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Chinyere, chi chi, talent manager, new york, actor, artist, film, television, representation, agent
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My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”
- Maya Angelou
Broken into scenes named for the five stages of grief, demons. is a self-styled dark comedy that dips more frequently into the tragic. It’s precisely about the incommensurable nature of grief, the way our various vocabularies of family and faith and love are never quite enough to explain what we’re feeling; the way grief doesn’t structure itself into neat stages no matter what the books tell you; the way that generational trauma winds its way into interpersonal trauma until sometimes you can’t even tell what you’re trying to talk about, let alone express it.
Christopher B Portley
INTAR Theatre has announced two world premieres to debut in the company's 2023 Mainstage season. The first production will be Truckers, a play by Mariana Carreño King and directed by Alfredo Narciso. The cast features Christine Bruno, Jesse Castellanos, Jorge Chapa, Yadira Correa, and Jacqueline Guillén. Scenic design is by Raul Abrego, sound design by Jimmy Kavetas, costume design by Harry Nadal, and lighting design by Dalia Sevilla.
Jacqueline Guillén
Pasadena Playhouse's production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Sunday in the Park With George officially opens at the California theatre February 19 after beginning performances February 14. The company includes Armand Akbari as Soldier #2/Ensemble, Jenni Barber as Celeste #2/Waitress, Allison Belinkoff as Female Swing, Erica Gonzalez as Louise, Brian Calì as Boatman/Lee, Marc Ginsburg as Ensemble, Jennie Greenberry as Nurse, Savannah L. Jackson as Ensemble ...
Savannah L. Jackson
The 2022/23 Sloan Commission recipients and plays are Taylor A. Blackman (To Infinity) ... Meet the "Devale family". Roberta & Destin Devale to be exact. Mother and Son. Both scientists. One contingent on humanity staying and fixing earth. The other contingent on humanity relocating to Mars for a new chance at life. And to top it off - it's the thanksgiving holiday. To Infinity, is a story about the choices and decisions we make- and the after-effects that come with them.
Taylor Blackman
The company will also include Armand Akbari as Soldier #2/Ensemble, Jenni Barber as Celeste #2/Waitress, Marc Ginsburg as Ensemble, Jennie Greenberry as Nurse, Savannah L. Jackson as Ensemble, Trevor James as Soldier/Alex, Robert Knight as Louis/Charles,...
Savannah L. Jackson
Seamlessly weaving story and song, this concert presentation of a timely new musical chronicles three generations of a Southern Black family as they trace the effects of racism, activism and legacy from the Civil Rights Movement to the present. Directed by Ryan Dobrin. Featuring John Edwards, Danyel Fulton, Alex Joseph Grayson, and Andrew Cekala...
John Edwards
The actors performing include Jane Bruce, Viveca Chow, Sarah V. Clifton, Nora Dale, Alex Fox, Ashley J. Hicks, Gabriela Z. Hernández, Naomi Honig, Maleah Joi Moon, Nandi Nfr Ka, Erika Norrell...
Erika Norrell
La Race follows Maxine, a Black woman in her 30s dealing with personal and professional setbacks, and her best friend A.J., who wants Maxine to run for office in Far Rockaway's local government. Their unconventional grassroots campaign soon becomes vitally important as political action becomes necessary in a place navigating race, identity, and gentrification. Starring are Auberth Bercy (She Persisted) as Uriel, Naomi Lorrain (Behind the Sheet, Entangled) as Maxine, Vince Nappo (The Merchant of Venice) as Grant, Christopher B. Portley (American Prophet: Frederick Douglass in His Own Words)as Trey, Stacey Sargeant (for colored girls...) as Dejani/Doctor, and Shaunette Renée Wilson (The Resident, Billions) as AJ in her New York stage debut.
Christopher B Portley
Where the shows shines brightest is in the moments when the characters actually perform, as if in concerts. ... Taylor Blackman as Raymon was the smooth love interest in Tina's early life. His duet "Let's Stay Together" was tenderly sung and a time when song and lyrics truly fit the plot.
Taylor Blackman
Composer, music director, and orchestrator Anessa Marie presents an evening of music from A First Glimpse of Light, a semi-autobiographical new musical telling the story of a 32 year old trans actress as she prepares for gender confirmation surgery in New York City. Featuring a cast of voices of varying identities that is majority transgender and gender nonconforming, performing a jazz-influenced score with sweeping piano, a 5-piece band, and lush harmony, this evening promises to be a celebration of relationships with others and ourselves. Directed by Dev Bondarin, with music direction by James Rushin.
Bianca Leigh
The Acting Company's national tours of The Three Musketeers and Romeo and Juliet begin performances at the Queens Theater in New York City October 13. Performed in repertory, the shows run at the Queens borough venue through October 16 before making Manhattan premieres November 11-27 at the New Victory Theater.
Starring in the company are Toree Alexandre, Zoe Anastassiou, Edwin Brown III, Darius Deon, Sam Encarnación, Max Antonio Gonzalez, Ty Camren Hawthorne, Travis Raeburn, Christopher Then, William Oliver Watkins, Eunice Woods, and Caro Zeller.
Toree Alexandre
Ensemble Studio Theatre (EST) has announced complete casting for the 38th Marathon of One-Act Plays, which will be fully comprised of work from artists who identify as Black, Indigenous & People of Color (BIPOC).
Ashley Marie Ortiz
ROME, N.Y. – AJ Dyer, a 2018 graduate from Notre Dame High School in Utica, has landed a role in the fifth installment of the "Insidious" movie series.
Dyer says his obsession with acting started in 2017 after getting a role in the production of "Pippen.” He says while his nerves were very high, so was his excitement during his first ever live stage performance.
AJ Dyer
More than 400 years after Shakespeare first premiered the classic "Much Ado About Nothing," the Denver Center for the Performing Arts is preparing to unveil its modern take on the tale. The show, which opens at the DCPA at the end of September, combines comedy, romance, music and dancing in a way that will help modern theatergoers better experience Shakespeare.
Gerrard James
Off-Broadway's Ars Nova and PlayCo will present Melis Aker's Hound Dog at Greenwich House Theater to kick off its 20th anniversary season. The world premiere will begin previews October 6, ahead of its October 24 opening night, with a run scheduled through November 5.
Starring in the cast will be Olivia AbiAssi, Ashley Baier, Ellena Eshraghi, Mel Hsu, Matt Magnusson, Sahar Milani, Laith Nakli, Jonathan Raviv, and Maya Sharpe.
Ellena Eshraghi
ONCE UPON A (korean) TIME further cements Ma-Yi Theater's commitment to producing work that challenges both artists and audiences against ideas of what Asian American theater should be about."
The cast for ONCE UPON A (korean) TIME includes Sonnie Brown, Sasha Diamond, David Lee Huynh, Teresa Avia Lim, Jon Norman Schneider, David Shih, and Jillian Sun with Daniel K. Isaac and Sami Ma serving as understudies.
David Lee Huynh
American Prophet: Frederick Douglass in His Own Words will open this summer at Arena Stage. Powered by Frederick Douglass' own speeches and writings, American Prophet is created by Charles Randolph-Wright (Trouble in Mind) and Grammy Award winner Marcus Hummon ("Bless the Broken Road"). Randolph-Wright directs with choreography by Lorna Ventura and music direction, orchestrations, and additional arrangements by Joseph Joubert.
Christopher B Portley
Barrington Stage Company has announced casting for Nilo Cruz's 2003 Pulitzer Prize-winning play Anna in the Tropics, on the Boyd-Quinson Stage July 16-30, and the world premiere of ABCD by May Treuhaft-Ali, on the St. Germain Stage July 1-23.
Toree Alexandre, Brandon St. Clair
The final production in Clubbed Thumb's 25th Annual Summerworks line-up, Bodies They Ritual by Angela Hanks begins its run June 22. The show will close out the festival, running since May 20 at The Wild Project, with performances finishing July 2.
Jacqueline Guillén
Last fall, GTG returned to live, in person performance with this acclaimed revival of Mrs. Warren's Profession starring Tony® Award winner Karen Ziemba as Mrs. Warren, Robert Cuccioli, David Lee Huynh, Alvin Keith, Nicole King, and Raphael Nash Thompson, which enjoyed an acclaimed Off-Broadway engagement at Theatre Row, directed by Mr. Staller. The design team included Brian Prather, scenic design; Asa Benally, costumes; Jamie Roderick, lighting; and Frederick Kennedy, sound.
David Lee Huynh
Djanet Sears' provocative play Harlem Duet joins the Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival's 33rd Season in Sen?"ákw/Vanier Park. The Bard premiere of Harlem Duet runs on the Howard Family Stage in the Douglas Campbell Theatre for a limited engagement from June 15 to July 17, 2022.
Marsha Regis
Portland Stage closes its 2021-2022 season with a new play with music that is really a chamber opera, SABINA, about the pioneer in psychoanalysis, the muse and lover of Carl Jung and colleague of Sigmund Freud, Sabina Spielrein. Sabina's story from Jung's catatonic patient to medical student and respected doctor in the turbulent years leading up to WWII is a fascinating one, filled with history and hope.
SARAH ANNE FERNANDEZ
Bodies They Ritual will star Jacqueline Guillen (Man Cave), Mahira Kakkar (7 Minutes), April Matthis (HELP), Emily Cass McDonnell (The Antipodes), Keilly McQuail (Lunch Bunch), Lizan Mitchell (On Sugarland), with more casting to be announced. Performances run June 22-July 2.
Jacqueline Guillén
What is great acting? We can see it here and now at the Shakespeare Theatre Company. John Douglas Thompson, anointed by the New York Times as “perhaps the greatest Shakespeare interpreter in contemporary America,” is giving a great performance as Shylock in STC’s The Merchant of Venice, and it is not to be missed.
David Lee Huynh
Stories about the creative process — much like the creative process itself — can be tricky. Characters are often reduced to tropes of tortured geniuses or idealized muses. At worst, stories about creative people feel like an excuse for the writer to vent about how misunderstood they are.
Toree Alexandre
Lauded and beloved by fans around the globe as one of the world’s best-selling music artists in history and one of the most successful entertainers of all time, with an unsurpassed number of awards and 39 titles in the Guinness Book of World Records to his name (including the most philanthropic pop star on earth), Michael Jackson is now the subject of the all-new Broadway jukebox, dance, and bio-musical MJ at the Neil Simon Theatre.
John Edwards
In a program note for cullud wattah, Erika Dickerson-Despenza's devastating new drama about the impact of the Flint water crisis on an intergenerational household of Black women, the playwright welcomes audiences to "participate both physically and audibly." At this neo-Greek tragedy about an American travesty, gasps and tears complete the experience.
Lauren Walker
According to the Small Business Association, more than 13 million businesses are owned by women. The theater industry is no exception, with women entrepreneurs rapidly appearing, meshing their skill sets with their love of the stage.
For ChiChi Anyanwu, she got hooked on theater when she and her sister, award-winning playwright Ngozi Anyanwu, began performing in summer musical programs. She found her way to the casting side through an internship with McCarter Theater Center in New Jersey.
Years later, Anyanwu realized her strengths lay in talent management. Like so many in the industry, Anyanwu was laid off in March 2020, and she was faced with an unknown future. “There are not a lot of opportunities for talent management in New York because it’s a smaller market,” Anyanwu says. “I was wondering, ‘Should I go to grad school or do something outside of management?’”
Founder ChiChi Anyanwu
FEINSTEIN'S/54 BELOW, Broadway's Supper Club, will present Sarah Anne Fernandez in Now What? on December 12, 2021 at 9:45 PM. Sarah returns to Feinstein's/54 Below after flying across the country by broom as the Elphaba u/s on the national tour of Wicked, fulfilling her ultimate life-long dream and marking her as one of the youngest girls to don the green paint and witch hat in the show's history. So... now what? How do you top your ultimate dream?
SARAH ANNE FERNANDEZ
Read about her journey, how it’s been after launching her own company, and about the changes she wants to see when the theatre industry is able to return fully from the pandemic.
Founder ChiChi Anyanwu
All events take place on Ars Nova Supra, a streaming platform from Ars Nova that showcases some of New York City's most promising emerging artists and currently serves as the online home for the majority of Ars Nova presentations.
Bianca Leigh
We talk with talent manager and entrepreneur ChiChi Anyanwu about her game-changing experience at the McCarter Theatre, the origin story of creating her own management company, and the important three C-words that inform her work with her clients.
Founder ChiChi Anyanwu
CBS’s FBI is taking a three-week break between new episodes and will return on March 2, 2021 with season three episode seven. Directed by Carlos Bernard from a script by Andy Callahan, episode seven finds the team hunting for a shooter.
Episode seven guest stars include James Vincent Meredith, Narci Regina, Alex Morf, Kate Villanova, Benja K. Thomas, and Kate MacCluggage. Alex Michael Stoll, Anne-Marie Cusson, Marsha Regis, Douglas Rees, Daniel Martin, and Joshua James Dye also guest star.
Marsha Regis
STORRS, CT – Connecticut Repertory Theatre (CRT) continues its 2020-21 virtual season with Pericles, Prince of Tyre by William Shakespeare, directed by Raphael Massie. All performances will be presented online, beginning on Thursday evening February 25 at 7:30pm, and continuing through Sunday, March 7 at 2:00pm.
Two AEA actors have been cast in this production. CRT is pleased to announce that Damien Thompson has taken the role of Pericles and Lauren Walker will play Diana and Gower.
Lauren Walker
Since its official launch on January 23, 2020, the Broadway Women's Alliance has developed into a legitimate and thriving enterprise.
Over the past year, BWA has hosted numerous salons, seminars, happy hours and networking events, creating a tight- knit community of women from all corners of show business, unified in the cause of empowering and advancing female professionals on Broadway and beyond."
Founder ChiChi Anyanwu
"FBI's“ Clean Slate” – As the team searches for a young girl who was kidnapped from a cabin during a family vacation, they discover that the abduction may be tied to a skeleton in her family’s closet.
Also, Maggie questions her relationship with Nestor when she learns he hasn’t been completely honest with her, on FBI, Tuesday, Jan. 26 (9:00-10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.
Taylor Blackman
After taking this huge leap of faith, to start my own talent management company during a pandemic, I was ecstatic to find out I was a recipient of the American Express & IFundWomen of Color “100 for 100” program. This program will provide me with funding and 100 days of educational resources, which is invaluable as a new entrepreneur.
Founder ChiChi Anyanwu
The Williamstown Theatre Festival season on Audible continues with the world premiere of Chonburi International Hotel & Butterfly Club by Shakina Nayfack. It is available December 29 within the Audible Plus catalog. Nayfack also stars alongside a cast that includes nine actors of trans experience. The complete company features Ivory Aquino, Kate Bornstein (Straight White Men), Liz Lark Brown, Samy Figaredo, Annie Golden (The Full Monty, Violet), Bianca Leigh, Telly Leung (Allegiance, In Transit), Dana Aliya Levinson, Pooya Mohseni, Angelica Ross (Pose), Ita Segev, and Jason Tam (Be More Chill).
Bianca Leigh
When ChiChi Anyanwu launched her new company Chi Talent Management, a couple of things made her new shingle stand out. For one thing: She launched it in the middle of a pandemic, when most of the news coming out of the theater business, and the entertainment industry in general, was (and remains) pretty grim. And as she’s well aware, she’s one of the very few Black agents, managers or casting directors in the business — and setting up her own company, with a roster focused on diverse voices and talent, felt like an important step in an industry working toward making all aspects of the business more inclusive.
Founder ChiChi Anyanwu
I founded CHI Talent Management in May 2020, after 10 plus years working in talent representation in New York. Although I cannot control when the entertainment industry will be back to normal, I can control how I maintain a healthy work-life balance and manage my personal stress. I realized that working long hours on little sleep was burning me out, so I made an active decision to practice better self-care and make myself a priority again. “Put your oxygen mask on first,” and you will serve yourself and everyone around you better.
Founder ChiChi Anyanwu
Born out of the COVID-19 pandemic, CHI Talent Management aims to advise, guide, and empower a diverse array of talent in the entertainment industry. In the interview below, ChiChi shares her story about her company's launch, how she got started, her ideal client, diversity in the industry, advice for aspiring/current performers, and MUCH MORE!
Founder ChiChi Anyanwu
The Alliance Theatre has announced its 2020-21 season, featuring a mix of drive-in-movie-style productions, socially distanced shows, and a new streaming platform. Exact dates for the productions are still to be announced.
Nathan James
Anyanwu founded CHI after becoming out of work due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw employers around the world forced to furlough or layoff its workers. Prior to CHI, she spent 10 years in New York working at casting companies including Laura Stanczyk Casting and Finnegan/Keller Casting. In addition, she served as producer for the Now Africa: Playwrights Festival. Anyanwu’s clients have appeared in a variety of works, including the Broadway and national touring productions of Wicked, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Jesus Christ Superstar.
Founder ChiChi Anyanwu
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