LISTEN TO season 3 HERE

Season 3.jpeg

FEATURING: Stacey Karen Robinson, Sonja Parks,
Aimee K. Bryant, Renita Martin & Mankwe Ndosi!

Thanks to artist/activist Jenna Worsham, I joined up with theatre artists from around the U.S. to donate performance work that helped raise funds for Homebound Project (which gives to No Kid Hungry). The piece I offered was a 5 min excerpt from my current work in-progress, bull-jean & dem/dey back: Dreaming,
which the brilliant One Stacey Karen Robinson performed. Stacey's performance swirled and swirled in my Heart long after our time with Homebound Project was over
SO
I decided to root Season 3 of the Who Yo People Is podcast in Stacey's performance.

This Season each episode will feature a conversation with a long time collaborator - and at the end of the conversation we will share the audio clip of Stacey's performance/along with that guest's vocal contribution to the audio clip. By the final episode of this season the track shared will be a completed rendition of the collaboratively made - 5 min excerpt from, bull-jean & dem/dey back: Dreaming.

I am developing bull-jean & dem/dey back: Dreaming, with support from my Playwrights’ Center Core Membership, Daniel Alexander Jones (Director) and Sonja Perryman (Dramaturg). Stay tuned HERE.

Check out the bull-jean stories, published by RedBone Press in 1998 HERE.

SEASON 3 GUEST BIOS

SKRmove3.jpg

Stacey Karen Robinson

Gender pronouns: she/her/hers

My people is: word lovers, magic-almost-preacher-race men, mothers who mothered children they didn’t birth as they-beloved-own, gardeners, rich deep laughers & storytellers, dreamers who loved loved loved in a way they hadn’t experienced except in they deepest heart, my people is mine… 

Stacey is a multidisciplinary theater artist fascinated by the possibilities of nonlinear storytelling to explore the emotional & spirit life of Black folx. She is a Resident Artist (59th Season) at La Mama Experimental Theatre Club and a Bushwick Starr Reading Series playwright (2020-2021). She performed her solo work, You Never Can Always Sometimes Tell, at JACK (NYC) and Salvage Vanguard Theater (TX). The work was developed with support from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the Foundation of Contemporary Arts. Her previous monodrama, Quiet Frenzy, is published in solo / black / woman: scripts, interviews, and essays, Northwestern University Press (2013).

Sonja_sunflower.jpg

Sonja parks

Gender Pronouns:     she/her/hers

My people is:  nurturers.  feeding body/mind/soul/spirit from the same gumbo pot.

Website:      sonjaparks.com



(Photo Credit: Joseph Brewton)

An accomplished actor/director/activist/educator, Sonja has been a featured performer with many notable venues including: The Public Theatre, The Royal Shakespeare Company-London, The Kennedy Center, Playwrights’ Horizon, & The Guthrie Theatre. She trained at UT-Austin & The National Black Theater under the direct tutelage of its founder and artistic director, the late Dr. Barbara Ann Teer. She is an NEA Fellow; a McKnight Artist Fellow; a 2-time Minnesota State Arts Board Fellow; a 2-time Minneapolis Ivey Award winner; a TCG-Fox Distinguished Achievement Fellow; a McCarter Theatre Center-Princeton/Sallie B. Goodman Fellow; has been a featured artist in Time Magazine and named “One to Watch” and one of “Seven Artists You Must See” by American Theatre Magazine.

aimee+bryant052515017.JPG

Aimee K. Bryant

My pronouns: she/her/we/ours/love.

My people is: joy makers, creators, and collaborators.

Website: aimeekbryant.com

Aimee is an actor, vocalist, and teaching artist who’s artistic practice is rooted in soul music. joy, and a rigorous curiosity about the way things are. Her mission is to use performance as a tool for self reflection, individual and collective healing, liberation and transformation. Her debut cd Becoming is available online. Aimee was named City Pages 2015 Actress of the Year, and is a McKnight Theatre Artist Fellow for 2015-2016.

Renita Martin.jpeg

Renita Martin

Pronouns: she/her/hers.

My people is: the doers of love

Website: renitamartin.com

Renita Martin is a critically acclaimed author, thespian, musician, and producer whose works have appeared on "Good Morning America," in Ebony Magazine, the New York Times, and the Boston Globe. She is a proud member of the Actors' Equity Association (AEA), the Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), the National Performance Network, and Alternate Roots. She has appeared in Off-Broadway, regional and international theater productions, as well as independent films and broadcast television. Renita is Founding Director of Rhythm Visions Production Company, an organization providing arts programs and employment opportunities to underrepresented artists.

Mankwe.JPG

Mankwe Ndosi

Pronouns: she/they

My people is: mending the breaks of history into radiant futures

Websites:   Instagram  ObsidianLit.org
Visual Collaborative

Mankwe Ndosi is a Culture Worker, Musician, Composer, and member of the AACM. She uses creative practice to nurture and re-examine social patterns and relationships with her community, ancestral legacies, and the earth. She’s worked with luminaries like Laurie Smith Carlos, Nicole Mitchell, Tomeka Reid, Transatlantic Amazon Gods, Douglas R. Ewart, Ananya Dance Theater, Atmosphere, Duriel Harris, and Sharon Bridgforth among many, many others. Mankwe is focused on forgotten and marginalized plants, people, and ways of knowing. Her work is aimed at creativity and healing through the interconnection and liberation of our personal, social, and terrastral structures, practices, and mythologies.

BONUS TRACK

Flo.jpg

Florinda Bryant

I am proud to offer my conversation with Florinda as a bonus track this season! I’ve worked with Florinda since 1998 and am really grateful for our Journey/and that she was able to make time for a virtual chat.

Florinda Bryant is an award winning interdisciplinary artist, activist and educator – a Texas gurl who calls Austin home. As a performer and director, she has worked with Salvage Vanguard Theater, the Rude Mechs, the Vortex, Paper Chairs, Theater en Bloc and Teatro Vivo in Austin, TX and the Ensemble Theater in Houston, Texas. 

More about Florinda: HERE

alice+work.JPG

THIS SEASON’S SPONSOR

Season 3 of Who Yo People Is is sponsored by
Sound Engineer Alice Wilder, who Loving worked to ensure make sure that our sound quality was great.

Pronouns: they/them

My people is: Witches, mages, unicorns, anarchists, nerds, lovers, storytellers and visionaries —

Illuminating the stream under the earth we are all connected by and sewing our celestial threads together through the sky

Website: alicewildersound.com

(Photo taken by Nicole Mago)