Channie Waites
Actor: If Beale Street Could Talk
Expert Teaching Artist
Channie Waites is a Literature to Life company member where she wears the hats of actor and teaching artist. Channie is an applied theater practitioner, performing and voice-over artist, educator, director and facilitator. She has worked and collaborated with youth, senior citizens and social justice leadership programs in the United States, Rwanda and South Africa. She has facilitated workshops within schools, hospital care facilities, supportive housing communities and corrections facilities. Channie has toured and performed professionally within the United States and abroad. Channie recently inhabited the role of Prospero in The Tempest with Connecticut Free Shakespeare and Dandelion Productions. Channie has received several honors and acknowledgements for her audiobook narrations including most recently Say Her Name by Zetta Elliott, nominated for a 2020 Audie. She provided the video description for the James Baldwin documentary I Am Not Your Negro. In 2021 she facilitated and directed a remote devised piece for People’s Theatre Project’s Luna Ensemble called The In Between of Fullness.
Channie was a co-founder of Capacity Arts, a theatre collective that created highly interactive historical dramas and developed tailored leadership workshops to lift-up untold stories, build empathy across dividing lines, and deepen participants’ analysis of historical and present-day conditions. Channie has been program director for The International Theater Project (ITP) –Rwanda for the last six years where she has co-directed five original plays devised by youth and led professional developments at the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village and the Rwinkwavu Community Learning Center and Library in Rwanda. Channie has a M.A. in Applied Theatre from the School of Professional Studies-CUNY and has a B.A. in Theatre with minors in Anthropology and Dance from Penn State University.
from Channie: