Table for Two opens in the midst of a scene many of us have found ourselves in before. A woman tired of online dating still hopes to find love. She’s in her bedroom, getting ready for yet another date with a man she met on an app. Her last date couldn’t have gone worse…but maybe this time will be different?

In her newest work, playwright and actor Akosua Amo-Adem examines the ups and downs of modern-day dating through the eyes of Abena Ohemaa Frimpong, also known as Abby, a 35-year-old Ghanaian woman looking for love in Toronto. Table for Two is funny, heartwarming, and captures the all-too-familiar frustrations of online dating, especially in a large city, where connections are fleeting and ghosting is common…but you never know who is just a swipe away.

“It touches on a lot of the struggles and difficulties that I think women at Abby’s age, my age, have when they’re looking for their partner,” says Amo-Adem, as we catch up with her between rehearsals.

Nine years and 17 drafts in the making, Table for Two is Amo-Adem’s first full-length play. She began writing in 2016, and as the years passed, the play started to evolve, eventually becoming an amalgamation of Amo-Adem’s dating experiences and stories from her single friends.

“Every time I came back to the piece, it felt right,” she says. “It felt like I need to see this through to the end.”

Table for Two is described as “a love letter to the perpetually single woman”, written for “the hopeless romantic who still believes in love.” While the play delves into the many ups and downs of the search for a partner, Amo-Adem sees the freedom and independence of singlehood as a gift. She tells us she’s come to a place where she is prioritizing her own peace and joy.

“I have been single long enough, and I have done the work on myself that I truly love myself. I have peace within myself.” She adds that many of the men she encounters on dating apps nowadays simply don’t add to this peace, so she chooses to remain single until she finds someone who does. “If the choice is between chaos and myself, I’m always going to choose myself.”

What does add to her peace and joy? Friendships—which she describes as the most fulfilling, satisfying, and important relationships in her life. 

“We as a society prioritize romantic relationships over platonic friendships,” she says. “I have five or six really beautiful women who encourage me, who support me, who root for me to succeed and to win…those are the strongest relationships that I have in my life.”

But even if one finds that inner peace, and receives plenty of support from friends, cultural pressures to find the “right man”, get married, and have kids can still weigh heavy. Amo-Adem was born in Ghana, West Africa, and came to Canada at the age of 5. She was particularly interested in writing about the dynamic between first-generation immigrant children and their parents—and the unique pressures this can bring to one’s dating life.

In Table for Two, Abby finds out that her family’s tribe is matrilineal, which means that the lineage and bloodline of families are passed on through the women. For Abby, the only daughter, her search for a partner is now underscored by the responsibility to carry on her entire bloodline!

“The stakes of her finding someone to get married to and ultimately have a child with all of a sudden go up,” Amo-Adem says. “Even though you were raised in Canada, you still have this attachment and this responsibility to the culture that you were born into.”

Table for Two also takes a look back at Abby’s dating history, with a series of flashbacks to previous dates and relationships. One of Amo-Adem’s favourite moments in the play is when Abby talks about her first boyfriend. 

“When we see him, the music and the lighting all come in together, and it’s just such a rom-com moment…lighting, sound and text all harmonized so beautifully.”

The woman who helped bring these moments to life is director Djanet Sears, an award-winning playwright and a trailblazer for Black theatre artists in Canada. Amo-Adem tells us Sears’ vision has shaped Table for Two—from the play’s opening right down to the lighting. 

“There are no words to describe this woman and what she has meant to the production of this play,” Amo-Adem says. “She’s just a visionary.”

For Amo-Adem, Sears directing was a dream since the play’s early stages. She fondly recalls what Sears told her during the pandemic, following a virtual reading of Table for Two. 

“After the reading, she called me and she told me that a great play does three things. It teaches, it entertains, and it moves you. And she said: ‘Your play does all three.’”

Just before she had to return to rehearsals, Amo-Adem tells us about another moment when a mentor’s words changed everything for her. It all began, like with many artists, when one teacher saw her talent and simply believed in her.

“Miss. Kelly, my teacher, gave us an assignment. We had to write a seven-minute monologue and perform it in front of the class. And so I did my piece, it was a very dramatic piece, and at the end of it…everybody was clapping and cheering for me. I look over and Miss. Kelly is bawling her eyes out, and she eventually says to me: ‘Don’t do anything else with your life. Be an actor. You have to be an actor. I’ve never seen a student do what you’ve just done.’”

And she did just that. Since joining the Soulpepper Academy in 2012, Amo-Adem has been in the company’s productions of Three Sisters, Billie, Ella, and Sarah: Revolutionary Women in Jazz, Streetcar Named Desire, For Colored Girls…, and The Crucible. And it was during her time in the Academy that she first had the idea for Table for Two, inspired by an assignment to write and perform a piece about waiting.

“I’ve met so many wonderful people, and I’ve been a part of incredible stories that have moved and touched people,” she says of her time at Soulpepper. “That, for me, is everything.”

After the play’s run at Soulpepper, what’s next for Table for Two? When Amo-Adem performed the show in front of early audiences, there was one comment she heard over and over again—this should be a TV show! 

“This play as a TV show is like The Mindy Project meets Insecure meets Coming to America. You’ve got the love, you got the Blackness, you got the Ghanaian culture all mixed up in one,” she says. “I think it would be a hoot!”

But for now, Amo-Adem is genuinely thrilled to finally be sharing Table for Two with audiences. As we say goodbye and let her return to rehearsal, it’s so clear that this is what she’s meant to be doing. 

“What I do is more than just a job,” she tells us. “For me, it truly is a calling. I’m being of service every time I step on stage and perform something.”

Table for Two, a co-production between Soulpepper and Obsidian Theatre, opens on Valentine’s Day and will be on stage until March 2. Tickets are available here.