Our Crew

Brittany Fisher

WRITER

Brittany Fisher (she/her) is an NYC-based playwright with roots in Richmond, VA and graduate of Juilliard's Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program. Her play How to Bruise Gracefully won the 2021 Kennedy Center Lorraine Hansberry Award and was recognized by the Rosa Parks Award and Paula Vogel Award. Her play Your Regularly Scheduled Programming was a 2022 O’Neill NPC selection and recognized by the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Award. She was a 2018-20 Pipeline New Works Playwriting Fellow, and her work has been featured at and developed with the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, National Black Theatre, Great Plains Theatre Conference, the Alliance Theatre's Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition, Virginia Repertory Theatre, and Cadence. She received her B.A. from James Madison University.

dl Hopkins

WRITER

dl Hopkins is an award-winning actor, poet, and the former Artistic Director of the African American Repertory Theatre of Virginia. Hopkins is a founder of the Southern Revolutionist Literary Guild (SRLG), a collective of poets and spoken word artists. While serving on the Board of Directors of James River Writers, Hopkins created the Just Poetry Slam, Richmond’s first and longest-running poetry slam. Hopkins is a founding member of the Jazz Actors Theatre established by his mentor, Ernie McClintock, founder of Harlem’s Afro-American Studio for Acting and Speech and the 127th Street Repertory Ensemble.

Margarette Joyner

WRITER

Margarette Joyner (she/her) is a director, actress, poet, singer, and costume designer based in Charlotte, NC. Joyner is a visiting professor of Costume Design at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of South Alabama and an MFA from VCU. Joyner founded The Heritage Ensemble Theatre Company in 2012 and served as the Artistic/Executive Director for 10 years. In addition to writing several stage plays, Joyner recently co-authored a book, When I Kill Him, Jesus Can Have Him, released through Pecan Tree Publishing. She also served as an Actor Interpreter at Colonial Williamsburg, where she wrote several of her own solo programs, giving voice to those of the enslaved community in Williamsburg in the 18th Century.

Omiyẹmi (Artisia) Green

PROGRAM DIRECTOR

Omiyẹmi Green (she/her) is the originator and Program Director for Cadence Sitelines BLM as well as a theater professor at William & Mary. She also holds posts as the editor-in-chief of the Black Theatre Review, the VP for Professional Development for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, and is a W&M Provost Faculty Fellow.

Since graduating from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2003 (MFA) she has taught at Morgan State University, Chicago State University, and Purdue University’s Black Cultural Research Center. Omiyẹmi’s accomplishments include two William & Mary NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Faculty Support, a Plumeri Award for Faculty Excellence, a W. Taylor Reveley III Interdisciplinary Faculty Fellowship, a WMSURE Mellon Faculty Fellowship, an Arts & Sciences Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence, and a term professorship as the Sharpe Professor of Civic Renewal and Entrepreneurship. She has been recognized by the Black Theatre Alliance Awards and supported with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, CultureWorks, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.