
Adonis Critter King
Writer-in-residence at Historic Joy Kogawa House in December 2024.
Adonis Critter King is a Black, non-binary, multi-disciplinary artist, director, producer, and activist based on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. They were the 2016 Youth Poet Laureate of Victoria, the 2017 recipient of the VACCS Community recognition Award, and in 2020 they received the Witness Legacy Award for Social Purpose and Responsibility Through Art.
During their stay King was be working on their youth play entitled Dreamweavers, set to be released in May 2025. It is a piece about utilizing the past to grow and change better futures, while exploring themes of childhood abuse. It explores repression and the role of dreams in helping us heal, move forward, and grow, and the power of narrative in shaping reality. It asks us to make peace with what hides in the shadows so we can be free.
King offered a writing workshop focused on poetry and dreams, which can be signed up by subscribing to the Historic Joy Kogawa House Newsletter. They consider workshopping an important part of the playwriting process as it offers the opportunity to hear the words and characters alive as they are supposed to be.
The following is a summary of King’s Dreamweavers play. Fox steals Anansi’s web of dreams, represented by an interactive music machine, allowing Fox the power to rewrite every story ever told, and control every dream, changing the fabric of reality. Anansi, now powerless, enlists the help of Bugaboo, a human child plagued by nightmares, who wields the power to control stories and dreams and change them back to how they used to be. Or maybe into something better.