I was working on another blog post, but it was getting a little negative, and being that it is Thanksgiving weekend, I want to do something positive, so I’m going to tell you about another amazing woman I have the pleasure to know.
Her name is Leighza Walker, and she runs Mildred’s Umbrella Theater Company’s (the company I founded in 2001) short play festival, Museum of Dysfunction. She took the festival over a couple of years ago and breathed new life into it after a couple of years of me phoning it in because I was too busy with our other productions. For this, I am eternally grateful to her, but that’s not the only thing she does.
In addition to running a play festival, Leighza is a performance artist, actor, director, storyteller, set designer, producer, and award winning playwright who studied with Edward Albee. Her play Fishing (which she also directed) won the Broadway World Editor’s Choice Award for Best New Play in 2013. She’s performed in many plays as an actress, directed many others and Her one woman shows, Leighzaland: Declaration of a Sovereign Nation, Observations from the LeighzaSphere, and Welcome to the LeighzaHood premiered at Station Theater in 2015 and are being developed for touring. She was selected in 2012 by the Houston Press as one of “100 Creatives” and is the Executive Director (and Queen) of Leighzaland, a non-profit organization dedicated to producing new work and supporting artists in their endeavor to create art.
She is also a mom and an amazing friend. Seriously, if she loves you, nobody had better mess with you, because she will go after them like a mama bear until they leave you alone. She is not scared.
I’m not trying to out her or anything, but I have never seen her in the same place as Wonder Woman, so I’m going with the assumption that they are one and the same.
So, this blog post is to honor Leighza in a public way to thank her for letting me know her and for being my friend. Here’s her Leighzaland Facebook page if you want to see more stuff about her. https://www.facebook.com/Leighzaland-Productions-153087758081832/
Lola's Umbrella 