Andrea Ambam is a performance artist and writer whose roots sprout from Cameroon. As a politically-engaged artist who believes in the art’s potential for movement-building and transformative justice, Andrea puts narrative to use – creating theatrical experiences that world bend and record truth.
photo credit: Lexi Webster Photography
Currently, Andrea is the Director of Programming at Level Forward, where she curates and produces story-driven/impact-minded events, and hosts the Anthem Award-winning third space and podcast More To Talk About. She has developed her multi-hyphenated artistic practice as a New York Theatre Workshop 2050 Artistic Fellow, Playwrights Realm Writing Fellow, a Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX) Artist-In-Residence, an Artistic Fellow with Signature Theatre, a Writing As Activism Fellow with PEN America, an Artivism Fellow with Broadway Advocacy Coalition (BAC), an Artist-in-Residence for Anna Deavere Smith, an EmergeNYC Fellow, and as a competitive public speaker/performer where she was been awarded 10 national championships including "Top Speaker in the Nation'' three times, and gone on to debate conservative pundits on live TV.
As a performer, writer, and facilitator, she’s worked with Broadway Advocacy Coalition, Level Forward, Harlem9, Classical Theatre of Harlem, gal-dem, Abrons Arts Center, NYU Prison Education Program, NYU Verbatim Performance Lab, and others. Her plays include: Twelve Angry Black Women, Fragile State (Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference Semifinalist, Rattlestick Van Lier Fellowship Semifinalist), R(estoration) I(n) P(rogress) (NYU Educational Theatre/Provincetown Playhouse 2023, ANPF Semifinalist 2021), Rehearsing Justice: A One-Woman Show (Presentations with BAX 2022 & BAC 2021), and Angelina Weld Grimke (Classical Theatre of Harlem/Playbill, Broadway Podcast Network).
Andrea lives in Brooklyn where the rent is too damn high and holds a Master’s degree in Art & Public Policy from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.