Amanda Parris

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.

Amanda Parris
Nationality	Canadian

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 it’s 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]