Connecting with the Community

By Grace DeWolff, Education Manager

Malaina Moore, our new Community Liaison, is a local playwright, actor, teaching artist and community advocate. While attending Rufus King High School, her one-act play THIS JUST IN… was one of three pieces selected city-wide for Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s Young Playwrights Festival. While working on her undergraduate degree at Marquette University (studying theatre with an emphasis in performance and a minor in social welfare and justice), her play WHITE PRIVILEGE was selected to perform at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF Region III) in January 2019 and also won a national Citizen Artist Award for its social justice impact from KCACTF. You may have seen Malaina recently as Lil’ Mama in STEW at Milwaukee Chamber Theatre or previously at Next Act in our virtual production of PRINCIPAL PRINCIPLE. You can see her at Next Act in our February-March production of PIPELINE.

“As Community Liaison, I want to help create a space for people of color and invoke conversations between people who don’t necessarily have the same backgrounds. I think that’s what makes theatre powerful; we’re coming together and we’re forced to reckon with the truth of whatever the story may be. Theatre teaches us so many lessons. I’m always thinking about what stories people have to tell and why those stories are important. It’s a way, especially in Milwaukee, to bring people together.”

-Malaina Moore