summer performances for 2025 in scarborough, ottawa, shelburne (Nova Scotia) and victoria (B.C.).  See detailed performance schedule and playbill below. 
​Trailer for "rethinking good intentions": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHIia6xRzLM
New discussion guide for students and other audiences, posted May, 2025.


​Playbill and discussion guide for "Rethinking Good Intentions"



​Top Ten Lessons learned from Fringe Festival Tour (2024)


About the plays

RETHINKING GOOD INTENTIONS (Written and Performed by Nancy Edwards)
​A compelling account, told by Nancy, a Canadian community health nurse who volunteered with CUSO (now CUSO International).  She takes us to the rural villages of Sierra Leone in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.  Village experiences rattled her cultural preconceptions, provoked her notions of social privilege, and forever deepened her global connections.  Her good intentions are transformed by stories that bridge human understanding. This play is based on a portion of Nancy’s memoir:  Not One, Not Even One: A Memoir of Life-Altering Experiences in Sierra Leone, West Africa.

BRINGING VILLAGERS' VOICES TO LIFE: STORIES FROM SIERRA LEONE (Co-written and co-performed by Nancy Edwards and Dauda Mansaray)
Two storytellers weave together their experiences of rural life in Sierra Leone, West Africa, giving voice to villagers. They engage audiences through narrative, spoken word poetry, and song; sharing complementary yet contrasting perspectives on village life from Sierra Leone’s post-independence and civil war periods. Compelling and powerful stories reveal the ancestral roots of knowledge and oral traditions; the strengths of family, community, and social connections; the hardships of poverty and child labour; and the trauma and injustice of civil war. Vivid and heartfelt stories are sprinkled with hopefulness and humour. Their insider and outsider cultural perspectives intersect as they share the bonds of our common humanity, and reconcile their cultural dislocation from Sierra Leone, a country they both love.

Completed Performances of rethinking good intentions (2024)

February 6th : Orleans Writing Group, Ottawa Public Library (invitational, in-person) (Workshop)
March 18th: Home concert, Ottawa (invitational, in-person) (Workshop)
March 24th: Baha'i Cultural Centre, Ottawa (invitational, in-person) (Workshop)
April 30th: Stephen Lewis Foundation Grannies to Grannies Group, Abbotsford, B.C. (invitational, in-person) (Workshop)
May 16th: Memoir writing group, (Ontario and B.C.) (invitational, virtual) (Workshop)
May 26th: Perley Health, Ottawa (invitational, in-person)
​June 6th: Navan Book Club, Ontario (invitational, home concert, in-person)
June 6th: Canadian Federation of University Women, Ottawa Chapter Writing Group, Ottawa (invitational, home concert, in-person)
June 8th: Home concert for winners of silent auction (Canadian Federation of University Women, Ottawa) (invitational, in-person)​
June 12th: Stephen Lewis Foundation Grannies to Grannies Group, Penticton, B.C. (invitational, virtual)​
​July 6th and 20th: Buxton Fringe Festival, England (2 virtual live performances)
August 8th-11th: Guelph (Ontario) Fringe Festival (3 in-person performances). CBC Kitchener media interview with Craig Norris available here: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-104-the-morning-edition-k-w/clip/16086767-rethinking-good-intentions-solo-show-nancy-edwards-runs
​August 13th-17th: London (Ontario) Fringe Festival (6 in-person performances)
​August 20th:  Outdoor home concert in Ottawa (invitational, in-person) 
August 21st-25th, Sault Ste. Marie (Ontario) Fringe North (pre-recorded, virtual on demand performance).  Podcast interview available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3nqPMOEI54
August 29th-September 1st, Halifax (Nova Scotia) Fringe Festival (4 in-person performances)
September 29th: Metropolitan United Church, Queen Street East, Toronto (in-person performance followed by Q & A).  Video recording available here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLAiBVTEqy4
October 3rd: University of Windsor, hosted by Faculty of Nursing at SoCA Armouries Performance Hall (in-person performance followed by Q & A).  CBC media interview available here:  https://www.tiktok.com/@josiahnrs/video/7421405753887608069
October 7th: University of Toronto, Centre for Global Health (in-person performance at Alumni Hall (Victoria College) followed by discussants' commentary).  Follow-up interview by one of the discussants posted here: https://mailchi.mp/cc967fe5ca24/centre-for-global-health-newsletter-december-2024. 
October 8th: York University, co-sponsored event with the Faculty of Health, the School of Global Health, and the Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on Africa and its Diasporas.  (In-person performance followed by discussants' commentary).  Recap and recording of event available here: 
https://www.yorku.ca/dighr/recap-rethinking-good-intentions-storytelling-and-epistemic-humility-as-critical-interventions-in-global-health/
December 16th: One World Grannies Ottawa and Gatineau, Stephen Lewis Foundation (in-person, invitational at Rockcliffe Park Community Centre, Ottawa followed by Q & A)

Completed performances of playS (2025)

January 12th:  Bringing Villagers' Voices to Life:  Stories from Sierra Leone.  Nancy Edwards and Dauda Mansaray.  Ottawa Story Tellers Signature Series.  Arts Court, Daly Street, Ottawa.  CBC Radio Interview January 8th, 2025:  https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-92-all-in-a-day/clip/16119735-two-storytellers-together-share-experiences-rural-life-sierra
​June 3rd: Rethinking Good Intentions: Reflections on Epistemic Injustices and Humility.  Annual Conference of the Canadian Association of African Studies.  Scarborough, Ontario.​
June 5th: Health Education Scene from Rethinking Good Intentions will be performed as part of a Workshop on the Power of Oral Story Telling in International Development Projects.  Canadian Association of International Development Studies Conference. Toronto, Ontario.
June 18th:  Health Education Scene from Rethinking Good Intentions, One World Grannies and Unitarian GoGo's Annual Fund-raising Event for Stephen Lewis Foundation Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign. Ottawa, Ontario.

Upcoming PERFORMANCEs OF PLAY "RETHINKING GOOD INTENTIONS" (2025)

July 25th: Rethinking Good Intentions. Black Loyalist Heritage Centre, Shelburne, Nova Scotia,
August 22nd-31st: Rethinking Good Intentions.  Six performances at the Victoria Fringe Festival, Victoria, B.C.
March, 2026: Rethinking Good Intentions. Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, B.C.

​STAY POSTED FOR INFORMATION ABOUT ADDITIONAL PERFORMANCES
Please contact me ([email protected]) if you are interested in booking a performance.

What audiences are saying about "Rethinking good intentions"

"Impressive, very powerful, very emotional to me."
"Engaging, innovative, moving, funny and informative in a lasting way. Wonderful work!  I cried a few times, tears of joy when you told us how the Mende women became responsible to decide their kids could be vaccinated."
"Touching at end!!"
"Completely positive, so many worthwhile messages!  Sincere messages.  Bravo, Nancy!"
"I was drawn in from the start – could identify with the different stages and circumstances in the stories."
"Enjoyable, informative, educational. The story was very well done, great writing."
"Every emotion under the Mende sun.  You came through so brilliantly."
"Beautifully written – pathos, humour, detail, compassion, self-awareness."
"Outstanding, moving.  Mix of all emotions, the time flew by. Learned a lot."
"Nancy, you brought me there with you."
"Awesome, amazing, so powerful."
"Poignant, funny, rich with culture and conveyance of natural environment, language."
"Inspired, reminded me of my own experiences in Africa."
"Tears as the memories flooded back."
"Loved it. So relatable."
"Captivating."
"Top notch."
​"Riveting story presented with heartfelt words and actions, transporting us to Sierra Leone."
​

What audiences are saying about "Bringing Villagers' Voices to Life: Stories from sierra Leone"

"Fabulous."
"Great show."
"Excellent and interesting story-telling."
"Informative and touching.  Having two story-tellers made it very lively."
"I love the way your and Dauda's stories were woven together - chronologically and thematically. Congratulations."
"Such a fine show. The combination of your and Dauda’s stories worked so perfectly together, clarifying and amplifying each other." 
 ​
​REVIEWS
London Fringe Festival August 13th, 2024 Performance of Rethinking Good Intentions
Rethinking Good Intentions is Nancy Edwards’ own story of her time as a teaching nurse in the small village of Serabu in the West African country of Sierra Leone. Like the breakthrough in her understanding of cultural divides and the bridges that can connect us, she uses the arts to share her experience. The first person recounting of her tale places the listener within the setting, using evocative imagery, and provides an understanding of the tensions she felt as the protagonist. Dr. Edwards’ low key, but evocative delivery, uses simple techniques to set and augment the mood as needed, and is supported by projected photographs that bring home the reality of the situation. While these likely facilitated her transition from lecturer to performer, the evening is all storytelling. She succeeds in encapsulating the arc of her journey from “one who didn’t know what she didn’t know” to one who uses the arts in the way they have been used for generations; to share and enlighten.
​Review by Rick, Community Member

Buxton Fringe Festival July 6th, 2024 Performance of Rethinking Good Intentions
This online performance by Canadian writer and former nurse Nancy Edwards takes us to the Sierra Leone of 1980. Nancy spent 5 years based at Serabu Hospital living on the compound itself. Her new home is far removed, physically, culturally and socially from her native Canada, and Nancy is so unsure of her place in this primitive world of village chiefs, rainforests, abundant wildlife and witch hunters that she cannot even relay observations and experiences to her own parents when she first arrives.
A change of her original role upon arrival at the hospital reduces Nancy's confidence in herself whilst her Canadian boldness of speech then leads her into a cultural faux pas with a highly regarded village chief. And so begins Nancy's journey in learning how to live and work successfully alongside her colleagues and patients in a country where life is so uncertain that parents give their children names which mean "let this one live".
Interspersed with photographs to provide scene breaks and with accompanying music from the region which was recorded by Nancy herself, she takes us with ease and authenticity to the villages where she worked. Here, the Granny midwives and (often) despairing mothers of an impoverished country where infant mortality is high and medical help is extremely basic and very limited provide the backdrop.
This is a story about people of different cultures experiencing the rocky road of life together and whilst seeming to be far removed from each other, as the ending of this piece of theatre shows, unexpected connections from the past can come to greet us.
In an hour, Nancy paints for her audience a colourful canvas of her reflections upon her 5 years of living in Sierra Leone with clarity and emotion whilst keeping our interest and our desire to hear more. A praiseworthy and thought-provoking production.
Nancy's next live performance online is on the 20th July from 5pm to 6pm where a Q&A session will also be offered.
Review by Julie Alexander

University of Toronto, Centre for Global Health, October 7th, 2024 Performance of Rethinking Good Intentions
Last October, I was a panelist for Nancy Edwards' compelling solo play, "Rethinking Good Intentions." It was my first time experiencing a solo performance, and I was deeply moved by Nancy's powerful portrayal of her lived experiences as a nurse in Sierra Leone.
Her ability to use theatre as a medium to highlight pressing public health issues was genuinely inspiring. I was particularly intrigued by how she brought an "outsider" perspective to culture and used the arts to engage audiences in critical global health conversations.
The play captivated me emotionally and intellectually, and I was fortunate to interview Nancy afterward to explore the intersection of art and public health further. This experience reinforced the transformative potential of creative approaches in fostering dialogue around global health challenges.
A heartfelt thank you to Nancy for her incredible performance and to the Centre for Global Health at Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto for providing me the opportunity to participate in this enriching event. Contributing to the discussion and seeing storytelling's role in driving social impact was an honour.
Review posted by Diana Kaliza on Linked In (January, 2025) https://lnkd.in/dkESGNSh

York University, Dahdaleh Institute of Global Health Research and Harriet Tubman Institute, October 8th, 2024, Performance of Rethinking Good Intentions
Dr. Nancy Edwards’ one-woman performance Rethinking Good Intentions (1 hour 3 minutes) opens with two lines she meticulously deconstructs throughout her play: “There is not much of anything here” and “I just want to help.” Rethinking Good Intentions is a critical and moving reflection on Edwards’ own experiences as a white Canadian public health nurse in Sierra Leone in the 1970s and ’80s. Her performance — a collage of reenactments, commentaries, and asides to the audience — articulates a deep process of unlearning that, for Edwards, gained momentum in Sierra Leone.  
Rethinking Good Intentions interrogates and wrestles with this desire “to help.” Rather than traditional academic critique, her critique unfolds through embodied and emotional storytelling that grapples with the interwoven—and uneven—geographies of authoritative knowledge, power, and capital in global health and development fields. Edwards invited the York University audience to rethink good intentions as connected to 1) the production of authoritative knowledge in global health and development institutions, and 2) histories of domination and violence.
Edwards organized her performance around multiple iterations of not knowing. She reenacted her difficulty with Mende, affecting a thick Canadian accent. When Edwards first arrived in the Bumpe Chiefdom, she recounted refusing the gift from the chief whose village she was visiting, much to the consternation of her colleagues. She received a reassignment—no longer would she be training public health nurses in the clinic but would be supervising student fieldwork, an area fully new to her. In one telling vignette, we learn that on one of her field visits, a village chief explained that produce had to be carried from the farms and through a swamp to the village: “We need a bridge over the swamp.” Edwards reflected that she was a public health nurse equipped to answer questions about malaria, not bridges.
Throughout the performance, moments such as these hung in the air without resolution. These moments pushed the audience to confront the epistemological siloing that global and public health institutions simultaneously reflect and produce. As it is these siloes, taken for granted as natural orderings of knowledge, that produce bridges over swamps as distinct from malaria responses and interventions.
This focus on not knowing creates space for simultaneously learning and unlearning. In the panel discussion following Edwards’ performance, Dr. Agnès Berthelot-Raffard, Associate Professor in the School of Health Policy and Management at York University, described Edwards’ Rethinking Good Intentions as a “journey through her own epistemic humility.” Here, not knowing manifests as a reflexive practice of learning and unlearning rather than ignorance. Edwards’s reflection on the early days of her career demonstrates how public health knowledge is itself “situated” (Haraway 1988) within multiple institutional and global histories. Fellow panelist Omosalewa O. Olawoye, Associate Professor in the Business and Society and director of the Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on Africa and Its Diasporas, similarly explained that participating in global aid ought not to be approached as “I’m just going to help those people there,” but rather, “going to offer assistance…on their terms.”
Storytelling is central to Edwards’ practice of epistemic humility. Panelists Dr. Oghenowede Eyawo, Associate Professor of Global Health Epidemiology, and Dr. James Orbinski, professor and the inaugural Director of the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research, underscored Edwards’ performance as evidence of deep un/learning in her time in Sierra Leone. In Rethinking Good Intentions, Edwards recalls efforts she, her students, and colleagues undertook to disseminate information on malaria intervention. Having tried public presentations with projectors and puppet shows, the team experienced an “aha moment” while listening to a village chief telling stories. Rethinking Good Intentions unfolds in multiple rhetorical and somatic registers. She oscillated between speaking in the present and past tenses. Her choreography reinforced those temporal oscillations as she walked back and forth between the two sets of chairs. Although the story carries the audience forward in time, it does so with loops, critiquing linear configurations of time and progress (Escobar 2012). Orbinski similarly drew attention to how scientific language tends to treat contemporary reality as ahistorical. Rethinking Good Intentions counters these harmful discourses by centreing deeply contextual forms of knowledge and knowledge production that are often neglected, undervalued, or underutilized in global health institutions and milieus. In a way, she flips the script.    
One of the performance’s most powerful moments came when Edwards turned toward the audience with her arms outstretched. She was recounting a pop-up clinic she and her colleagues were running when the mother of an infant ran toward them crying—the child’s spasms were a clear indication of a tetanus infection. But all the pop-clinic workers could ask is, did she have her husband’s permission to send the child to the hospital? Edwards explained that the woman did not answer. And none of the health workers spoke on their drive back. Olawoye named Edwards’ attention to issues of patriarchy in women’s health a key contribution of Rethinking Good Intentions. (Indeed, contestations over the misoprostol in global health discourse and ongoing debates around reproductive rights in the United States attest to the necessity of attending to patriarchal norms and institutions in women’s health.) Edwards approached these moments by bearing witness to them, rather than theorizing, abstracting, or reproducing what Sociologist Chandra Mohanty (1991) describes as a tendency in white Western feminist scholarship to cast women in the developing world as an ahistorical, monolithic category.
Her performance concluded with another looping of time. Describing a dinner in which she had been invited to speak, Edwards recounted standing up to deliver a speech, when she felt the midwives and many women she had worked with and learned from in these villages standing beside her, their hands on her shoulders. They urged her to tell the stories they had shared: the midwife berated by and barred from a clinic, being told she took too long to bring the birthing woman in despite critical and painstaking work to get her there; the eighty-year-old traditional birth attendant who still sought training; the Bundu grandmother who made tetanus vaccinations as part of rite of passage rituals.  
Rethinking Good Intentions creates space for such hauntings—the absent presence of friends, colleagues, students, and experiences. Not knowings continued throughout the performance. As she reflected on her experience at the Door of No Return, where she confronted the intersections of the Atlantic Slave Trade with Canadian history (see Browne 2015), Edwards asked, “How could I know nothing about this history?” and noted that she began to “feel the tentacles of the slave trade reach Nova Scotia.” Good intentions are implicated in the knowledge-power nexus. Edwards’ epistemic humility did not resolve in mastery. Instead, Rethinking Good Intentions shows knowledge is highly contextual and situated, requiring as much learning as unlearning to see that there is so “much of everything here.”

Recap by Alexandra Frankel, Dahdaleh Global Health Graduate Scholar, York University.





​Photos from workshops and performances of rethinking good Intentions

 PictureFirst workshop of play at Orleans Public Library (February, 2024). Flying Pigeon bicycles' fiasco in the Transportation Bottlenecks scene.
Picture
Performance at Perley Health, May, 2024. Opening scene and introduction of Sister Hilary Lyons, my supervisor and mentor when I worked at Serabu Hospital, Sierra Leone.
On stage at Perley Health (top left in gallery display of photos) and virtual performances from my home theatre for Buxton (England) Fringe Festival and Fringe North.

August, 2024 was a busy month performing Rethinking Good Intentions in Guelph, London, Ottawa, and Halifax.  
Photo Gallery Above:
Upper left: my brother and his family came to see my performance at Guelph Fringe.  So pleased they were able to join.
Upper middle and right: backstage at Guelph Fringe.  Joshua provided great tech support. Tech support by Shaun in London (not shown in photos) was also terrific.
Bottom left - so much fun to meet with McMaster colleagues who came to Guelph Fringe performance. 
Bottom middle and right: first outdoor concert in Ottawa.  Big thanks to Heidi for organizing.
Photo Gallery Below:
Upper left and middle - First St. Andrew's United Church - my performance location at London Fringe Festival.
Upper right - Honoured to have May-Marie Duwai Sowa, Special Envoy, International Relations, Trade, and Investment representing the Government of Sierra Leone in Canada attend my performance in Guelph with her family.
Lower left - Holding my simple props - gara cloth and country cloth from Sierra Leone in Guelph's Silence Sound Theatre.
Lower middle - Halifax Public Gardens where I rehearsed my script every morning while enjoying the magnificent gardens.
Lower right - Brenda, another super tech who was right on cue with my sound and light effects - Thank you!  
​
Very pleased to have the opportunity to perform at several venues in Ontario (fall, 2024).  First up was the Metropolitan United Church in Toronto at the end of September.  It was an inspiring venue. I thank Reverend Jim Harbell and the congregation for making me feel so welcome.  Performances in three academic settings followed in October: University of Windsor, University of Toronto, and York University.  Thanks to all those who assisted with logistics and organization at each site.  I really appreciated having discussants at University of Toronto and York University who offered reflections and commentary on Rethinking Good Intentions after my performances.  A few photos from these events shown below. 
Top left, middle and right: outside Metropolitan United Church in Toronto and performance in the church.
Bottom left: Armouries building where my performance took place at U Windsor.
Bottom middle:  Discussants speaking after my performance at University of Toronto.
Bottom right: Performance venue at York University.  
Picture


Thanks to One World Grannies in Ottawa for inviting me to perform Rethinking Good Intentions at their December, 2024 holiday luncheon.  I enjoyed meeting some of the "grannies" in the Ottawa-Gatineau area who contribute many hours of volunteer time to the grandmothers-to-grandmothers campaign of the Stephen Lewis Foundation.  I was honoured to be introduced by Peggy Edwards, a colleague who has made many outstanding contributions to the field of health promotion.  

PHOTOS FROM REHEARSALS AND PERFORMANCE OF "Bringing villagers' voices to life: stories from Sierra Leone"
January 12th, 2025 was our first live performance. 
Below:  Dauda Mansaray and I rehearsing with Jacqui Du Toit (our amazing dramaturg) for our story-telling performance at Arts Court Theatre in Ottawa, January 12th, 2025.  We were so pleased to have access to Jacqui's studio, The Origin Arts and Community Centre, for several rehearsals.  It's a warm and welcoming space.  
Black Box studio in Arts Court was our performance location.  The room was filled by a welcoming audience.