Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony?
TaNisha Fordham has your EGOT right here.
“I ain’t waiting to be counted,” she announces in her new show. “For you to pick me? I’m not waiting to get free.”
The writer, director, actor and producer isn’t hoping to be “discovered,” or holding for applause. Fordham passionately raps the praises of seizing the moment in what she describes as a “hip-hop neo-soul-funk-gospel musical.”
“I’m finally peeping the secret, the key,” she declares in “Tanisha Fordham’s Snatch Yo’ Free,” premiering July 22 in Newark. “I ain’t waiting on nothing except me. I don’t need no approval to pick up my pen. I don’t need no one else. I can simply begin.”
But Fordham, 34, already has two feet planted on Broadway. She’s associate director of the five-time Tony-winning revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “Company.”
The final performance of that show — her first Broadway show — will be July 31, but Fordham isn’t slowing down. Her Newark production of “Snatch Yo’ Free,” staged outside with free performances at Mulberry Commons park across from the Prudential Center in downtown Newark, continues with Friday performances through Aug. 12.
For weeks, she has managed the demands of both shows. Just after July 4, Fordham postponed an interview about “Snatch Yo’ Free” because of an emergency. She had to head back into the city — one of the “Company” actors had tested positive for the coronavirus.
But Fordham is always up to the task, because why stand still?
As for awards, the show where she works was not only feted with Tonys, but she has also, in fact, come close to an Oscar. However, the Bloomfield resident tells NJ Advance Media that “Snatch Yo’ Free” is all about “not waiting.”
Because if she waited for someone to give her a microphone, maybe what she had to say would never be said.
“It felt so universal,” says Fordham, the only Black member of the “Company” directing team.
Her experiences as a Black creator are foundational to the story in her musical.
“The themes are very specific to me being a young Black woman and my journey through being a young Black girl and a young Black teen and a young Black college student,” she says.
But those same details help her relay a global message.
“Because it’s so specific, that’s what makes it very accessible to people who maybe don’t have the same experience as me,” Fordham says.
“I don’t want things to be niche,” the director says. “I honestly really do believe this is for every group.”
“Snatch Yo’ Free” is premiering in Newark, but the project was born on Broadway.
Fordham adapted the musical and its rhymes from her “poetic narrative” book “TaNisha Fordham the EGOT,” published in June.
She started writing in the back of the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre between “Company” rehearsals and during breaks between matinees and evening shows.
“Man, this is gonna be a great story one day,” she remembers thinking.
Tony and Grammy-winning “Company” actor Katrina Lenk (”Ozark”), who plays Bobbie, the lead in the show — “the coolest, dopest, nicest soul in the whole entire world,” Fordham says of the performer — was keen to provide feedback on her manuscript as though it were Broadway-bound and she had a starring role.
TaNisha Fordham and the "Snatch Yo' Free" cast prepare for the show, which will be staged outside in Mulberry Commons in downtown Newark.John Jones | For NJ Advance Media
“Ultimately, that’s what gave me the kind of courage and chutzpah to just, like, do the thing,” says Fordham, who arrived in New Jersey five years ago via Arizona, Los Angeles and North Carolina.
But her first home was in Buffalo, New York, where she grew up in a family of educators, including her mother Pamela Fordham, the first Black teacher in Amherst, New York; her grandmother Freddie Mae Fordham, who taught third through fifth grade and functioned as “a mother of the village,” she says; and her grandfather Monroe Fordham, who was a professor at SUNY Buffalo State College.
Fordham started performing as a child. In high school, she won gold awards for oratory and written performance from the NAACP’s ACT-SO (Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics) competition. She majored in journalism and professional theater at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, a historically Black college in Greensboro, graduating in 2009.
Fordham says her family served as an example of what was possible, and she credits her college experience with giving her the drive to realize her artistic visions even when she didn’t have the money, staff or venues that she wanted.
Tony winners Patti LuPone, left, and Katrina Lenk, center, in December on the opening night of the Tony-winning revival of "Company" at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre. Lenk gave TaNisha Fordham feedback as she crafted what would become "Snatch Yo' Free."John Lamparski | Getty Images
Musical expression and lyricism is at the heart of “Snatch Yo’ Free.” Fordham’s creativity was nurtured from childhood by wide-ranging influences — jazz, classical, gospel, country and hip-hop among them. She has long gravitated to Jersey’s own Lauryn Hill, who “made it cool to be a girl and to not have to be sexual to be powerful and impactful and worth listening to,” she says.
Today, Fordham also connects with the music of Jon Batiste, the five-time Grammy winner from Louisiana whose “We Are” won album of the year in 2022; Maverick City Music, a Christian collective from Atlanta; and Nigerian American Houston hip-hop artist Tobe Nwigwe and his wife, who performs as Fat.
“It’s loud and it’s big and they scream on the tracks,” Fordham says of Nwigwe. “The beat is dizzying and it is enticing and it draws you in. And it is unabashedly, unashamedly Black.”
After she earned her master’s degree in professional leadership from Northeastern University, the director and her husband, Robert Alston, moved to Los Angeles, where Fordham wanted to feel out the film industry. The experience didn’t yield the best results — they moved before spending a year there — but it did help her make an important connection.
After she left LA, director Kevin Wilson Jr., a college friend who Fordham got close to while living there, invited her to be a co-producer on the short film “My Nephew Emmett.” In 2018, the film about the 1955 murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till received an Oscar nomination for best live action short.
TaNisha Fordham rehearses with the cast of 'Snatch Yo' Free' at KIPP Newark Collegiate Academy. John Jones | For NJ Advance Media
Fordham has continued to work on both theater and film projects through her production company, Enlightened Visions. She’s in post-production on a narrative feature film, “Go Black Boy; Fly,” which follows five brothers living in Newark whose mother takes them on a bike ride from New Jersey to North Carolina.
“It’s a beautiful film about Black boys just doing all the things that you don’t ever get to see Black boys doing,” Fordham says of the movie, filmed in Newark and Irvington and at Watchung and South Mountain reservations.
In 2021, she released a documentary called “Queen” at the Pan African Film Festival. The film, which won an award for most inspirational documentary at the International Christian Film Festival, is about women of color in the pageant world. In order to film what it’s like for contestants, Fordham entered the Mrs. New Jersey United States pageant — and ended up winning the 2019 title.
It was trauma, not tiaras, that first brought Fordham to Jersey.
She previously lived in Chandler, Arizona. For five months, she owned and operated a Tempe theater, The Light Space.
“I started struggling really terribly with anxiety,” Fordham says.
Besides Robert — her husband of 13 years and then an electrical engineer at Intel — she was far from family. The couple had put $14,000 into renovating the venue, but made the decision to move closer to home.
Fordham sent out applications to various places and was hired as a theater teacher at KIPP Newark Collegiate Academy. Robert got a job at Picatinny Arsenal in Morris County.
“I had never thought of living in Newark before. But we just stepped out on faith,” she says with a laugh. “It ended up being one of the best moves of my life. I don’t think I could see myself living anywhere else in the tri-state.”
"Snatch Yo' Free" stars TaNisha Fordham, Rahbert Britt and Donna Glaesener. The Newark show is being co-produced by the the city. John Jones | For NJ Advance Media
“It’s just the perfect hub of all the things that I love,” she says. “It’s got beautiful people. There’s so much potential. There’s so much history ... It’s a community that really is people-forward, and if you invest in the people and get to know the people and build and do life with the people, the city very much does that for you as well.”
“Jersey has just done something to me,” Fordham says. “I can only show up and be who I am. And I think that there was a time, particularly in Arizona, where there was so much of me that wanted to appease everyone ... That kind of made me ineffective at being effective for anyone.”
Newark is co-producing “Snatch Yo’ Free” and providing financial support for Fordham’s work.
Last year, she launched the city’s Theater in the Park program by helming a four-weekend run of “12 Mo’ Angry Men” at Mulberry Commons. In the show, Fordham’s timely reimagining of Reginald Rose’s “12 Angry Men,” 11 Black jurors and one white juror consider the case of a white cop who shot and killed a 16-year-old Black child.
“It was a hard piece to do,” Fordham says.
At the end of each show, there was a talkback and ballots were distributed so members of the audience could give their own verdict.
“It was tremendous because every night the vote was split,” she says.
Word-of-mouth worked its magic.
“By the time we did the last event, we had more than doubled our attendance from the first show,” Fordham says.
The play then debuted off off Broadway at New York’s Teatro LATEA. Rose’s son came to see the show, which the director calls a grassroots project, one filled with students and staff from her school.
"Company" director Marianne Elliott accepts the 2022 Tony for best direction of a musical. As associate director, TaNisha Fordham checks in regularly with Elliott.Theo Wargo | Getty Images
Not long after Fordham’s off off Broadway moment, she made her Broadway debut.
She had been applying to different fellowships and apprenticeships while serving as artistic director at Newark Collegiate Academy, where live productions had been limited by COVID-19 safety measures. Fordham submitted an application to the Black Theatre Coalition, a nonprofit founded in 2019 to address systemic racism in theater spaces and a lack of opportunities for Black theater professionals. Its mission of “removing the illusion of inclusion” appealed to Fordham.
Nearly a year passed before she got a call from the coalition. Fordham thought the person on the line was talking about a Broadway company, not the “Company.” But the interview would be the very next day.
When Tony-winning director Marianne Elliott, who mounted the “Company” revival on London’s West End before Broadway, got on the Zoom call, Fordham was very confused. Eventually, it hit her. Now she’s glad the little mixup prevented her from being a nervous wreck during the conversation.
“If I had known, I probably would have been losing my mind,” Fordham says.
In September, on her 34th birthday, she received the call for “Company,” a musical about a woman turning 35. She got the job.
Today, Fordham has weekly check-ins with Elliott, who won her fourth Tony in June for directing the gender-swapped revival of Sondheim’s 1970 show (lead role Bobby is now a woman named Bobbie, among other changes). The director went back home to London about a week after “Company” opened in December 2021 following a nearly two-year delay because of the pandemic shutdown. Fordham serves as Elliott’s eyes and ears, making sure everything aligns with her vision.
“Company” won the Tony for best revival of a musical, while Broadway superstar Patti LuPone, who plays Joanne, won best featured actress in a musical, and Matt Doyle, who plays Jamie, won best featured actor in a musical.
Fordham leads rehearsals, gives actors notes on anything that needs tightening from show to show and works with understudies, who have played a large part in sustaining the production through the pandemic. When Broadway’s mask mandate — which LuPone famously had to enforce from the “Company” stage — was lifted, Fordham worked with a choreographer to restage part of the show where actors walk into the audience. She has also been a liaison between actors and TV productions during televised appearances, including the Tony Awards.
This past spring, Fordham also served as assistant director of the off Broadway play “SuperHero,” about a Black family living in the Manhattanville projects of Harlem in the ’80s and a boy who fantasizes about having superpowers. The show was directed by Warren Adams, co-founder of the Black Theatre Coalition.
In May, she was named the first recipient of the coalition’s American Express directing fellowship, which provides a $50,000 salary and opportunity to have a hand in developing a Broadway show.
Fordham’s transition to Broadway directly inspired “Snatch Yo’ Free.”
“It was the first time that I got to see artists who are working at this high level of artistry, and yet, the craziest part to me was like, ‘Man, the people that I work with every day in the city of Newark are just as talented,’” she says. “It was at that point that I really wanted to tell this specific story.”
“Who knows?” Fordham says. “Somebody may come see this show and a producer may come up to me and say, ‘Hey, let’s do a Broadway run or let’s do an off Broadway run.’ But you know what? I don’t want to wait for that, and I don’t want to bank on that.”
After all, she says, Newark is right here, ready to hear her voice.
“We have to do it now, and we can’t be asking for permission,” Fordham says, the urgency building in her voice. “Because we have the talent, and we have the message that deserves to be heard. So we just have to kind of do it.”
“The world may not give you a treasure, a trophy,” she raps in the show. “The world may not get you’re ahead of your time. Too far ahead is treated as crime, but way out ahead is paving the way. And way out ahead despite what they say is what changed the world. That’s a fact. I’m leaving that ... there ain’t no rhyming for that.”
Fordham began writing the show after a troubling conversation with a co-worker where she felt disrespected.
“In that moment, my humanity wasn’t honored,” she says.
Fordham left that exchange with a desire to write something to remind herself of her value ... and others of theirs.
“It felt so different than much of what I’ve written up to this point because it was my own story,” Fordham says.
She took inspiration from her elementary school days, from those closest to her and from conversations she had with students.
“Your hair is beautiful,” she’d tell them. “You may not see that in the media, and you may not see that in the news, and you may not see that on social media, but it is, and you are enough.”
Fordham glows with pride about one of her former students, “Snatch Yo’ Free” assistant director Phaedra Foreman, who subbed in for her to lead rehearsals at Newark Collegiate Academy.
“She’s literally almost half my age, and she’s directing a show that’s going to be seen by probably thousands of people,” she says.
Foreman, 18, a recent graduate of the school, serves as Fordham’s artistic assistant.
“She really believes in you in a way that you don’t even think to believe in yourself,” Foreman says. “It makes you want to pour into her as much as you can just because of how much she pours into everybody around her ... I wouldn’t have done half of the things I’ve done today if it weren’t for her.”
"TaNisha’s the kind of person that is super hard to say no to," says Alayna Miller, seen here rehearsing for "Snatch Yo' Free." In the show, the school principal is dancing for the first time in 10 years.John Jones | For NJ Advance Media
Social media networks like Instagram and TikTok may urge comparisons, she says, but the musical shifts the focus to love of self. The message: “That people should be unapologetically them,” Foreman says. “Whatever that is, however that is, they should believe fully in that and practice it with everything in them.”
The show’s stage manager is Rescue Poetix, poet laureate of Jersey City, who Fordham calls an “impeccable” community builder. Members of The Lab Sisterz, a young dance group, bring their authentic moves to a Jersey Club scene.
Alayna Miller, assistant principal at KIPP SPARK Academy in Newark, performs several different roles alongside Fordham in “Snatch Yo’ Free.” She hadn’t danced in 10 years when she joined the show, and acting was an unrealized dream when she was cast in the New York production of “12 Mo’ Angry Men.”
Fordham gave her the push she needed.
“She’s such a dynamic person, just her spirit and who she is, down to her core,” says Miller, 32. “TaNisha’s the kind of person that is super hard to say no to. She could ask me to do probably one of the most outlandish things possible, and I might say yes just because of how much she truly believes in what she’s asking of somebody — they’re capable of doing it.”
“TaNisha Fordham’s Snatch Yo’ Free” premieres Friday, July 22 at 7 p.m. at Mulberry Commons park across from the Prudential Center (between Mulberry and Columbia streets) in Newark (children and pets welcome, food trucks on site). Free admission. The show also runs Friday, July 29; Friday, August 5; and Friday, August 12 at Mulberry Commons park.
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Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com and followed at @AmyKup on Twitter.
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