TESHONNE NICOLE POWELL

she/hers

What I do
For the last 10 years, I was an arts and non-profit professional. I have a background in performing arts-related marketing and communications, and I have supported artistic projects all over the Washington, DC area. Currently, I am based in Brooklyn, NY and am pivoting towards a career in creative arts therapy, specializing in drama therapy.

By night, I write. I write fiction and I am currently working on my first ever novel. I also consider myself an emerging playwright. My first short play, Afromemory, was produced at FRESHH Inc. Theatre's Next to Kin One-Act Festival, and a full-length version of the play was produced in a staged reading at the Kennedy Center's Page-to-Stage Festival in Fall 2018. Additionally, I am a Producing Playwright with The Welders, a playwrights’ collective in Washington, DC. I am one of six DC-area playwrights who will produce our own unique theatre projects in the next three years. The Welders presented my play Girls’ Night (with Spirits) in 2021.

I occasionally perform. When the opportunity arises, whether it’s to perform in a full-length play like FRESHH Inc. Theatre's Surrender, or a short play in Young Playwrights' Theater's New Play Festival, I jump at the chance to be a part of the magic. I am also available to read scripts aloud in public or private readings for script development.

I'd like to think that I live a creative life at all times. I love the performing arts and visual arts. I love seeing how art can connect with people and connect people, and I really do believe that art is a very viable way to affect change in our communities. 

Why I do what I do, whatever I do...

As a lover of stories, I reveled in the prospect of getting lost in fantastical universes, where anything can happen, where anyone can do or be anything. But alongside my enthusiasm was the acceptance that people that looked like me did not really exist in many of the stories that I loved.  

As a story-teller, I no longer accept that Black women don’t belong in fantastical stories. The genre known as speculative, including science fiction and fantasy, is still pining for more Black women voices and more Black women stories that expand definitions of Black humanity, Black womanhood, and Black consciousness. There is beauty and wonder in the strength of Black women and my prose and dramatic writing intend to place Black women characters in a 3-dimensional form with infinite possibilities of what they are truly capable of. Furthermore, my artistic goal in any project that I am involved in will always and forevermore compel the audience, the reader, the onlooker, the receiver to view Black women as human, as complex people deserving of respect and agency, and most importantly, as awesome.

What else?

I support community activism, I support dismantling oppression, mental wellness, and I support diversity. I support real, honest conversations about issues that affect us most, though at times very differently.

I love to learn, and I am always looking for the next documentary. I love films; I love music; I love DC. I love Chocolate. I love my dog, Beaux (the ‘X’ is for extra flare).

I'm a Sagittarius/Capricorn cusp.