Kamilah Forbes is an American curator, producer, and director. She created and directed the Hip Hop Theater Festival from 2000 to 2016. She has held directing roles for television and theater productions such as Holler if Ya Hear Me, The Wiz Live!, and the 2014 revival of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. Forbes was named executive producer of the Apollo Theater in 2016.[1]
Early life and education
Forbes was born and raised in Chicago to Jamaican immigrant parents.[2] She attended Howard University with the intention of attending medical school but changed her major to theater to pursue acting.[2] While at Howard she met Chadwick Boseman and they collaborated on a play about their generation.[1]
Career
Theater
In 2000, Forbes wrote and directed Rhyme Deferred, a play that used a mythic fairy tale format to explore the existential nature of hip-hop.[3] That year, she also created the Hip Hop Theater Festival in 2000 citing the need to feature work created for and by her generation.[4] Forbes oversaw the development of the nonprofit called Hi-ARTS, which produces the festival.[5]
Forbes left Hi-ARTS in 2016[2] and became executive producer for Harlem's Apollo Theater that year.[2] She stated that her goal as director would be to preserve the heritage of the Black cultural institution,[6] and has made efforts to add a diversity of Black art to the Apollo Theater's offerings.[7] In 2016, the Theater began hosting the New York premiere of the annual Women of the World Festival.[8]
Forbes was one of 300 signatories of a public letter directed at addressing systemic racism in American theater, along with others such as Sandra Oh, Sterling K. Brown, and Viola Davis.[9] The letter was released in June 2020, in the aftermath of the George Floyd protests.[9]
Forbes is set to direct the Broadway musical Soul Train based on the variety television series, which was originally scheduled to be released in 2021,[10] but due to COVID-19 production delays, is now scheduled for a fall 2022 debut.[11]
TV and film
Forbes has directed and produced several television productions that center the intersection of Black narratives and music. She produced the HBO television series Def Poetry Jam (2002) and Brave New Voices, PBS's The Women's List,[2] and was associate director for NBC's The Wiz Live![6]