“Lenelle Moïse brings fierce passion.” - The New York Times
“A masterful performer” - GetUnderground.com
Nomadic wordsmith Lenelle Moïse creates jazz-infused, hip-hop bred, politicized texts about Haitian-American identity, creative resistance and the intersection of race, class, gender, sexuality and spirit. She recites from hand-made scrolls, from memory, with fervor and with movement. In addition to featured appearances at theatres, bookstores, cafes and conferences across the USA and Canada, Moïse has performed at the Louisiana Superdome, the United Nations and Off-Broadway at the Culture Project.
She has induced standing ovations at dozens of colleges and universities including Columbia College Chicago, Williams College, Berklee College of Music, the Ohio State University, Evergreen State College and the University of Louisville. She has also been featured as part of Sister Spit: The Next Generation, the Split This Rock Poetry Festival, the National Queer Arts Festival, Homoagogo and Estrojam, among others.
Lenelle is the recipient of the 2009-2010 Astraea LWF Award in Poetry and is the 2010-2012 Poet Laureate of Northampton, MA. She is currently available to perform Womb-Words, Thirsting, her acclaimed autobiographical one-woman show and Speaking Intersections, a dynamic set of poetry and performative prose. Her debut CD Madivinez is now available.
Lenelle earned her MFA in Playwriting from Smith College in 2004. In 2008, Women Center Stage at the Culture Project launched the Off-Broadway production of EXPATRIATE, her critically-acclaimed two-woman play with all-vocal music (read The New York Times review (pdf file)).
Her other plays include: Matermorphosis, an adaptation of Kafka's "Metamorphosis" commissioned by Serious Play! Theatre Ensemble; Little Griot, a youth play about masculinity commissioned by the Drama Studio; The Many Faces of Nia, a two-act comedy about stereotypes and Black-Jewish relations; Cornered in the Dark, a choreopoem about the psychological aftermath of sexual assault; and Purple, a youth play about dating violence commissioned by the Kitchen Theatre Company.
She was also commissioned to contribute 25 poems & monologues to We Got Issues, a "performance-based dialogue" on young women and voting produced by Eve Ensler, Jane Fonda and the Next Wave of Women in Power. In 2010, through a collaboration with the Mellon Foundation, Northwestern University invited her to participate in Solo/Black/Woman, a performance series and forthcoming book. She is currently developing Merit, her ninth play, at the 2010 Hedgebrook Women Playwrights Festival. As an actor, Lenelle was seen Off-Broadway at the Culture Project in the ensemble cast of Rebel Voices, a play based on the book Voices of a People's History of the United States co-edited by the late Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove.
PROSE
Lenelle’s essays are featured in several anthologies, including: WORD WARRIORS: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution and We Don't Need Another Wave: Dispatches from the Next Generation of Feminists. Her blogs and articles have also been published in Utne Reader, Make/Shift Magazine, Rethinking Schools, the legendary OurChart.com and Velvetpark Magazine. In 2008, she was a featured writer for The Golden Notebook Project, the Institute for the Future of the Book’s online experiment in collective close-reading.
MUSIC
Follow the link below for more information about Lenelle’s newest CD, The Expatriate Amplification Project, playfully poly-rhythmic all-vocal music about love, homeland, flight and freedom.
FILM & VIDEO
At age 20 Lenelle co-wrote Sexual Dependency, Bolivian director Rodrigo Bellot's feature film debut about cross-cultural machismo and U.S. media influence on the youth of the global south. Currently out on DVD, the film won the International Film Critics' Award at the Locarno International Film Festival (Switzerland) and has since been screened and awarded in dozens of festivals and cinemas on four continents.
Moïse also wrote and starred in Mara Alper's short experimental video To Erzulie which premiered at the Berlin Sommerfest der Literaturen in July 2002. She has completed her own experimental shorts Blue Passersby Eyes and Atlantic Soul. Her self-produced music video Pied Piper was an official selection of the International Museum of Women's 2007 Online Film Festival. Lenelle’s distinct voice is featured in Step by Step: Keeping the Arts Alive, a 30-minute documentary by Julie Akeret.
HONORS & AWARDS
2010-2012 Poet Laureate of Northampton, MA
2009-2010 Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund Award in Poetry
2008 Black Women Playwrights Group Whisper Laugh Shout Award
2008 GO Magazine’s 100 Women We Love
2008 Hedgebrook/ New WORLD Theater Writing Residency
2008 GO Magazine’s Literary Lesbians: 15 Exceptional Wordsmiths We Love
2007 Patchwork Majority Radio Award for Best Solo Album: Madivinez
2006 Gaea Foundation Sea Change Residency
2005-2006 Astraea Loving Lesbians Award for Poetry
2004 Drammy for Best Ensemble Acting: Cornered in the Dark
2004 & 2003 James Baldwin Memorial Award in Playwriting
2003 New WORLD Theater Poetry Slam Champion
2001 & 2000 National Poetry Slam competitor with Team Ithaca, NY
VISUAL ART
Lenelle experiments with collage as a form of meditative practice and nonlinear storytelling. In December 2007, the self-taught artist first presented her collection “URBAN WINGS” in a group show at the Hosmer Gallery in Northampton, MA. See the slideshow below for a glimpse of these vibrant mixed media works.
All texts written and performed by Lenelle Moise. Video by Kate Geis
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