I want to illuminate the laughter, humor and the poetry in the everyday experiences of African Americans in the US. Most of my work explores the curious place that the black middle class occupies in US culture. Whether I deploy realism, satire, parody, or unconventional theatrical forms, I’m interested in rendering the complexities and ironies of this privileged group. I find comedy—particularly the comedic lineage of writer-performers such as Redd Foxx, Moms Mabley, Dick Gregory, La Wanda Page, Richard Pryor, Chris Rock and Amanda Seales—a liberating medium for leveling critiques about such hefty issues as racism, sexism, and classism in benevolent and disarming ways. I find that humor allows for both blunt criticism and nuanced empathy. Laughter is universal and yet time and event specific: a historical constant as well as ephemeral and difficult to capture. Humor allows me to use my chosen artistic genre of playwriting in a way that I find both generative for writing a coherent narrative and for connecting to US multiracial audiences across class, region, sexuality and gender. If I manage to make diverse audiences laugh at prevailing assumptions about identity then I’ve written a thought provoking, yet entertaining play.

My visual artist statement can be found in this short by KLRU's Arts in Context:

http://www.pbs.org/video/scholarartist-0fhnst/