Okwui Okpokwasili

Okwui Okpokwasili is a Nigerian-American actress, performer, choreographer, and writer born on August 6, 1972, in the Bronx, New York. Her parents were Igbo Nigerian immigrants who relocated to the United States in the late 1960s to flee the Nigerian Civil War. Okpokwasili attended Yale University, where she crossed paths with filmmaker Andrew Rossi, who would later create a documentary about her work. She describes her practice as occupying the space where theatre, dance, and installation converge, and she has become a prominent figure in New York's experimental performance scene.

Okpokwasili made her Broadway debut in 2022 in the revival of Ntozake Shange's for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf. Her stage work extends well beyond Broadway, encompassing a body of one-woman performances and ensemble pieces developed in collaboration with her husband, director and lighting designer Peter Born, as well as frequent creative partnerships with choreographer Ralph Lemon. In 2013, she performed the role of Hippolyta in Julie Taymor's production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Among her most recognized performance works is Bronx Gothic, a 90-minute solo piece she both wrote and choreographed, in which she portrays two young Black girls navigating vulnerability, adolescence, and emerging sexuality. Commissioned by Danspace Project and Performance Space 122 in 2014, the work begins with Okpokwasili already on stage, trembling in a dark slip as the audience enters, before she takes on the voices of the two girls in dialogue. Andrew Rossi's documentary of the same title captures the creative process behind the piece, features candid conversations between Okpokwasili and her husband about race, and includes her parents' responses to her art. Cultural critic Hilton Als praised Bronx Gothic in a 2017 review.

Her earlier collaboration with Born, Pent Up: A Revenge Dance, centered on a mother-daughter relationship and examined cultural and generational conflict. The work earned Okpokwasili a 2009 Performance Bessie Award for Outstanding Production and a 2010 New York Dance Award. She has since received multiple Bessie Awards across her career, and in 2018 she was named a MacArthur Fellow, a recognition intended to support recipients in further developing their work.

Several of Okpokwasili's projects engage directly with Nigerian history, particularly the experiences of women. Poor People's TV Room examines two specific events: the Women's War of 1929, which took place during British colonial rule, and the 2014 kidnapping of approximately 300 schoolgirls by Boko Haram. In developing the piece, she also researched Nollywood, the Nigerian film industry, considering how representations of women emerge at the intersection of African and Western cultures. The Nigerian novelist Amos Tutuola, known for incorporating Yoruba folklore into his fiction, has been a cited influence on her work. Research conducted for Poor People's TV Room additionally informed Sitting on a Man's Head, which Okpokwasili presented at the 2018 Berlin Biennale.

In July 2016, she staged When I Return Who Will Receive Me at Fort Jay on Governors Island as part of the River to River Festival. The two-hour group performance featured seven female performers singing, speaking, and dancing within the underground magazine of the military structure, with the audience free to move through the installation spaces. The work was commissioned by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. In April 2017, Okpokwasili performed a site-specific dance at Mass MoCA in response to Nick Cave's large-scale installation Until, in a series co-sponsored by Jacob's Pillow.

Her screen credits include the role of KK in Josephine Decker's 2018 film Madeline's Madeline, a starring role alongside Leslie Odom Jr. in The Exorcist: Believer in 2023, and an appearance in the music video for Jay-Z's song "4:44" from the album of the same name. In 2024, she played the character Vertigo of the Salem's Seven in the television miniseries Agatha All Along. Okpokwasili has also held residencies and fellowships including a 2013 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Choreography, a 2013 Visiting Artist position at the Rhode Island School of Design with Ralph Lemon, and a 2015–2017 Randjelovic/Stryker Commissioned Artist residency at New York Live Arts.