Ifa Bayeza

Ifa Bayeza's works for theatre include Homer G & the Rhapsodies in the Fall of Detroit, for which she won a Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award, Welcome to Wandaland, Kid Zero, and the novel, Some Sing, Some Cry, co-authored with her sister Ntozake Shange.

The Ballad of Emmett Till was awarded a Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference fellowship, received its world premiere at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, and garnered the 2008 Edgar Award for Best Play, while the Fountain Theatre West Coast premiere in Los Angeles received the 2010 Backstage Garland Award for Best Playwriting. The second work in this trilogy, benevolence, is currently in performances at Penumbra Theatre in St. Paul, MN through March 10, 2019, and Penumbra will also produce the third play, That Summer in Sumner.

The Harvard graduate and Rhode Island State Council for the Arts 2014 Artist Fellow is Distinguished Artist-in-Residence and Senior Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Africana Studies at Brown University.