Chokola is a study of racial discrimination in the form of visceral poetry. The message of the play is that "racism is so endemic that it can be found even where there is love."
Venue / Lieu :
Text / Texte : Phara Thibault;
Translator / Traduction : Malube Uhindu-Gingala.
Chokola is a study of racial discrimination in the form of visceral poetry. Sometimes in the form of a letter to her birth mother, sometimes in the form of reflections or in discussions with her psychologist or God, Thibault takes a frank, lucid look at Quebec and its unconscious racial prejudices. To explain her different skin colour, her adoptive mother told her that she had fallen into a pot of chocolate. As Thibault puts it, the message of the play is that "racism is so endemic that it can be found even where there is love."
Thibault was born in Haiti and adopted at the age of three by a white family in Levis, Quebec. She became preoccupied by questions of identity because of her white family's unconscious microaggressions which made her feel "first and foremost a foreigner." She was motivated to write Chokola by participating in demonstrations during Black Lives Matter, resulting in a poem addressed to her biological mother that she would later develop into a play.
Following the international success of Night from the 4th to 5th (2022), we will collaborate with Para-dime Productions, to produce a digital version of Chokola.
