Peggy Pettitt

Peggy Pettitt, born February 8, 1950, in St. Louis, Missouri, is an American actress, dancer, teacher, playwright, and storyteller. After earning a Bachelor of Arts from Antioch College in 1974, she traveled to London on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. She has resided in New York City and has been married since 1982 to writer, director, and painter Rémy Tissier.

Pettitt's screen career began in 1972 with the family-drama film Black Girl, directed by Ossie Davis and written by J.E. Franklin, whose source material originated as a 1969 WGBH teleplay and a 1971 stage play. Pettitt played the role of Billie Jean opposite Brock Peters and Claudia McNeil, and the performance earned her an NAACP Image Award nomination for Best Actress. Her Broadway career includes the 1991 production of Mule Bone, the historical comedy by Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes, in which she appeared at Lincoln Center as Miss Lindsey.

As a playwright, Pettitt has developed a solo performance style grounded in African-American storytelling traditions, using it to portray interconnected characters whose experiences illuminate the history of African-American men and women. Working in collaboration with director Rémy Tissier, she has created more than ten original full-length plays. These works address subjects including domestic violence, sexual abuse, cross-generational conflict, voting registration, the Civil Rights Movement, identity, and the global HIV/AIDS crisis. Titles among her body of work include Women Preachers, Caught Between the Devil and The Deep Blue Sea, Tricksters: All Over You Like White On Rice, Wrapped Up, Tied Up and Tangled, Mollie Oil BETWIXT, Wild Steps, and In The Spirit For Real.

A 2000–01 Fulbright Fellowship to Senegal produced the play The Spirit Factor, an original work drawing on the living history and storytelling traditions of West Africa. Her play Voyage, which traces American history through the blues and a spiritual heritage connecting the Mississippi River to West African origins, was presented at the Avignon Off Festival in 2010. In 2011, Pettitt presented her work at the Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni Les Rencontres du Bout des Mondes International Festival in French Guiana. Her work has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts, among other sources.

Pettitt is the founding artistic director of Pearls of Wisdom, a storytelling ensemble affiliated with Elders Share the Arts in New York City. In 2007, she and the ensemble were inducted into City Lore's People's Hall of Fame. Among her additional honors are the New York City Arts In Education Roundtable Award for sustained achievement in theater, the Performance Space 122 Founders and Board Pioneers Shining Star Award in 2011, and recognition from the William Hodson Senior Center, the Roundtable Senior Center, and Elders Share the Arts for her commitment to storytelling. In 2008, her role as story gatherer for Another River Flows was recognized with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Award.

As a teacher, Pettitt instructs students in creating, writing, and performing original material, and she currently teaches self-scripting at New York University's Experimental Theatre Wing. Her teaching work has extended to homeless shelters, prisons, drug treatment centers, VA hospitals, and senior and adolescent centers, as well as work with the emotionally and physically disabled and their families. Her contributions to the field are documented in several published volumes, including Out of Character edited by Mark Russell (1997), Performing Democracy by Susan Chandler Haedicke (2004), and Forget Memory by Ann Basting (2009), among others.