she | her | hers
I create, direct, and produce theater in New York City. I make theater to build deep empathy, goofiness, uprising and collectivity. My work aims to unsettle and upset audience expectations. My art centers all different types of Black women. I aim to disrupt conditioned routines of behavior by confronting exclusionary accounts of history and dealing with how the past piles into the present. The guiding principle of my theatrical practice is making theater for, with, and about Black, Indigenous, People of Color, Queer folks and people with disabilities.
I am a co-leader of the Turn the Page Movement to uplift Black-owned bookstores and Black storytelling. I am a consulting guest artist for Princeton University’s Program in Theater, which includes co-coordinating a BIPOC theater makers group. I am newly a member of the Roundabout Director’s Group and an Associate Board member for Classic Stage Company.
I directed Big Date by Cary Glitter for the Wet Paint Festival at New Ohio Theater and Olio Live! by Pulitzer Prize winner Tyehimba Jess for Audible Theater at Minetta Lane Theater. Currently producing a production of a play by Rachel Calnek-Sugin about white supremacist women in upstate New York directed by Mia Fowler. In 2018, I received a Lilly Award for the New York Women’s Foundation Directing Apprenticeship Award.
I am interested in Blackness and femininity and history and critical race theory and playing with time and found text and experimental movement and ensemble work. I like ritual and asking questions and challenging every assumption that surfaces in a production process.
I have acted as assistant director for some really inspiring artists including Lileana Blain-Cruz, Saheem Ali, Sam Gold, Diane Paulus, John Doyle.
I have collaborated with National Queer Theater, 24 Hour Plays: Nationals, Audible Theater, McCarter Theater, University of Missouri: Kansas City, Prospect Theater Company, and ArtHouse Productions.
I received a Bachelor’s Degree from Princeton University where I studied English LIterature, Theater and African American Studies.
I am currently developing some projects about time and history and Blackness:
The Space Between, a play about a white Jewish woman and Black woman who relive their lifelong friendship in their aging bodies. developed with real-life best friend Anna Zabel
The Womb Abyss, a theatrical poem tracing the afterlife of The Middle Passage and the relationship between Black diaspora, kinship, and water. developing with poet/writer Nicole Acheampong
Be White, an etching of the musical movie White Christmas interlaced with the legacy of black train porters.
Some things I’m inspired by right now:
• Lose Your Mother by Saidiya Hartman
• A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness: Writings, 2000–2010 by Cherríe Moraga
• Rupaul’s Drag Race
• NFL Sunday Night Football
• Titus Kaphar
• Ginger Saffron Candles
• Dirt and rain
• I May Destroy You on HBO
• Ella Fitzgerald
• Food 4 Thot Podcast
• Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing
• James Baldwin writing “I am a Negro + a Native New Yorker”
• Black hairstyles
• Kindred by Octavia Butler
ABIGAIL JEAN-BAPTISTE
Director, Theater-Maker, Equity Activist