simultaneously working on all of them as they move through the various stages of development. I think the next one that will be shared with the world is Wake. It was the inaugural IBPOC commission from Persephone Theatre in Saskatoon. Wake is the biggest show I have ever written and we had an amazing workshop last summer. I’m super excited to see it on stage when the time comes.
I’m also really excited to start some new projects. I have had ideas floating in my head for a few years now and I am craving that first draft feeling.
Do you have any favourite Canadian plays and/or which artists are currently inspiring you?
Canadian theatre artists who are always inspiring me: Akosua Amo-Adem, Lisa Codrington, Jeff Ho, Tawiah M’Carthy, Natasha Mumba, Christine Quintana, Makambe K. Simamba — just to name a few.
Harlem Duet by Djanet Sears will always have special place in my heart.
Disclaimer: Playwrights Guild of Canada (“PGC”) is a national arts service mandated to engage and grow an active Canadian writing community. We promote Canadian plays around the world to advance the creative rights and interests of professional Canadian playwrights for the stage. The views of our members are their own. The opinions of PGC as an association remain neutral.
