ARTISTIC STATEMENT
Black, POC, NB, queer, trans, marginalized….
I write to and for the parts of myself that bleed. Allow my blood to grace the space between words. Like music, I attack my unbearable. I prefer an attack that is bold, uncompromising, unapologetic, atomic in subject, theme and structural lawlessness. Work not asking for permission, nor seeking validation nor Anointing from anyone, anywhere, anyhow. I need to create an unscripted social imaginary through material that explodes the stale, Old, egocentric Order with its cheap version of Radicalism posing as “style”. I privilege “misfits”, more marginalized characters, the so-called “losers” of this world who breathe in the margins. I believe we “losers” offer a wider, purer emotional divine because of, not despite our lack of material resources. I believe “misfits” are better equipped to illuminate, read: reveal what it truly means to be a human being when everything in this world screams “UGLY, invisible, fat, erased, not enough, unworthy, “poor”, too Black, not white enough, not trans enough, disabled” etc. I scream back: “I exist. FUCK YOU!”
NICK MWALUKO
NICK HADIKWA MWALUKO (pronouns: he-him / they-them / Nick) is a third-culture queer, non-binary trans Tanzanian-American. Nick’s plays include: Silence Is A Sound; the comedy Cock Tales for Christmas; 37, a Black lesbian duet set in prison; S.T.A.R: Marsha P. Johnson; queer trilogy bathed in queer African fantasia Waafrika 123; QTPOC trans masculine THEY/THEM/THEIRS; the queer apocalyptic Homeless in the AfterLife; Blueprint for an African Lesbian; SH/Ero; Asymmetrical We; Brotherly Love; Trailer Park Tundra; Once A Man Always A Man; Mama Afrika; Queering MacBeth; Life Is About the Kill; That Day God Visits You; Ata; To Dyke Trans; Gayze; Good Grief; Pence At The Border and many more.
Residencies include: Nationally recognized and nominated Resident Playwright Initiative with Playwrights’ Foundation (San Francisco, CA 2019-2023); Resilience and Development (R&D) Writers’ Lab with Crowded Fire Theater Company in San Francisco (2017-2018); New York City’s EWG (Emerging Writers’ Group) at the Public Theater sponsored by Time Warner Co.; New York City’s Groundbreakers Group, Djerassi Artist Residency in northern California, Freedom Train Productions, Ragged Wing Ensemble and more. Nick is a 2018 finalist for Africa’s Gerald Kraak Award; a two-time recipient of the Creativity Fund issued by the Public Theater and Time Warner, and a 2017 Spring grantee of a Theatre Bay Area (TBA) Individual Artist Cash grant. Nick graduated Magna Cum Laude at Columbia University in New York City for undergraduate and completed an MFA at Columbia University as a Point Scholar, the nation’s largest LGBTQIA scholarship fund, and was awarded a Columbia University Fellowship for theater at the same time. Nick attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop thanks to a Norman Felton Fellowship.
WAAFRIKA 1-2-3, Nick’s trans queer tragic triptych in Africa fantasia is slated for a production in Florida in 2021. XXY Queer Africa: More Invisible, a companion essay to WAAFRIKA 1-2-3 published in literary magazine Juked, was in Best American Essays 2020. Nick’s other essay, A Letter to My Gay Black Brother, was recently nominated for a Pushcart Award (final results announced in March 2021).
List of Plays: Nick Hadikwa Mwaluko