what's next

Now that my Drama League Fellowship is complete, everyone keeps asking me "what's next?" If I am being honest, I don't know. I don't have any gigs booked. I am on the job market with hundreds of others. My lease is up on April 30, 2012. This is what is true today.

As I move forward and try to plan a future for myself and Jordyn, I have been thinking less about what is the next thing, and a lot more lately about utility. What does it truly mean to serve or to be useful? How is theatre useful? How are the arts useful? And to what purpose am I an artist? What does it mean to be a good parent? And what choices are in the best interest of my child? I have realized through several uncomfortable months of feeling "lost," unsure, insecure, and doubtful, that I have not always been of use or an effective decision maker. This is what must change for me in 2012. It is not a resolution. I am not resolved to be useful, I have evolved to be useful.

I have given much thought to my core tenets, and not to solely focus on in my art, but in my life, as a human being, mother, artist, friend and neighbor.

Over the last several months I have discovered what is important to me and have distilled that down to:

Utility. It has become one of my personal goals, part of my artist mission, to be of service.

Community. I want to be a part of something; I want a sense of belonging; an active exchange of thoughts and ideas. I want to collaborate, converse, and create toward a common goal.

Leadership. I want to be not only accountable, but a willing representative of the values and mission of the community I serve. I want to facilitate, guide, and be a voice that people can depend on.

Language. This is my art and my politics. Through a system of symbols, signs, sounds, gestures, or the like used or conceived as a means of communicating thought and emotion, I want to make known my existence and the existence of those before me and the promise of those yet to come.


These are my four pillars. This is how I choose to move forward in space and time; how I am defining myself, and the work for which I wish to be remembered. Of course my identity is comprised of many things (a woman, mother, black, etc.) and I belong to multiple communities but at the center of my being and with the time I have to share this is what I seek.