what i’m up to.
happening now:
ongoing: I am a Resident Acting Company member at Mercury Store.
ongoing: Tap into Keep Your Change, a theatrical criticism outlet for femmes of color, co-founded by Des’ree Brown and myself.
january 2023:
1/18-21: I appeared in Reply All, written by Jahna Ferron-Smith and directed by Nemuna Ceesay, as part of Clubbed Thumb‘s Winterworks.
throughout: Keep Your Change is here! Check out our first two pieces, one on the ethos of KYC, and our Under The Radar round-up.
2022 highlights:
- I made my 54 Below debut in the Seventh Annual Harvard-Yale Cantata.
- I played Snout/Moth in A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Commonwealth Shakespeare Company
- My piece, The Exhausting, Endless Black Trauma-Art Feedback Loop, was published with Mental Hellth
- My interview piece, Lifting up each other, Lifting up ourselves, was published with The Public Theater
- My piece, Seeing Double: Double Consciousness as a Black Theatre Practitioner, was published with Howlround Theatre Commons.
what i’m about.
TL;DR: Ekemini Ekpo (she/her) is a theater artist, singer(-songwriter), and cultural critic. She is NYC-based, by way of Austin, TX and Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria.
Hey, y’all.
I’m a Nigerian-American performer/cultural critic/retired Twitter fiend.
Here’s the perfunctory actor bio: NYC: Mercury Store Resident Acting Company, Reply All (Clubbed Thumb), Harvard-Yale Cantata (54 Below), Hello Dolly! In Concert at the Stonewall Inn (Black Theatre Coalition and Creating in Color), 24 Hour Plays Nationals. Regional: The Tempest (Commonwealth Shakespeare Company; Elliot Norton Award Nomination for Outstanding Ensemble), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Commonwealth Shakespeare Company), Coriolanus (Praxis Stage). Education etc: Atlantic Acting School, IGNITE Mentorship, Harvard College
Beyond acting, I am a product of the “Tumblr Fandom Discourser” to “Chronically Online Twitter Pontificator” to “Published Critic and Essayist” pipeline. I’ve written for Howlround Theatre Commons, The Public Theater, and TheBody, among other publications, I am an alum of the BIPOC Critics Lab, and I can be found gisting about plays on the Broadway Podcast Network’s Critics’ Table podcast. Speaking of podcasts, I assistant produced Planet v. Profit, a podcast centering the stories of climate activists and activism.
I graduated, cum laude, from Harvard College with my Bachelor of Arts in Sociology. My social scientific work has focused on identity-based violence, white nationalism, and the U.S. carceral system.
Also…I promise I’m not as serious as I look.
