Keli

Keli Stewart (Poet/Playwright/Performer)Keli Stewart is a writer, performance artist, and educator based in Western Massachusetts. Born and raised on the Westside of Chicago, Stewart attended Columbia College where she received a B.A in Creative Writing. Currently, she is a doctoral student in Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.While in Chicago, Ms. Stewart honed her performance talents early on as an ensemble member of TeenStreet Theater, a division of FreeStreet Programs. She performed in Mad Joy and BoOom! Mad Joy subsequently was performed at the Steppenwolf Theater and was part of the ensemble's European Tour. She has also been cast in For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Wuz Enuf, The Grandmama Tree, Body Politics and most recently Lydia On The Top Floor with New World Theater. Keli has taught theater to community youth and served as Senior Apprentice Artist with Gallery 37 Chicago, as well as with the Chicago Park District's "Park Kids" in conjunction with Free Street Theater's Arts Literacy program. Professionally she also has had the opportunity to work with the Youth Theater Coalition of Chicago.Her work has been published in Hairtrigger, Echo Magazine, Slipstream, South Loop Review, Body Politics Anthology 2004-6, and upcoming publications of Warpland, Meridians, Letters To Our Fathers and Drum Voices. Her play "House of Forks and Knives" received the Douglas Turner Ward/Alice Childress Scriptwriting Prize. "House" had its debut at the WORD! Multicultural Theater Festival in 2007 and will begin a national tour Fall 2007.She also has been a part of Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA.Over the last four years Keli Stewart has been an ensemble member of Body Politics, and commissioned as its director for the last two. Body Politics is an original production about women of color and body image and has been performed in conjunction with the Women of Color Leadership Network at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. "House of Forks and Knives", Ms. Stewart's debut theater piece was started as an excerpt she performed in Body Politics 2004. "House of Forks and Knives" is her autobiographical work about surviving physical violence and reclaiming identity.I edited my profile with Thomas' Myspace Editor V4.4A IMG{ border-style:none;