Artist Statement
Growing up with activist parents who were also musicians I was always exposed to living art that sprang from the soul and inspired the listener. At my first live play, a Broadway musical about race and class injustice, I was summoned by the emotional vulnerability of the actors and deeply stirred by this mysterious way of multidimensional storytelling. Not only was I called to witness more but I was called to story tell. I answered. My art reflects my lived experiences, my commitment to social justice, and my aspiration to foster deep human connection. I invite audiences to see theatre as life, a mystic mirror of our intertwined past and present, as well as a vehicle through which we can project imagined futures. In devising theatre I balance emphasis on process and product. I honor both spaces as unique openings to community movement and healing. In collective questioning, answering, interpreting, and visualizing, performers and audiences blur lines of division and cooperatively examine the ideological paradigms surrounding our existence. As playwright, director, and performer I seek to produce work that promotes cross-cultural exchange and centers often marginalized perspectives. Fusing conventional and experimental performing art modalities is a part of my responsibility to create and share living moments that engage diverse audiences. It is in the intimate moments that we awake to ourselves, where creativity and power harmonize to reveal unbounded possibilities.
"Our Liberated Justice"
Through dialogue, monologue, poetry, and song this play explores the lived experiences of an activist family targeted and displaced by the United States FBI counter intelligence program in the early 1980s. Uniquely written from the perspective of a Black woman, also the youngest child of this family, Our Liberated Justice exemplifies the manner in which Black women craft innovative forms to voice their lived experience and also share with the world the rich history and present culture of all Black people. An excerpt from Our Liberated Justice was originally produced in Atlanta at Georgia State University (GSU) Players’ playwrights showcase in 2009 and then again in 2010 as a full-length staged reading sponsored by the GSU African American Cultural Performing and Visual Arts Council.
"A Political Prisoner in my Mother's Womb"
"And they looked at me William. The children looked at me as if to say do something Mommy! Mommy do something! Why are you letting this happen? What is happening? They looked terrified William...terrified and I couldn’t do nothin to help them...I could only watch.”
This solo-performance piece is embodied memory in action. It chronicles the complex circumstances surrounding exile and conception, as well as pregnancy, birth and imprisonment. It celebrates perseverance, resistance, and survival. APMW has been performed since 2012 in high school and university classrooms, at symposiums and conferences, as well as Perryville Women’s Correctional Facility in Goodyear, Arizona.