Ahdri Zhina Mandiela

Ahdri Zhina Mandiela (born May 10, 1953) is a Canadian dub poet, theatre producer and artistic director, based Toronto.^[1] She has gained worldwide acclaim for her books, music recordings, film, theatre and dance productions.^[2][3] Mandiela is the founder and artistic director of "b current",^[4] a not-for-profit performance arts company in Toronto.

In 2006, she was selected to write and direct a project for Winnie Mandela as part of the 50th anniversary of the South African Women's Liberation Movement.^[5]

Over the following decades, mandiela continued to develop her practice as a director, mentor, and performer, nurturing generations of artists through b current and advancing the presence of Black women’s voices in Canadian theatre. In 2025, she returned to the screen in the title role of Aunt Harriet: An Ontario Oratorio, an audiovisual installation directed by mixed-media artist HAUI. The work reimagines the final day of Harriet Miller, a nineteenth-century Black elder from southern Ontario, through poetry and performance. Mandiela’s portrayal merges her long-standing interest in dub poetics, ancestral memory, and oral tradition.^[6][7]