The creator of the play, Jijo Quayson, first dreamt up this teenage girl in 2014, as the voice behind a monologue for a fourth-year university writing class. She would then transform her into the protagonist of her debut play, Osia.

Osia tells the story of Harmosia and her family as they plan to make their way to the United States from Ghana. The transactions of a “shady uncle” promises to help them in their great pilgrimage, but soon, the parlous state of his business deals threatens to upturn all of their lives.

Quayson began working on the script of Osia during her final undergraduate year at the University of Toronto. She was later accepted into Toronto’s Nightwood Theatre’s writers program in 2015, which helps budding writers develop scripts that have never been published into full-length pieces. At Nightwood, under the direction of famed Canadian directors Brad Fraser and Andrea Donaldson, the details of Osia gradually took shape—its Ghanaian setting in the working class, coastal town of Teshie; and its colourful list of characters, including Harmosia’s mother, who works as house help for a wealthy family, and a neighbour, Bernice, whose livelihood comes from spreading gossip and teaching bible studies.

As production for Osia began in January 2016, an ensemble of actors from African and Caribbean heritages was put together to bring the show to life. Quayson notes that the piece used an all-Black cast, including Nicole Nwokolo, who played Harmosia, also starred as the evil stepmother in a 2016 Africanized version of Cinderella, hosted by the Robert Gill Theatre at the University of Toronto’s St. George campus, and Chemika BennettHeath, known for roles on CBC and Nickelodeon series. “I really do enjoy seeing people who look like me onstage,” says Quayson, whose own Ghanian background is reflected in the play. “I was very lucky to have been surrounded by individuals who wanted to bring this story to stage.”

In many ways, Quayson, who grew up in England but also visited Ghana frequently during her childhood, embodies in her play an ideological exchange between her two subjectivities. As her uncle’s business deals accumulate, Harmosia dreams of becoming a princess—a familiar trope for Canadian girls—forcing Harmosia’s selfhood to take up space next to ours. Quayson’s focus on Harmosia’s idyllic escapism also highlights the paradoxical optimism in migration: A dream of a better life typically is the source of hope for potential expats, though they cannot confirm if their dreams of a brighter future will substantiate until they have said goodbye to their reality. As Harmosia imagines herself a princess while she sits in her stark room, we the Canadian audience are confronted with the painful duality of diasporic dreams.

Distinctly Ghanaian specificities also figure in Quayson’s script. Characters in the play speak in the Ghanaian languages Gha, Twi, and Ewe. And in select scenes, characters utter a Ghanaian word for God, “Yesu.” During these moments, Quayson had to trust that the similar euphonies of “Yesu” and “Jesus” would manifest the religious connotations of a scene. “It was very interesting shaping a story for a Canadian audience while mediating the language and culture of somewhere else to them,” she says.

Despite the cultural specificities explored in Osia, Quayson says her play is for all audiences, be they expats or 12th-generation Canadians.

In August, her play premiered to great acclaim at Toronto’s SummerWorks festival, and she completed her work with the Nightwood Theatre a few months later.

When asked if her she believes Osia makes her a voice for minority experiences in Canada, she laughs. “I think I have a lot more work to do for that,” she says.

Photo by Anthony Gebrehiwot.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this online story misspelled Ghanian in its title. This regrets the error.

Jenny Vaughan

Jenny Vaughan is no stranger to the hybrid role of journalist, leader, and advocate. She now occupies a unique position as the Accra, Ghana-based eyes and ears of Journalists for Human Rights, a media development organization with operations throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Currently, her job ranges from ensuring the professional and personal well-being of a team of journalists currently placed in Ghana and Malawi, to leading training programs with soldiers from various African countries on interaction with the press. Yet her fascination with the points where journalism, leadership, and international advocacy work coincide dates back much further. Born and raised into a family of journalists and politicians in Toronto, the 25-year-old has been navigating those worlds all her life.

Vaughan first worked in African media in the summer of 2009, as a reporter for the Daily Monitor, a national newspaper in Uganda. Sample stories from this time saw Vaughan on the back of a bodaboda motorbike in August 2009, weaving through traffic on Kampala’s red dirt roads to cover the story that businessman Benjamin Mukasa had been illegally detained by an army major in Kampala. “For two days,” says Vaughan, “he says he was starved, beaten, and refused access to a bathroom.”

Vaughan knew covering that story would be dangerous, because it involved exposing human-rights abuses committed by the army. But, as she puts it, “I didn’t hesitate when my colleague asked me to interview Mukasa. It’s because of stories like this that I became a journalist.” While at the Monitor, Vaughan also produced features on refugee rights, sexual harassment, and youth empowerment. “Human rights abuses often go unreported,” says Vaughan, “which is why I believe the work of Journalists for Human Rights is so important.”

Founded nine years ago, JHR—of which I am International Programs Director—works with local media in a variety of sub-Saharan African countries to shore up the power of the fourth estate. It does this by foregrounding a culture of human-rights reporting in a media environment where life is cheap, and respect for human rights is frequently the last priority.

But Vaughan’s engagement with this kind of work predates her time at JHR. Uganda, for example, made international headlines in January 2011 when gay activist David Kato was murdered. Yet Vaughan was on that issue two years prior, co-producing a television documentary about Uganda’s criminalization of homosexuality for iChannel and working closely with gay rights activists who risked their safety to expose injustice.

Her time in Uganda proved to her the power the press has to educate and empower communities in developing democracies, especially when it comes to human rights—an ethos she has refined during her time with JHR. With such a heady mix of media work, leadership, and development to her credit, I’m fascinated to see what Vaughan does next.