Member Since: 2019
What has been your favorite role?
Picking a favorite role is like picking a favorite son or daughter. Everyone is so different and interesting. I really enjoyed working on my last two gigs- playing a 911 emergency dispatch worker for HSS and playing Fred the Bartender on “Ride”. I felt like I was in a whole other world as the dispatch and that is of course part of the motivation for acting. Exploring new experiences. I also got to see the intensity of that experience. As a dispatch, your work is basically life or death- not just a voice on the phone. On “Ride”, I was mc-ing a rodeo event on that and it was a hoot. I really loved that world and liked watching the other actors and their commitment to their characters. And the director was great! (And of course, I liked playing someone named “Fred”.)
What do you do when you are not performing?
I make films, writing and studying fiction and television writing, I am helping people with their television pitches, and also facilitating filmmaking with youth. I am working on my own original series idea in one of my classes and a novel in another at UBC, which is pretty exciting. Planning my next digital/film/fiction/onstage project.
What organization / activity are you involved with or passionate about that people would find interesting?
I am a part of the Artist As Changemaker Cohort at the Trico Changemaker Studio at Mt. Royal University. We are all artists who use our work to affect social change and work with non-for-profits in the business of addressing social change. I am also editing a film I facilitated and directed and co-wrote with youth for a third year at Action Dignity. I am about to distribute a documentary I produced and directed over the Summer about my grandmother called “Finding Mother” that I did on a Fellowship with Caribbean Tales in Toronto.
What Director would you like to work with?
Hmm… Ava DuVernay, and I’d like to do so as both a writer and actor. There’s so much wealth of storytelling and worldbuilding that is a part of our shared experiences as Black women that I would like to explore and that I see in her work.
What is your favorite movie and/or TV show?
Again. A very hard choice. I really loved a show called “Undone”. It’s an animated series on Amazon Prime that was done on camera first, then animated. I also pay homage to a classic comedy film “Tootsie” in my solo theatre show “The ‘Hoodwink”. That will always be a favorite.
As a Performer, what is one thing you wish you would have known sooner.
Enjoy yourself and bring your joy in pretending and imagining and playing to whatever, you do. Work on the craft but enjoy the fact that in acting it’s the one place where you have permission to commit to your character’s wants and needs – and you get to dress up and pretend! Have fun.