Jersey City Theater Center Presents Free BLACK SPACE Web Series with Ashley Nicole Baptiste

Jersey City Theater Center presents the latest installment of Black Space, hosted by Ashley Nicole Baptiste, a free web series that celebrates Black artists, educators and culture.

The latest episode will feature an interview with Michelle Tyrene Johnson, public radio journalist, author, former attorney and award-winning playwright. The show will premiere live on Sunday, April 16 at 3:30pm EST and can be accessed via Zoom:

https://us02web.zoom.us/

Webinar ID: 846 9022 2281

Passcode: 915986

You can make a reservation to participate for free at www.JCTCenter.org.

Michelle Tyrene Johnson is a public radio journalist, author, and former attorney from the Greater Kansas City, Missouri Area who now lives in Louisville, Kentucky. As an award-winning playwright, Johnson's plays have been staged nationally, including in California, Texas, Illinois, Nevada, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Utah. Several of her plays, such as "Wiccans in the Hood," "The Negro Whisperer," "Trading Races: From Rodney King to Paula Deen, "Echoes of Octavia," and "The Green Book Wine Club Train Trip" have been in New York City festivals and readings. Her play "Only One Day A Year" was chosen for the Kennedy Center's 2020 New Vision/New Voices Festival and received an award from the National Endowment for the Arts for its World Premiere at the Coterie Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri. Johnson received her MA in Writing, with a focus on playwriting, from Spalding University in May 2022.

Ashley Nicole Baptiste is an actor and teaching artist working and living in New York/Jersey City, and is the Associate Artistic Director of Jersey City Theater Center.

As an actor she has had the opportunity to use her artistic talents in theater, television and film. She started working on using her creative talents in new directions to help produce, and create space for stories that are under-represented. It was during her work on the production of HANDS UP in Portland, Oregon (during the summer of 2015) that helped inspire her to expand her voice as an artist and activist. Having the opportunity to work on two August Wilson plays, Jitney & Seven Guitars, helped influence her inspiration to mix arts with activism and later led to the immeasurable opportunity to work with Anna Deavere Smith on her HBO special, Notes From The Field.

She is a proud graduate from Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts M.F.A Acting program (2020), and spent six months training/performing at Shakespeare's Globe in London. She has had the opportunity to work in diverse communities as a Teaching Artist with, NJCU, Spotlight (The Spot JC), Arts Horizon, MAST High School, RSAC and Greenville Stories with JCTC. She's excited for the opportunity to do meaningful work and continue to lay a foundation for social justice through the arts.

Jersey City Theater Center (JCTC) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) arts organization committed to inspiring conversations about important issues of our times through the arts. Co-founded by Executive Producer Olga Levina, an immigrant from Belarus, Jersey City Theater Center (JCTC) produces and presents universal yet locally relevant works, emphasizing social justice and human rights. Since 2006, JCTC has provided a platform for all artistic voices to be heard in Jersey City, with the aim of sparking meaningful cross-cultural dialogue that helps build a greater understanding, mutual respect and better communities in New Jersey.

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