Andrew Adridge | Scarborough, Ontario
Andrew Adridge is a Canadian singer, writer, and arts administrator of Guyanese descent from Scarborough, Ontario. Recent singing credits include Schaunard in Against the Grain Theatre's Boheme and the baritone role in Soundstreams' Electric Messiah. Andrew is an avid writer championing the amplification of oppressed communities and the voices of young artists through personal blogs and publications in Opera Canada and Ludwig Van Toronto. He currently works with Tapestry Opera as the Advancement Associate, and is the Co-Founder of Opera InReach, a collective seeking to expand the civic impact of opera through education. He is an arts administrator, a frequent panelist, and serves as a member of several arts equity advisory committees.
Africvylle, a community forgotten
Africvylle, a community forgotten, is a dramatic retelling of the real story of Africville, a late 19th early 20th century Black community in Halifax, Nova Scotia. This new libretto will tell an incredibly important Canadian story of a land that no one wanted that was transformed into a place of new life for Black settlers and former slaves only to be destroyed by the White people who didn't want the land in the first place. The story will encompass the oral tradition of story telling in two ways, one that stems from the traditions of the community that the land was stolen from, spoken word, and one traditional to the community that stole it, classical voice or opera. It is intended to use both these mediums to underscore the magnitude of appropriation and the beauty and power of intersectionality. The opera will play with many disciplines of music and is intended to integrate the music traditional to many communities along with what would traditionally be associated with music in an opera.
[What that program meant for me was] the chance to find legitimate intersectionality between my identity and the art I am trying to create.
Andrew Adridge
