If you don't know...Nina Bowers

…Let me introduce you!

Nina Bowers is an actor & theatre maker, now based in London & raised in Ottowa, Canada.

I asked Nina some questions!

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HALEY: How do you describe your work?

NINA: I make plays and things mostly related to escapism rooted in afrofuturist ideas and aesthetics. I spend the day writing, researching, and procrastinating.

HALEY: What’s your artistic mission? Or who is your work dedicated to ?

NINA: My artistic mission is to find new ways into old questions, and to create spaces of vulnerability, softness and weirdness. My work is dedicated to seeking out people who crave spaces to be vulnerable, weird and soft.

HALEY: What are some of your favourite projects that you’ve worked on so far?

NINA: The Letters Project at The Gate Theatre: A Zoom show (I know) in which actors wrote letters to each other. Very simple but effective (i think) and helped start a collaboration with my Mum and her work at Age UK .

Twilight Los Angeles 1992 at The Gate Theatre: I had the privilege of acting in this verbatim show created by Anna Deavere Smith, and directed by Ola Ince about the Los Angeles uprising in the wake of the Rodney King verdict. This show changed my life, and changed the way I think about race, history and people.

Jelly Atlantis and Her Ocean of Pain: I made this piece while I was on Carnesky's Radical Cabaret Course this year. It's about allyship, the performance of history and hand-washing.

HALEY: Where did you study or train? Or did you have any great mentors?

NINA: I studied Acting and Collaborative and Devised Theatre at the Central School of Speech and Drama.

HALEY: What are you working on these days?

NINA: I’m working on a piece about the emotional connection between the erasure of history and climate change denial, and a fiction podcast about an underwater galaxy based on afrofuturist lore.

HALEY: What artist(s) do you look up to?

NINA: The Director Ola Ince, Musician Janelle Monáe, Designer Iris Van Herpen, Writer Zora Neale Hurston, greek poet Sappho, Artist Georgia O'keeffe.

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You can visit Nina’s website & watch an online performance of Jelly Atlantis at part of the Queer Valentines fundraiser for The Kite Trust available until the 28th of February.

Photo credit: Nina Bowers