Guyanese-American actress Ingrid Griffith to perform in Guyana
Guyanese-American actress and playwright Ingrid Griffith is set to perform her one-woman show “Shirley Chisholm: Unbossed & Unbowed” for the first time in Guyana.
Guyanese-American actress and playwright Ingrid Griffith
The one-woman show, written and performed by Griffith herself will take centre stage at the Theatre Guild of Guyana Playhouse, Kingston, on April 29. The 80-minute performance will start at 18:30h with no intermissions.
The solo performance with Griffith was inspired by the life of Shirley St Hill Chisholm, who was an American politician, educator, and author, who, in 1968, became the first black woman elected to the United States Congress.
“Unbossed and Unbowed” is the largely-unheard story of the Brooklyn-born politician of immigrant parents, who in the 20th century, was the first African-American woman to win a seat in the US Congress and run for the presidency of the United States.
The story journeys back to 10-year-old Shirley returning to the US after being separated from her parents during The Great Depression. It reveals how Chisholm, living with her grandmother in Barbados, over the years, manifested and reinforced her Caribbean heritage in her bearing, speech pattern, and expectations of herself.
“Unbossed and Unbowed” dramatises the Civil Rights era, the unrest of the 1960s, the patriarchal system, and the all-boys network Chisholm was up against, many themes we still see in the politics of today.
Griffith is a member of The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG/AFTRA) and the Dramatist Guild of America. She is an immigrant and a trained actor with a master’s degree in creative writing who migrated to the United States of America when she was 12 years old. She has been in off-Broadway and regional theatrical productions in both classical and contemporary roles. Griffith is the writer and performer of the internationally-acclaimed solo show “Demerara Gold”, a nostalgic, funny, and thought-provoking story of a Guyanese girl’s immigrant experience. Griffith performed “Demerara Gold” in Guyana in 2015 at the National Cultural Centre. (G2)
