About

I am the host of CBC Arts: Exhibitionists, The Filmmakers and From the Vaults on CBC Television and Marvin’s Room on CBC Radio. I also write a weekly column for CBC Arts. I wrote the play Other Side of the Game which was co-produced by Cahoots Theatre and Obsidian Theatre Company in 2017. It is due to be published by Playwrights Canada Press in 2019.

I’ve worn a number of hats in my life:

I co-created the multi-award winning alternative education organization Lost Lyrics.

I worked as the Managing Director at The Remix Project.

I’ve spoken at U.N. conferences in Durban, South Africa and Naples, Italy.

I’ve performed roles in the play Aneemah’s Spot and on the web series Anarkali.

Below are some more highlights.

Theatre

My theatre plays have been staged at festivals such as rock paper sistahz, The Piece of Mine Festival, The Festival of Original Theatre and the De Colores Festival and have been awarded grants and bursaries by The Michaelle Jean Foundation, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts. I completed a playwriting residency with Alameda Theatre for my one-woman play 32C and was the 2016 Playwright in Residence at Cahoots Theatre. In the fall of 2017, Cahoots Theatre in partnership with Obsidian Theatre co-produced the world premiere of my critically acclaimed play Other Side of the Game.

As a theatre actor, my credits include the 2015 workshop of I Cannot Lie to the Stars that Made Me, the 2014 and 2012 productions of Aneeemah’s Spot and the 2011 production of The Whores. I have studied acting with The Lee Strasberg Institute of Film and Theatre as well as Theatre Ontario, b current and York University.

Education

Alongside Natasha Daniel, I am the co-founder of the multi-award winning alternative education organization Lost Lyrics. Through Lost Lyrics I co-created a number of programs within and outside of the school system based on a critical pedagogy that utilizes arts-based engagement and worked with hundreds of young people across the world. I also worked for a number of years first as the Outreach and Community Partnerships Coordinator and later as the Managing Director at the internationally renowned arts incubator The Remix Project. My facilitation skills have led to hundreds of invitations to moderate panels and conduct workshops at schools, community centers, corporations and conferences around the world including the CBC Development Workshop Series for Diverse Content Creators and the Navig8 leadership program through the Dufferin-Catholic District School Board. My curriculum work was published in the 2014 book Rhymes to Re-Education.

Academia

I received the William Waters Scholarship and the Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship, in 2015, and completed my M.A. Degree in Sociology of Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. After receiving the Michael Smith Foreign Study Bursary I lived in New York City conducting thesis research as a Visiting Scholar at New York University under the host supervision of Dr. Pedro Noguera. My academic essay ‘Document it Before we Forget.’ A Conversation with African-Canadian Female Artists on the Canadian Black Arts Movement was published in 2015 in the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives Journal Our Schools/Our Selves. In 2015 I worked at Environics Research Institute on The Black Experience Project research study as the supervisor of field researchers, coordinator of social media and editor of The Black Experience Project Blog.

Additional Projects

I am the founder of the critically acclaimed multi-arts collective T-Dot Renaissance. In 2011, I brought together over 22 artists across a variety of mediums to produce the multi-arts installation Diasporic Journeys. Also in 2011, I was invited to be the Artistic Director of Wombmanifesto, the first ever celebration of women and trans people in Hip Hop culture at the Manifesto Festival. In 2015, I helped to produce the Scratch and Mix Project an ancillary event for the Jean-Michel Basquiat: Now’s the Time Exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). This project enabled 13 young Black visual artists from across Ontario to showcase their work for 4 months at the AGO. I also created The Ride or Die Project, a multi-platform initiative that traversed the fields of theatre, fashion and blogging to produce creative content inspired by the stories of women who live by a ride-or-die philosophy.