My artist statement

to create work that improves people’s lives 

to exalt, enlighten, and educate African-American people and culture by telling stories of well-seasoned, African-American Women

1. To carry on the nearly-abandoned tradition of Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Alice Walker in proclaiming the literary grandeur of African-American English Vernacular, folk idioms, and linguistic eccentricities. 

2. To explore the events of slavery and their influences today as well as excavating the African-American experience from significant milestones in history such as: 1800 and Froze to Death and the Dust Bowl. 

3. To make the “audience” co-creators of the work I produce. 

4. Create work that is not only edutaining, but is a useful tool for those who experience and participate in it. 

 My work looks like a puzzle that is almost solved. Mixed media jazz, funky rhythms, and stern teaching. It’s the hickory stick in school followed by a lemon sugar lollipop that makes your lips sweet and sticky. It sounds like a whole lot of blues and smells like a juke joint just cleaned in the morning but fragrant from the night before. 

My plays are the 5th grade teacher that cared enough to be stern. They are Pigfoot Mary and Blanche Dunn, the first fashionista. Moms Marley and Michelle Obama, and they really really really want to be Maya Angelou.

They are push me-pull yous of disparate dreams. What you want you can have ‘cause it’s so bad for you it sounds good. People on the precipice of desperation too scared to jump and too foolish to stand still. They are simmering anger confined, with a tiny, rusted release valve. 

They sound like Harlem in the 1920’s, gandy dancers and gospel music trying to reconcile making sense of things that make war. 

My words come from my father’s mouth. He’s dead now, but not really. He’s a smiling , happy soul, who knew how to drink poisoned sweet milk without dying. I WRITE PLAYS TO HONOR MY FAMILY and the women who raised me.