American playwright visits Zim

Entertainment Editor
An Obie Award-winning American playwright and actress Nikkole Salter (pictured left) is currently in Zimbabwe teaching six promising Zimbabwean playwrights in Almasi’s Collaborative Arts first training exchange programme. This is Salter’s second visit. Her first was when she performed alongside American-born Zimbabwean actress Danai Gurira in “In the Continuum”, a play which the two wrote.
Speaking at the training workshop in Harare early this week, Salter said she was impressed by presentations made by each participant, an indication that Zimbabwe had talented artistes.

“It was an inspirational moment to reach our first week’s benchmark where participants presented their ideas for the plays they would begin to develop in the following weeks. After a jam-packed week of fundamentals it was rewarding to see them all immediately applying their knowledge to their story outlines. It’s going to be exciting to see them manifest their explorations on karma, moral duty, romantic love, justice and dreams on the page … and eventually on the stage,” she enthused.

Salter, who will be going back to her home country over the weekend, said her interaction with the artistes helped her to dispel the notion of white supremacy.

“The biggest lesson I’ve learned so far is how much white supremacy and Western values dominate my perspectives on the world and Africa . . . how American I am . . . and how important travel and first-hand experience helps to dispel (or to give a more thorough picture of) the stereotypes and single-stories perpetuated.

“It brings me shame to know I harbour such thoughts on a subconscious level and such gratitude for the opportunity to work with Almasi. I’ve also learned how technologically dependent I am – talk about withdrawal.”

As an actress, Salter can be seen in Gavin O’Connors feature film “Pride & Glory” starring Ed Norton, Colin Farrell and Jon Voight, and heard as the voice of “Laticia” in Rockstar Games’ video game release, “Midnight Club: Los Angeles”.

In 2011, Salter received an IRNE award nomination for Best Actress for her performance in “Stick Fly” co-produced by Arena Stage and the Huntington Theatre in Boston, directed by Kenny Leon, and was most recently seen performing the role of Lucy in the world première of Huntington Theatre’s production of Kristen Greenidge’s “Luck of their Irish”, directed by Melia Bensussen.