performer bios

Cave Canem was founded in 1996 by Toi Dericotte and poet Cornelius Eady to offer a home for the diverse voices of African American Poetry. Cave Canem's programs offer black poets a chance to work together in a welcoming atmosphere and to study with accomplished poets andteachers. Programs include a summer Workshop/Retreat, a first Book Prize, regional workshops and readings in major cities. http://www.cavecanempoets.org/

Zenzele Cooper (Young (g)riot's Circle) is a rising junior at Rutgers' Mason Gross School of the Arts. She is a theater artist, with an acting focus, for now :) This is her first time reading her "poetry", or collection of words in public. She is so thankful to be a part of the (g)riot and hopes to make more appearances on the WOW stage in the near future.

Scottie Davis, professional actor, singer and mime, and founder of the Salt and Pepper Mime, will perform Ira Jeffries' characters Delilah Brown and the Bag Lady, of which she says "The characters in Ira's plays are an actor's dream."

Sharon "Bonaparte" Diop (Martha Redding by Ira Jeffries) is a theatre person involved in many aspects of theatre. She loves acting and directing as well as the lighting operations that bring the magic. Her acting experience includes The Wound by Paul Willems directed by David Willinger, The Intern by Jarod Gibson directed by Mikael Meskanen, Yerma by Frederico Lorca directed by Eugene Nesmith and No Place to be Somebody by Charles Gordone directed by David Willinger. She has a love for dance especially traditional Congolese African Dance and has choreographed the opening dance for Frederico Lorca's Yerma, as well as teaching the Kwanza Celebration for sixth graders at P.S. 132. Her aim is to be involved in theatre in as many ways as possible--physically, mentally and spiritually.

D'Lo (Word Buffet, the Inside Story) is a bi coastal Sri Lankan, poet, and producer, currently causing the most trouble in LA.  This clown's work includes comedy, theatre, dance, poetry, and music and revolves around socio-politico issues (war, gender and sexuality, race etc.).   D'Lo has been described as "a fierce bolt of creative and comedic energy" and has trained in the vina, and Bharatha Natyam in addition to her degree in ethnomusicology from UCLA and additional training in NYC in sound engineering.    D'Lo's career work has included being part of several performance groups; working closely with diverse youth as a teaching artist; establishing herself as both a solo and collaborative performer internationally including shows and speaking engagements at various colleges and universities, conferences and festivals. Hir work continues to create spaces for open dialogue and creative exchange.  Look for this funny guy in Susana Cook's production "100 Years of Attitude" all of July at Dixon Place. E-mail her: dloco at prodigy dot net.

t'ai freedom ford (Word Buffet) is a writer and performance poet who lives, loves and survives in brooklyn. In 2002, she earned her MFA in Creative Writing, fiction from Brooklyn College where she had the honor to study with Pulitzer Prize winner, Michael Cunningham. t'ai was a proud member of Bar 13's 2003 National Slam Team. Now, you can find t'ai honing her DJ'ing skills at Bar 13 every Monday night. Her latest spoken word CD is entitled Prehistoric Hip Hop Futuristic which features candid interview segments and new poems. http://www.taifreedomford.com

Sabrina Hayeem-Ladani (Word Buffet) is a poet, actor, singer and dancer who was born and raised in Manhattan. She has toured with her poetry across the United States, reading at such venues as the Nuyorican Poet's CafŽ, Bar 13, and the Bowery Poetry Club. She has also worked as a teaching artist in both New Mexico and New York City. Sabrina was a member of the Albuquerque Poetry Experiment, a spoken word/jazz music ensemble, has performed with Organic Ghetto, a live poetry collaboration with The African Space Project, and has opened in concert for BŽla Fleck and the Flecktones. She served as coach of the 1998 Albuquerque Poetry Slam Team and led them to competition in the National Poetry Slam held in Austin, Texas. This spring, Sabrina can be seen in the Off-Broadway production of Downtown Rhythm at Primary Stages Theatre. She is also a member of the louderARTS Project, a not-for-profit arts collective committed to developing challenging spaces for artists to create, critique, present and teach poetry. Her work is available in her two chapbooks, harsh miracles, and the bone, the weight.

Tonya Cheri Hegamin (Women of Cave Canem), although originally from Philly, now lives the swanky life in the West Villiage. She spend her time recovering from recieving her MFA from The New School and finishing her novel. Her first book, MOST LOVED IN ALL THE WORLD will be published by Houghton-Mifflin in 2006.

Imani Henry (Living in the Light) is an activist, performer and writer. As a solo performer Imani has toured nationally and has been featured at a wide array of venues including The Boston Center for the Arts, The Apollo Theater and national anti-war rallies. He is a second year Artist in Residence at BAX. http://www.geocities.com/imani_henry

Ira Jeffries has been a playwright for over twenty years and a member of the WOW collective for over ten years. She is a graduate of City College with a B.A. in communications. She has written over twenty plays, most of which have been produced at WOW. She founded Kaleidoscope Theatre to produce her own plays and deal with issues of the lesbian community. In 1985 she received an Audelco Theatre Award for Excellence in Playwriting.

Jacqueline Johnson (Women of Cave Canem) is a multi-disciplined writer. She writes poetry, books for children, non-fiction and fiction. She is the winner of the 1997 third annual White Pine Press Award for Poetry. Her poetry book "A Gathering of Mother Tongues" was published by White Pine Press in the spring of 1998. She is also the author of “Stokely Carmichael: The Story of Black Power, Simon & Shuster Books. Recent publications include: “Calabash: Caribbean Journal of Literature”, “Beyond the Frontier," "Def Poetry Jam", and "Streetlights: Illuminating Tales of the Urban Black Experience." Ms. Johnson has received awards from the New York Foundation of the Arts, the Mid-Atlantic Writers Association’s Creative Writing Award in Poetry and is a Cave Canem fellow. She teaches poetry as Frederick Douglas Creative Arts Center in New York City. She is at work on two new projects: "The Place Where Memory Dwells," and a collection of short stories "Songs of Ikari."

Karma Mayet Johnson (Women of Cave Canem) is a poet, performing artist, and percussionist. She has taught Creative Writing to undergraduates at New York University, where she completed her MFA, and leads poetry workshops for youth in and around New York City. Recent work has been published in African Voices Magazine, A Gathering of the Tribes literary journal, and Nocturnes (Re) view of the Literary Arts. Karma is an alumna of the Cave Canem Workshop-Retreat for African American poets and a grant recipient from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Recent performance work includes touring with Jane Comfort and Company's dance theater production of ASPHALT, by Carl Hancock Rux. She resides in Brooklyn, New York with her boa constrictor, Krishna.

KARINA (Young (g)riot's Circle) is a Daughter of the Moon & Stars learning power from the love of her young people. She lives by the saying “build a bridge & get over it!”

A native of New Orleans the Beautiful, Keturah Kendrick (Word Buffet) is a writer, performer and teaching artist who has resided in Harlem, New York for three years. Her writing has been featured in The Louisiana Weekly, Heart and Soul magazine and her work as a stage and screenwriter has been recognized in theater festivals and staged readings across the country. The former host of Rivers of Honey at WOW, Keturah performs in and around the city.

Kenyetta Lovings (Women of Cave Canem) teaches adult literacy in New York City Public Libraries. She is a Cave Canem fellow, and her work can be seen in AMBULANT, BLACK IVY, SIDEREALITY: A JOURNAL OF SPECULATIVE AND EXPERIMENTAL POETRY and WARPLAND: A JOURNAL OF BLACK LITERATURE AND IDEAS. Kenyetta currently attends Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Harlem.

Tere Martínez (Time For A Song) is a Puerto Rican playwright and actress. She lives in New York City, where she has been working with the Latino theatre community for the past fifteen years. Her theatrical adaptation of the popular memoir, When I Was Puerto Rican, by Esmeralda Santiago, has toured the United States and Puerto Rico for the past seven years. Her two one-acts plays, My Last Night With Ruben Blades and For Mi Chichi, were part of the 2000 Latina Playwrights Festival at WOW Café in lower Manhattan. In June 2001, the plays were produced professionally by Pregones Theatre in the Bronx. These two pieces have toured theatres in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Puerto Rico. A staged reading of Agria...Tierra...Dulce, a full-length play about the effects of war on a Puerto Rican family of Spanish descent, will be produced by IATI Theatre this fall. Other playwriting credits include: La Partida y El Regreso, Por Dios… Paren ya las Máquinas and Borinquen Vive en el Barrio. As an actress, Tere’s New York theatre credits include Steinbeck’s The Pearl; Lorca’s A Poet in New York; Dario Fo’s Isabel, Three Sailing Ships and a Con Artist; and the one-woman shows, When I Was Puerto Rican and My Last Night with Ruben Blades. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.

Everelle Mercer, director for "Delilah Brown", "Martha Redding" & "The Bag Lady & Ole Becky," has many credits in the world of theatre to her name.  She has worked with Negro Ensemble Company, The Ensemble Studio Theatre, Woodie King Jr's New Federal Theatre, The Roundabout Theater Company,  the Harlem Theater Company, and National Black Theater Company, just to name a few.  Under the many faces of theatre production, Everelle has done it all!

GinnaKarla S. Nicolas (Word Buffet) received her B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Redlands and her M.F.A. in Poetry from Saint Mary's College of California. She is the recipient of two Academy of American Poets Jean Burden Prize Honorable Mentions, and won Second Place in the Wendy Norins Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in Coracle, Anthology, Cimarron Review and Cider Press Review. She part of the louderARTS Project and lives, writes, teaches and performs in New York, a city she loves in a way that doesn't surprise her.

Nina Polan (Time For a Song) is an actress, singer and stage director. Born Polish, she was raised in London where she graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Miss Polan started working in the British theater and performed under Peter Brook's direction in Dark of the Moon, on London's West End, as well as in many roles, in London's Club Theaters, various regional theaters in the UK as well as in the Polish theater in London. She also acted in numerous films and on British TV. Miss Polan toured in Europe and appeared in Spain, in Edgar Neville's film, QUENTO DE HADAS. After a stint in Radio Free Europe, in Munich, she came to the USA and performed in the American theater in New York City, at LaMaMa, in the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater and various other venues, on tour and in stock, in regional theatres at the Seattle Rep, the New Orleans Playhouse, American Players Theater, in Wisconsin, the NJ Shakespeare Festival and many other companies, playing a great number of Shakespearean and contemporary roles, as well as on TV (SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE) in films (SOPHIE'S CHOICE, FEVER, STUFF 'nd LOVE) and in radio (WQXR, RFE, VOA) among others. She concertizes extensively in various languages. Since she is bi-lingual she tours with the Polish Theatre Institute, as actress and singer in the US and as far as Vilnius, Lithuania, Poland and Paris, France. Miss Polan directs many of the shows produced by the PTI, most notably HALKA and VERBUM NOBILE, both operas by S. Moniuszko which she recently took to Poland with a mostly american cast of singers, singing in Polish. Among the numerous roles she performed, her favorite is the role of the extraordinary actress and theatre personality, Helena Modrzejewska, the Polish/American star of the latter part of the 19th century. She is about to repeat the role in Washington DC on June 13th, 2004. She is also the executive and artistic Director of the Polish Theatre Institute in the USA , since 1984.

QUE (Young (g)riot's Circle) is Satellite alum, an Aquarian Goddess of design & lyrical ingenuity.

Al D. Rodriguez (Time for a Song) can be seen as Cuqui opposite Benjamin Bratt in PIÑERO (Miramax).Other film roles include Angel Melendez /Party Monster-Shockumentary (Sundance Film Festival/Cinemax), Javier/The Love Machine (LAIFF, Philadelphia Gay & Lesbian Film Festival) and Carlos/Isabella Rico (Hamptons International Film Festival). NY Stage: The Public, Vineyard, INTAR, Duo. Regional: (World Premire) of Tooth and Claw Arden Theatre, Kennedy Center, Olney, and the National Tour of City of Angels as MUÑOZ.

Silvia Sierra (Time for a Song) was born and raised in Puerto Rico. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drama from Syracuse University in 1999 and has continued her theatre studies in NYC with such distinguished teachers as Betty Buckley, Geoffrey Owens, Barbara Maier, Susana Tubert and Tom Nelis (of the SITI Company). She has worked with several NY theatre companies including Syracuse Stage, Repertorio Español, Teatro Pregones, Teatro La Tea, Teatro SEA, Chashama, and renowned physical theatre company ImpACT Theatre (directed by Fay Simpson). Some of her favorite leading roles include the Angel in Angels in America, Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Rosita in Los Títeres de Cachiporra, and Esperanza in The House on Mango Street. Silvia is a co-founder of Teatro La Culebra and has created several experimental movement-based pieces, such as 5.Wash Your Bowl, Pérdida de la Propiacepción, Requiem para los Diecisiete, and Poema Sinfónico (created for the innaguration of Natives Theatre). Silvia has appeared in a number of short films, including Is Your Neighbor Latino? (for PBS-channel Thirteen). As a singer, she performs regularly with different bands and as a soloist throughout the city in venues such as S.O.B.’s, Symphony Space, Cami Hall, NJ Symphony Hall and Hard Rock Café. Her voice can be heard in several musical recordings, including recently with Mike Gordon of rock band Phish.

Patricia Smith (Women of Cave Canem) is an award-winning poet, writer, journalist and national slam champion. She is the author of three volumes of poetry as well as the PBS companion book "Africans in America," the children's book "Janna and the Kings," and theupcoming "Fixed on a Furious Star," a biography of Harriet Tubman.

Hanifah Walidah received the NYFA Fellow in Poetry in 1999 and in that same year co-wrote and performed in the multi-cast stage play and musical "Bloom" (Ain't I a flower); which had successful runs at WOW and the Nuyorican Poets Café. The debut of Hanifah Walidah's one-woman multi-character stage play "Black Folks Guide to Black Folks" at the Black Box Theater in Oakland October 2002 and later at the Alice Arts Theater in April 2003, received outstanding reviews from both the SF Chronicle, Guardian and East Bay Express. The Guide has since been commissioned at Harvard, Stanford, SF State, Mills College, The Living Word Festival at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SF international Arts Festival, The Queer Arts Festival (SF) and The NYC Hip Hop Theater Festival. She was recently featured in the NY Times Arts and Leisure section and on Bay Areas KRON 4 and KQED programming.