Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe
Actor, Writer, Director
Edris is the Founder and Artistic Director of Black Artists Contemporary Cultural Experience, and has been performing more than 20 years with credits at the Sacramento Theater Company; SF Mime Troupe; Theater Works in Palo Alto; Magic Theatre; Intersection For The Arts and was an Associate Artist with Rhodessa Jones' The Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women. In 1991, she won the Goldie Award for Acting from the SF Bay Guardian. In addition, Edris has created more than 8 different solo performances, including the recently published Adventures of A Black Girl: In Search of Academic Clarity and Inclusion.
As a director, Edris has worked at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, RI; Capital Repertory in Albany, NY; Southern Rep in New Orleans ; Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles; Alabama Shakespeare Festival; Woolly Mammoth in Washington, D.C; Curious Theatre in Denver; TheatreWorks, Palo Alto. Edris’ Bay Area directing credits include the West Coast premieres of Relativity at the Magic Theatre, Stealin’ Home at Exit Theatre; The Old Settler at TheaterWorks in Palo Alto; Crying Holy at Theatre Rhinoceros, andUrban Zulu Mambo and Blue/Orange at Lorraine Hansberry Theatre. Her productions of John Henry Redwood's The Old Settler, received the Dean Goodman Award for Excellence (TheatreWorks) and, in Dallas. Best Production, two Best Acting Awards and an Outstanding Direction nomination from the 2003 Rabin awards. In 2006, she received her second Rabin nomination for her direction of Neil LaBute’sThis Is How It Goes at Water Tower. She holds an M.F.A. in Directing from the University of Iowa and is an alumna of the NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Directors. Additional training has included theatre research and performance at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and at Shakespeare & Company in Tanglewood, Massachusetts.
SOLO WORK
Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe's new solo show, Adventures of A Black Girl: Traveling While Black, debuted at Brava Theater Center for a weekend in March, 2013 and transferred to Eastside Alliance in Oakland in November of 2013. TWB returned for a longer run in October, 2014.
TWB is the 2nd play in a trilogy entitled, Adventures of a Black Girl. The first production in the trilogy, Adventures of a Black: In Search of Academic Clarity and Inclusion was commissioned by AfroSolo and received its first full production at Intersection for the Arts in 2004. In 2011, it was presented as part of the solo/black/woman festival and was published in an antholoy, solo/black/woman edited by E. Patrick Johnson & Ramón H,Rivera-Servera. Edris is developing the final installment in the series, The Oneness of Blackness; the oneness of mefor a run in June, 2015.
BLACK ARTISTS CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL EXPERIENCE
June, 2015
So So San Francisco, a cabaret performance with Marvin K. White
2014
Zakiyyah Alexanders's bitter satire,Sweet Maladies, set during the Reconstruction Era and starring Brit Frazier, Lisa Anner Porter, Kehinde Koyejo and Stefanee Martin. Awarded Best Ensemble for 2014 Theatre Bay Area Awarads.
2013
West Coast premiere of In A Daughters' Eyes' by A. Zell Williams. Set in Oakland, In A Daughter's Eyes is the story of two women, daughter of an Oakland police officer and the daughter of the man accused of his murder and their struggle to honor their father's and come to grips with their pasts.
Prior to Brava
Previous productions from Black Artists Contemporary Cultural Experience,include On The Hills Of Black America and Hollis Mugley’s Only Wish +2 by Keith Adkins (Intersection for the Arts); Chain and Late Bus To Mecca by Pearl Cleage (Theatre Rhino); and Will He Bop, Will He Drop? by Robert Alexander (African American Art & Culture Complex).