Weyni Mengesha

Weyni Mengesha is a theatre director, based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.[1][2][3] She is known as the director of the plays da kink in my hair, and Kim's Convenience.

Weyni Mengesha
Born
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
NationalityCanada
Known forartistic director of Soulpepper Theatre
Spouse(s)Eion Bailey

Mengesha married American actor Eion Bailey in 2011.[4] The couple have two children.

In 2018 she was hired as the artistic director of the Soulpepper Theatre.[1][5] Observers applauded her appointment, and that of her colleague Executive director Emma Stenning, as it meant the two senior posts at the theatre would be filled by women, after the previous male director Albert Schultz resigned after actors accused him of preying on female subordinates.

Mengesha's parents were immigrants from Ethiopia. While she was born in Vancouver, Mengesha grew up in Scarborough, Ontario.[2][6] She graduated from Soulpepper Academy.

Mengesha has been nominated for the Dora Mavor Moore Award five times, winning the award in 2014.[4]

Mengesha co-signed a letter of support to the Black Lives Matter movement, in June 2020, following several high profile incidents where Police killed black civilians, in both the United States and Canada.[7] The Toronto Star's theatre critic, Carly Maga, followed up by interviewing Mengesha over her personal experience with racism.

References
  1. J. Kelly Newstruck (2018-10-11). "Home from the wars: Weyni Mengesha returns to Toronto to run Soulpepper". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 2019-07-03.
  2. Bahia Watson. "Spotlight: Weyni Mengesha". Intermission magazine. Retrieved 2019-07-03.
  3. "Weyni Mengesha: Artistic Director, Biography". Soulpepper Theatre. Retrieved 2019-07-03.
  4. J. Kelly Newstruck (2016-09-01). "How stories shaped Weyni Mengesha into the theatre director she is today". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 2019-07-03. That’s one way to come out of maternity leave. “Two babies, three shows,” is how Mengesha summarizes her schedule this summer – the Vancouver-born, Scarborough-raised director now has both a one-year-old boy and three-year-old boy with her husband, the American actor Eion Bailey.
  5. Carly Maga (2018-10-11). "Soulpepper names its new artistic director". Toronto Star. Retrieved 2019-07-03. Paired with the hiring of UK-based arts administrator Emma Stenning as Soulpepper’s new executive director in August, Toronto’s largest not-for-profit theatre company will now be led by two women after a year rocked by legal and internal discord.
  6. Courtney Shea (2019-01-23). "Q&A: Soulpepper artistic director Weyni Mengesha on life after SchultzAnd how to save a theatre company from its scandal-plagued past". Toronto Life magazine. Retrieved 2019-07-03. I came to this job championing Canadian voices that weren’t represented on stage, in shows like ’da Kink in My Hair and Kim’s Convenience. With ’da Kink, for example, we were the first Canadian show at the Princess of Wales Theatre, and a show about women of colour at that.
  7. Carly Maga (2020-06-14). "As one of the few Black theatre leaders in Toronto, for Weyni Mengesha systemic racism is nothing new". Toronto Star.
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