Support 'LULU' at the Toronto Fringe Festival 2025

Help us fund our Toronto Fringe Festival production!

Your support will help us reach our goal of $5,000 which will go towards covering artist and production fees.

The Walking Griot is mounting our stage play, LULU, at the Toronto Fringe Festival this July 2-13, 2025!

After a Hamilton Fringe Festival presentation in 2024 to Tarragon Theatre's Sally Stavro Series in 2025, we're excited to grow this show at the Toronto Fringe Festival.

One one coco fill basket. Whether it's $10, $20 or $100, you'll be supporting a team of artists uplifting Caribbean artistry and creating space for Black young audience within our theatre community.

FULL PRODUCTION TEAM:

Playwright/Producer - Sashoya Simpson

Stage Manager: Taylor Cumming

Direction by d’bi.young anitafrika

Costume Design by Candice Dixon

Sound Design by Stephon Smith

Set Design by Amelia Mielke-O’Grady

Choreography by Ern in Motion

Cast: Najla Nubyanluv, Leilani Ragobeer, Sashoya Simpson, Tasha Gray, Danielle Grant, Kabrena Robinson, KayGeni

ABOUT THE SHOW

Written by Sashoya Simpson, 'LULU' was inspired by her childhood growing up in St. Thomas, Jamaica. The parish of St. Thomas is where many ancestors of Congo origin settled and brought with them their cultural practices, way of life and knowledge. As a child, being surrounded by such a rich heritage and prideful celebration of who we are became an intrinsic part of this story.

Beyond Jamaica, similar folklore practices are found all throughout the Caribbean, which is why this show embodies Afro-Caribbean culture as a whole.

LULU dives into the theatrical forms of the Caribbean and utilizes the playfulness of pantomime and rough theatre, told through a linear storyline, making it easy for young audiences to journey along. With music, sounds and vocals being a central part of the storytelling, it evokes dub rhythms infused with ancestral sounds. The story of Lulu reimagines Caribbean folklore as a contemporary norm, preserving these art forms in active practice and introducing them to distant communities within the diaspora.

SYNOPSIS

Unbeknownst to Lulu (10), she’s about to embark on a life-altering journey she didn’t know she signed up for. With her ailing grandmother in the hospital and her estranged father back in town, Lulu finds herself in the company of Anansi, a mythic trickster. Needing to find the key to save her life as she knows it, Lulu sets out on a journey and arrives in the mystical folk realm, a world on the verge of collapse, where she encounters beings she’s only heard about in stories and new lessons to be learned. But as time counts down and the folk realm on the verge of collapse, will she discover the hidden secrets in time or will everything be lost forever?

With central themes of family, love and self discovery, Lulu takes its audience on a journey of memory, cultural connections and generational legacy.

“ a truly beautiful, powerful and impactful piece of theatre” - Steel City Reviews.

“…a deeply personal odyssey” - Steel City Reviews

ABOUT THE COLLECTIVE

The Walking Griot is a collective dedicated to the facilitation and production of art and programs about Afro-Caribbean culture geared towards young Black audiences and communities.

The collective was created to fill a gap we saw existing within the Toronto theatre community. This is space for Black children to engage with stories that are rooted in their cultural mythology, Caribbean knowledge systems, and embodied experiences.

The stories we create are interwoven with cultural and traditional elements and invite audiences into African and Caribbean culture, while creating art that (re)connects and educates and keeps culture and traditional storytelling art forms alive. While living in underserved communities, it’s a vital goal for us to bring theatre to those areas so that children and youth can participate, not just as audience members, but be their own creators and storytellers.