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Drama Women Authors

Simone, Half and Half

by (author) Christine Rodriguez

foreword by Quincy Armorer

Publisher
Playwrights Canada Press
Initial publish date
Oct 2022
Category
Women Authors, Canadian
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780369103765
    Publish Date
    Oct 2022
    List Price
    $18.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780369103772
    Publish Date
    Oct 2022
    List Price
    $13.99

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Recommended Age, Grade, and Reading Levels

  • Age: 11 to 18
  • Grade: 6 to 12

Description

Fourteen-year-old Simone is caught between cultures: Canadian, Québécois, and Trinidadian. She’s also torn between friends and the projects they want her to take part in. Her best friend Sarah wants them to compete in the talent show with a dance routine, but her new friend Jay has introduced her to the Black History and Culture Committee’s activism and its organizer, tenth-grader Vanessa. Though Sarah represents the comfort of what she knew growing up, Jay and Vanessa offer Simone an opportunity to get to know part of herself that she hasn’t explored yet. As pressure mounts on seeing both projects through, her friendships start to feel the strain and her loyalties are tested. Can Simone find the courage to stand up for what she believes in? Will her friends accept the choices she makes? And will she finally learn to be more comfortable with herself? Simone, Half and Half is a touching story about finding one’s place between identities and communities.

About the authors

Christine Rodriguez is the award-winning playwright of Dreaming in Autism, which earned third prize at Ottawa Little Theatre’s 72nd National One-Act Playwriting Competition. Simone, Half and Half, commissioned and produced in 2020 by Black Theatre Workshop, received five Montreal English Theatre Award nominations, including one for Outstanding New Text. Christine’s first short film, Fuego, an Official Selection of the 2021 American Black Film Festival, was written and filmed in English, French, and Spanish. She was nominated for Best Filmmaker of the Year by Montreal’s very own Gala Dynastie. Christine was also selected by the Rogers-Black Screen Office Development Fund to write the pilot for her TV concept Nina’s 80s. She holds an M.B.A. from McGill University and a Certificate of Professional Screenwriting from UCLA. She’s currently working on obtaining a major in Hispanic Studies from Université de Montréal. Christine’s work is largely informed by her mixed-race Afro-Caribbean heritage and her multicultural environment. She lives in Montréal.

Christine Rodriguez's profile page

Quincy Armorer has worked professionally as an actor, director, instructor, and administrator for over twenty years. As an actor, he has worked at the Stratford Festival, National Arts Centre, Centaur Theatre, Black Theatre Workshop, St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival, Geordie Theatre, Repercussion Theatre, Imago Theatre, Piggery Theatre, and Shakespeare by the Sea, among many others. An alumnus of both the Theatre Department at Concordia University and the Birmingham Conservatory for Classical Theatre at the Stratford Festival, Quincy is Adjunct Professor at Queen’s University, Associate Director of the Acting Program (English Section) at the National Theatre School of Canada, and was Artistic Director of Black Theatre Workshop from 2011 to 2021.

Quincy Armorer's profile page

Excerpt: Simone, Half and Half (by (author) Christine Rodriguez; foreword by Quincy Armorer)

Miscegenation. Sounds like a science experiment... These are the words that have been used to describe people like me. But what's in a word or in these words or any words? What are the words that really say who I am? I am. I am. Here I am... Why do you need the words? What if there isn't one word? My mom can trace her family back to the 1600s to this one spot in the north of France. A name and a place. Daniel Parent, Tourcoing, Nord- Pas-de-Calais. But my dad can't do that. He can only go as far back as Trinidad and Tobago. A dark-skinned woman. Soledad Rouseau. My great-great-grandmother. An old woman who spoke little as she sat in her rocking chair watching the world change before her eyes. That's all my grandmother remembers. Was she a slave when she was a child? Or were her parents slaves? What did she see? What did she know? It's all gone now. We'll never know where she came from or what she believed or what cultural practices she had that came from her faraway homeland. Just an old black woman on a Caribbean island. To know and not to know. "Where are you from?" Everywhere. "What are you?" I don't know.

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