Amanda Parris
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| Nationality | Canadian |
| Occupation(s) | writer, radio and television broadcaster |
| Known for | Exhibitionists, Revenge of the Black Best Friend |
Amanda Parris is a Canadian broadcaster and writer.[1] An arts reporter and producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, she hosts the CBC Television series Exhibitionists, The Filmmakers and From the Vaults, and the CBC Music radio series Marvin's Room.[2][3] She was cohost with Tom Power of the 2016 Polaris Music Prize ceremony.[4] She writes the weekly column Black Light for CBC Arts.
Other Side of the Game, her debut as a theatrical playwright, was staged by Toronto's Obsidian Theatre and Cahoots Theatre in 2017.[5] After it was published in book form, it won the Governor General's Award for English-language drama at the 2019 Governor General's Awards.[6] Other Side of the Game was adapted by the theatre podcast PlayME and released in three parts on February 24, 2021.[7]
The Death News, written by Amanda Parris and directed by Charles Officer, is a short, filmed, stage monodrama set in the near-future where premature Black death is an inevitability.[8] Commissioned by Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu, Obsidian Theatres’s artistic director, for 21 Black Futures, an anthology series featuring 21 Black playwrights which began streaming on CBC Gem in February 2021.[9][8] The Death News responds to the question “What is the future of Blackness?”[8] Parris was inspired by TV and radio broadcasts in Grenada, where hosts provide information on who has died and funeral details.[8] Parris imagined her work as a tool of resistance to mainstream media and its failure to tell nuanced stories of Black people.[8]
Prior to joining the CBC, Parris co-founded Lost Lyrics with Natasha Daniels, an arts education program that used theatre, dance, poetry, film and music to reach youth at risk of dropping out of school.[10]
In 2022, she was named alongside Kathleen Newman-Bremang and Kayla Grey as one of the recipients of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television's inaugural Changemaker Award at the 10th Canadian Screen Awards.[11] She also received a nomination for Best Host, Talk Show or Entertainment News as the host of Exhibitionists,[12] and won the award for Best Writing in a Web Program or Series for "The Death News".[13]
In 2022 she created the comedy web series Revenge of the Black Best Friend.[14]
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Winners of the Governor General's Award for English-language drama
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