Africana, Black Theatre, and Performance Studies Scholar

Actress

Playwright

Originally from the Southside of Chicago

BOOK

The Healing Stage: Black Women, Incarceration, and the Art of Transformation (Ohio State University Press, 2022)

Winner of the Errol Hill Award for Outstanding Scholarship in African American Theatre.

Winner of the National Communication Association’s Lila A. Heston Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Interpretation and Performance Studies.

More Publications

Theatre & Human Flourishing (2021)

The Conversation (August 2017)

Theatre Survey (2016)

Black Acting Methods: Critical Approaches (2016)

Solo/Black/Woman: Scripts, Interviews, Essays (2013)

Artistic Work

AFTER/LIFE tells stories of women and girls who lit up and lived through the 1967 Detroit rebellion. Directed by Kristin Horton, with the support of the Knight Foundation, it premiered in Detroit in July 2017 in conjunction with city-wide events marking the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Detroit rebellion, and played to sold-out audiences.

American Black Journal (2017) “AFTER/LIFE: In Honor of the City Rising from the Ashes” https://www.pbs.org/video/afterlife-honor-city-rising-ashes-hsk77g/

From 1999-2001, I was a member of the former Living Stage Theatre Company, one of the preeminent theatre for social change programs in the country. There I appeared in hundreds of improvisational theatre pieces and facilitated arts workshops for participants aged 3-103. My acting credits also include productions at the Kennedy Center, Arena Stage, African Continuum Theatre, ETA Creative Arts Foundation, Chicago Theatre Company, Baltimore Theatre Project, the National Black Theatre Festival, Cultural Odyssey, Hip Hop Theatre Festival, NY International Fringe, and Lookinglass Theatre, as well as featured roles on radio and TV, and in the documentary, Walk with Me: The Movie (2013).

Grants and Scholarships

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Pembroke Center and the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Brown University, the Ellen Stone Belic Center for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media, Michigan State University, the Michigan Humanities Council, the Global Midwest Initiative at the University of Illinois-Champaign, the State of Illinois, Northwestern University, and the National Endowment for the Arts/Washington DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

Education

BA in Theatre and Dance from Amherst College (1993)

New York University's Gallatin School (MA Playwriting and Performance Studies, 2007)

Northwestern University (PhD Performance Studies, 2013).