Our Work – Drama Queens Ghana

Speakeasy

Drama Queens Speakeasies are recurrent spaces we curate where we engage in conversations. Each Speakeasy involves the curation of resources: literature, audiovisual, and performance art around which the conversations can be grounded in and by feminist and pan-Africanist principles. Our Speakeasies have spanned conversations on reproductive justice, civic action, body autonomy, abortion access and rights, and representation in the media

Theatre

In 2018, we staged Ghana’s first theater production centered on the realities of queer lives in Africa dubbed “Just Like Us”, surviving multiple threats of legal injunctions, to stage a riveting and moving body of political work as a public statement in recognition of the LGBT community in Ghana and across Africa and to represent their very human emotions as an assertion of the humanity they are denied by our societies. We have since successfully staged “Until Someone Wakes Up” (2019), “An African Man” (2020), “Ashikishan” (2021), “Liberating Pleasures” (2022) and “Monsoons” (2022).

Workshops

A core part of the work at Drama Queens is making resources available to more people in digestible formats. Our workshops allow us to curate resources and present them in accessible formats. We currently offer 3 workshop streams; Let’s Talk Consent, Women of Independence, and Artistic Activism workshops. We revel in the opportunity to curate our content to suit the requirements of each audience.

The Queer Film Festival

In 2018 and in 2019, we held the Queer University Film Workshop for queer storytellers and filmmakers from African countries to acquire the necessary creative skills to depict the narrative of the lives of queer people living on the continent from an authentic and informed perspective. The one week intensive workshops covered a wide area of training in the use of basic and advanced software for film, appropriate representation, human rights abuses and persons living with disabilities.
As a climax to the year’s Queer University Film Workshop in 2019, we held Ghana’s first ever Queer Film Festival (QuFF), reprising it in 2022 and 2024, in the face of a surge of homophobia in Ghana following the introduction of the Proper Sexual Human Rights and Ghanian Family Values Bill.
Our next edition is in 2026.

Collaborations

Collaborations are an important part of Drama Queens work, whether with organisations or individuals. We welcome the opportunity to engage in cross-learning with as many varied Feminist practitioners as possible. Some past collaborations include “Leave Prints”, a climate justice outdooring initiative with LGBT+ Rights Ghana and a speakeasy workshop on reproductive justice with representatives of Women’s Health Ghana. Collaborations may also look like consultations where we leverage our experience with the queer community and with organising to develop safeguarding manuals and policies such as with W’AHU Magazine, or to curate safe spaces like our programs with Afrodite and Friends, the Free Forever Collective, and others.

Community Engagements