Wanda's Picks Radio Show, Wed., February 10, 2016

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay! 

Morning Guests:
Link to show: http://tobtr.com/s/8265481

Laura Elaine Ellis is Executive Director of the African & African American Performing Arts Coalition (AAAPAC), a San Francisco-based, nonprofit organization founded in 1995 by a collective of artists who were looking to create better performance opportunities for African and African American performing artists as well as to produce shows that reflect the aesthetic and cultural representation of the African and African American experience.  As AAAPAC’s executive director, Laura Elaine Ellis has co-produced successful events such as the Labor of Love Dance Series, The Quilt Project: Pieces of Me, and numerous presentations under the banner of the Black Choreographers Festival.

Joslynn Mathis Reed hails from Detroit Michigan and founded Mathis Reed Dance Company in 2014. Joslynn’s movement and choreography is driven by a high-energy fusion of hip-hop, modern and ballet forms, resulting in her own unique style. Joslynn holds a B.A. in Dance/Theater Arts from California State University, East Bay and an MFA in Dance Performance and Choreography from Mills College in Oakland, CA. Joslynn has trained in Dunham, Horton and Graham Techniques. Photo of Joslynn.

Emerging choreographer Wanjiru Kamuyu’s career began with its genesis in New York City.  As a performer Kamuyu has worked with Jawole Willa Jo Zollar of Urban Bush Woman, Bill T. Jones (Broadway show FELA!), Molissa Fenley, Julie Taymor (Broadway show The Lion King (Paris, France)), Nathan Trice, Tania Isaac, Dean Moss, amongst others.

As a choreographer her work has received wonderful reviews from the New York Times and Le Figaro (Paris, France) as well as gaining a Wayne State University (Detroit) Maggie Allesee Department of Dance Copperfoot Award (2012).

Kamuyu’s work has been presented in New York festivals DANCENOW, Cool New York and Harlem Stages’ E-Moves series, LaMama Moves, Joyce Soho, Chez Bushwick and Movement Research, as well as in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Missouri, California, Europe and Africa.

Kamuyu is engaged in various international residences and is commissioned to create work and teach at esteemed US universities such as Wayne State University, University of Michigan, Mills College, Stephens College, Stanford University, Virginia Commonwealth University, Towson University, Spelman College amongst others.  She has also taught in London (UK) Paris (France), Johannesburg (South Africa), Nairobi (Kenya) and Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso).

8:30 AM















Chris Evans, an interdisciplinary artist trained in music and dance, works in and through performance broadly defined. She is a member of Bandelion Dance Theater and collaborates regularly with Byb Chanel Bibene, David Boyce, Sheena Johnson, Ernest Jolly, and Randee Paufve. Through these collaborations she aims to create moments of community that revere, challenge and lovingly hold our imaginations, bodies, stories, and expression.

David Boyce has been experimenting, innovating and improvising with the Broun Fellinis, an avant jazz group he co-founded for 20 years. He is a long time Bay Area musician who has explored a range of different musical genres – jazz, post rock, hip hop, world music, electronic music, and Afro funk. His music has taken him to Europe, Japan and Canada as well as around the US. Currently, he performs with Broun Fellinis, Katdelic, The Afro Funk Experience, Black Quarterback, David Mihaly's Shimmering Leaves Ensemble, The Supplicants, and Black Edgar's Musik Box.

9 AM to 9:30 AM

The African American Shakespeare Company's first time staging of George C. Wolfe’s contemporary, devastating and satirical masterpiece, The Colored Museum tackles thorny issues of race and history with in an era time-stamped and hash-tagged by the phrase Black Lives Matter; the production will feature four different directors collaborating to bring the play's eleven vignettes to life as part of what Artistic Director L Peter Callender calls the Company's “season of purpose”

The Colored Museum runs from  February 13 – March 6; Tickets: $15.00 - $34.00 at
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/1641586; more information www.african-americanshakes.org

Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe, Director: “The Gospel According to Miss Roj”, “The Hairpiece”, and “The Party”

Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe is an award winning actor, director, writer and performer. She has directed around the country at Trinity Rep in Providence, Capital Rep in Albany, NY, WaterTower

Theatre in Dallas, Curious Theater in Denver, Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, 42nd Street Playhouse in NYC, and Alabama Shakespeare, and has taught acting and directing at Naropa University and Indiana University. In San Francisco, she has directed at Lorraine Hansberry, Magic Theatre, GAP Festival at Aurora Theatre, A.C.T. MFA Program, and Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Ms. Cooper-Anifowoshe received a Dean Goodman award for Excellence for her direction of John Henry Redwood’s Old Settler at TheaterWorks in Palo Alto; and several Rabin Award nominations for her work at WaterTower Theatre in Dallas. She has taught at College of Marin and Berkeley Rep School of Theatre. She also directs with the company she founded: Black Artist Contemporary Cultural Experience, which was awarded recognition for Best Ensemble at the 2014 TBA Awards. She earned an MFA in Directing from the University of Iowa, and is Artist In Residence at Brava Theater Center in the Mission District, San Francisco.

Michael Gene Sullivan Director “Soldier with a Secret”, “Symbiosis”, and “The Last Mama-on-the-Couch Play”

Michael Gene Sullivan is an award-winning actor, writer, and director whose work includes pro-ductions at the American Conservatory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theater, the Denver Theatre Center, Theatreworks, the Magic, Marin, Aurora, and Lorraine Hansberry theaters, the S.F. Playhouse, and the San Francisco and Berkeley Shakespeare Festivals. He is also a member of the Tony and OBIE award-winning (and never silent) San Francisco Mime Troupe, where he has acted in and/or directed over 30 productions, and has also, for the past 15 years, been Resident Playwright. His scripts for the SFMT include Red State, Posibilidad, For the Greater Good, and last year’s SFMT hit play about police brutality, Freedomland. Mr. Sullivan’s non-Mime Troupe dramas, musicals, and satires include the all-woman farce Recipe, his one person show, Did Anyone Ever Tell You-You Look Like Huey P. Newton?; a stage adaptation of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol: his historical drama fugitive/slave/act, and his award-winning stage adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984, which opened at Los Angeles’ Actors’ Gang Theatre under the direction of Academy Award winning actor Tim Robbins, and which has since toured nationally and internationally, and been published in two languages. Mr. Sullivan’s plays have been performed at theaters throughout the United States, as well in Germany, Australia, China, Greece, Spain, Columbia, Argentina, Canada, Mexico, Scotland, and England. Mr. Sullivan’s directing credits include work with the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, Mystic Bison Theatre, Street of Dreams Theater, and the San Francisco Mime Troupe. He is very happy to be back with the African-American Shakespeare Company, where his previous work includes directing the critically-acclaimed adaptation of Julius Caesar, and his performance as Prospero in the Tempest. Mr. Sullivan is also a blogger for the political website The Huffington Post.


9:30-10:00 AM

Hattie Carwell, Co-founder and Executive Director, Museum of African American Technology (MAAT) Science Village, Oakland, CA

Hattie Carwell is Co-founder and Executive Director of The Museum of African American Technology (MAAT) Science Village in Oakland, California. She creates programs and exhibits to share the African Americans role in technical developments and the fun of science. Since 1983, she chairs the Development Fund for Black Students in Science and Technology and recently served as President of the National Technical Association and the Northern California of Black Professional Engineers.

As a health physicist with the U.S. Department of Energy, she provided radiation safety program oversight at several National Laboratories. At the Department’s Berkeley Site Office, she served as High Energy and Nuclear Physics Program Manager and later as Operations Lead managing Environmental. Health and Safety oversight for the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She served as a nuclear safeguards group leader at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria. She is a graduate of Bennett College and Rutgers University.