Tawiah M'Carthy | |
|---|---|
| Born | Accra, Ghana |
| Occupation | theatre artist; actor, playwright, director, creator |
| Nationality | Ghanaian-Canadian |
| Period | 2008-present |
| Notable works | Obaaberima |
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]
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]