Love Letter to Oakland
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Ayodele Nzinga, MFA, Ph.D, is a multidisciplinary creative force invested in developing structures for cultural production and transformation in marginalized communities. She is an actress, producing director, playwright, dramaturge, poet, educator, and community advocate. Known as WordSlanger, she is Oakland’s Inaugural Poet Laureate. In 2023, Nzinga founded the BAM House Cultural Arts Center. She is the Founder and Producing Director of the Lower Bottom Playaz, Inc., Oakland's oldest North American African Theater Company, where she directed the first staging of August Wilson’s American Century Cycle in chronological order. She is Executive Director of Oakland’s Black Arts Movement Business District Community Development Corporation (BAMBD CDC) and founding Producer of arts and cultural festival, BAMBDFEST International Biennial. She was the founding Artistic Director of the original Recovery Theater, a founding member of BlacSpace Collective, and the co-founder of Janga’s House, a Black Women Arts collective. Nzinga holds an MFA in Writing and Consciousness and a Ph.D. in Transformative Education and Change. She is author of Performing Literacy: a Narrative Inquiry into Performance Pedagogy, The Horse Eaters, SorrowLand Oracle, and Incandescent. Her work has been published in numerous journals and anthologies. Nzinga is a Cal-Shakes Artist Investigator Alumni, a YBCA 10 Fellow, a BIPOC Leadership Circle Fellow, a MapFund Fellow, and has received awards for her leadership. She is an Alameda County Women's Hall of Fame Inductee and is recognized by Theater Bay Area as one of the 40 faces that changed the face of theater in the Bay.
www.ayodelenzinga.com