OUR TEAM
Graphic Design: Taylan De Johnette
Antonio Duke
THE IFÈ LAB PROGRAM DIRECTOR: (He/Him/His) I am an actor, playwright, director, and griot: a solo West African oral storyteller. My goal is to provide easily accessible digital theater that motivates, inspires, and replenishes black communities. Digital theater is theater that is filmed and streamed. If black communities don't have easy access to theater that reflects back at us our humanity then we are not able to envision our artistic future. I have been a digital theater maker since 2012. Pillsbury House Theater received The Summer 612 Micro Grant and hired my brothers and I to create a theater piece centered on nonviolence in the Powderhorn Community. The culmination of the grant was a digital theater piece at the Minneapolis Central Library. I continued my relationship with Pillsbury House Theater in 2012 as part of their Late Nite Series. After graduating from The University of Minnesota/Guthrie B.F.A Actor Training Program I received the 2018 Naked Stages Fellowship with Pillsbury House Theatre where I created my first solo play called Ashes of Moons. My second solo play Tears of Moons was accepted into The Guthrie Theatre’s Solo Emerging Artist Celebration in 2019. Since then Tears of Moons has been filmed and streamed with Parksquare Theater. With these two pieces I received an inaugural Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship the same year. I created my third solo play Missing Mississippi Moons with additional support from The Minnesota State Arts Board’s Artist Initiative Grant. Missing Mississippi Moons was filmed and streamed by Combustible Theater Company, Los Vegas Theater Company, and The Guthrie Theater. I am a Wonderlust Ensemble Member. https://www.antonioduke.com/
Photo credit: Nance Musinguzi/Musinguzi.
Ashawnti Ford
THE IFÈ LAB SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER: (she/her) I am an actress, teaching artist, improviser, playwright, director, and cultural producer whose works center on social justice, youth voice and Black expression. My parents: a spoken word poet and a hip hop artist cultivated in me a special attention towards Blackness and creativity. I have traveled the world bringing social justice theatre to places such as Liberia, Canada, and England. As a producer, I co-founded two companies: Theater45° and Black Ensemble Productions.
Nía Navarro
THE IFÈ LAB DIGITAL CONTENT UNIT DIRECTOR: Nia (she/they/elle) is an experienced community organizer and filmmaker with an extensive background in building strong Latinx immigrant communities and narratives in Minnesota. At the core of her filmmaking practice and community engagement work lies the principle of healing through sharing stories. As a Mexican immigrant girl growing up in south Minneapolis trying to assimilate into American society she dreamt of becoming a Film Director so she could make movies that would inspire others to be more kind towards one another. Her early training as a youth media maker can be traced to Phillips Community Television (later becoming Intermedia Arts) during the mid 2000s through their after school youth media literacy program. As an adult, Nia has been trained in documentary filmmaking through Saint Paul Public Network’s DocU Fellowship in 2021, Spotlight Series cohort experience in 2022 and is a 2023 New Angle Fellows, and a Firelight Media alumni. She was recently featured in Film North’s LGBTQIA+ Pride Month Newsletter edition as an independent filmmaker to watch. Nia’s work in community engagement involves hosting in-person & virtual community conversations with Latinx immigrants on a variety of topics: mental health, activism, and representation of Latinx/a/o stories on mainstream media. Nia’s commitment to improving her craft and engaging community members in her artistic process aims at working with Minnesota-based filmmakers and center stories that are uniquely Minnesotan.