Back in the day, I used to read 'Archie,' but I haven't been a comic book aficionado.
I like to focus on stories that need to be told and are not told enough. When I get bit by that bug, and the story is saying, 'You must tell me,' I then go through a process which is often painful and arduous, and long - and joyful! - of submitting to the story until I prove a worthy enough vessel to get it out.
It's something I've constantly found shocking - all this astounding talent amongst black women that never gets to be seen or heard.
I never consider myself a minority. I see people who look like me in Barbados, in Trinidad, in Haiti, in London, and in Brooklyn. So I don't know what the heck anyone means when they call me a 'minority.' There's something about that word to me. It just minimalizes people.
You look at women like Lena Dunham, you look at how women are kind of crafting their own space on the screen. I want to add to that.
I went to grad school because I wanted to learn the rules so I would know how to break them. Breaking the rules is saying, 'I'm breaking in, OK? I'm breaking in your very comfortable little house over here, and I'm going to take a room.'
I was in a very multi-racial, multi-cultural schooling system. I had a really delightful childhood. I was a jock. I became a very competitive swimmer in Zimbabwe. I was a swimmer, a tennis player, a hockey player. Then, when I was 13, I joined a Children's Performing Arts workshop in Zimbabwe.
I grew up in Harare, Zimbabwe. And I had a pretty idyllic childhood. I felt that I was kind of this outspoken girl, I was considered. I was a girl who talked a lot and didn't think my voice had any less value than anyone around me. Apparently, that was strange.
I work with writers whom I believe to be true storytellers. And because I'm a writer, I pay very keen attention to their vision. I find that so fueling creatively because, in telling those stories, you use everything you've got. You come away with battle scars. It's gratifying and invigorating.
I often feel like a nutty professor, like I'm going to try this experiment and see if it works. My hypothesis is, people in the West can absorb African women stories without any shaken or stirred mixer. It can come directly from the source.
I got an M.F.A. in acting from NYU, and part of our training is to learn how to use swords in combat situations in a performance and Shakespeare plays where you have to fight.
If my work is on the stage, you can be rested assured I'm going to make use of it as a platform for activism as much as possible.
I want women and girls of African descent and of color to be able to not have to keep searching for stories about themselves.
We moved to Zimbabwe when I was five, some years after Zimbabwe had gained independence.
