About |
AfroSolo Theatre Company’s mission is to nurture, promote, and present African American and African Diasporan art and culture through solo performances and the visual and literary arts. Since the company began in 1993, we have presented the annual AfroSolo Arts Festival, a forum for African American and African Diasporan artists to give voice to the unique experience of being Black. Through art, we bring people of all ethnicities together to explore and share the human spirit that binds us all.
Under the artistic direction of Founder Thomas Simpson, the AfroSolo Theater Company has built a reputation for nurturing, promoting, and presenting the experiences of African Americans and those from the African Diaspora over the past 16 years, primarily through the AfroSolo Arts Festival, an annual summer event debuted in 1993. Designed to give voice to the unique experience of being Black, the Festival showcases African American solo theater, dance, music, poetry, multi-media, spoken word, and visual artists during a four- to six-week schedule of performances, art exhibits, workshops on arts organization management and production, and community forums.
Past Festivals have featured Hope Foye, Ruby Dee, Dick Gregory, the late blues and piano legend Charles Brown, the late June Jordan, the Marcus Shelby Trio, and the Paula West Quintet, as well as many other Bay Area critically acclaimed and emerging artists such as Idris Acikamoor, Angela Dean Baham, Laura Ellis, Bryan Freeman, Alison Wright, W. Allen Taylor, Guidi Nkruma, Robert Moses’ Kin, Cedric Brown, Aya de Leon, and Emmit Powell. The Festival reflects Mr. Simpson’s deep commitment to showcasing the depth, diversity and breath of artists in the Bay Area; artists are the very heart and soul of AfroSolo. His vision for the Festival is to present artists whose work has noteworthy artistic merit and gives voice to the Black experience, but who often have extremely limited access to high quality performance opportunities.