Mukwae Wabei Siyolwe is the director of development at Afropop Worldwide™ and co-host of Planet Afropop. She is a cultural curator and learning strategist focusing on change management. She has a BA in Acting (Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London), an MA in Performance Studies (New York University), an MA in Producing Film and Video (American), and an MFA in Film and Digital Technology (Chatham).
A member of Actors´ Equity and British Equity Collecting Society, her credits in film, theatre, opera, and musicals include co-starring with Denzel Washington in the Oscar™ nominated film Cry Freedom (Attenborough, Universal), Nuns on the Run (Handmade Films), King, A Musical Testimony (Picadilly Theatre), School for Scandal and To Kill a Mockingbird (Birmingham Repertory Theatre, UK), The Crossing: Scene 1968-1977 (BBC), King David (Bach Choir), Mass (Barbican Center), Constant Star (Pittsburgh City Theatre), Slide Glide the Slippery Slope (Chosky Theatre), A Midsummer Nights Dream (Quantum Theatre), On the Beach (Pittsburgh Playhouse), Keepers of the Dream (Pittsburgh City Theatre) and many more.
Directing credits include The Island and And the Girls in Their Sunday Dresses (Pittsburgh City Theatre) Voted Best of Pittsburgh, Joys of War (Helms Theatre), Innacity (Hipollo Theatre), and plays for children and youth include Choices, A radio series (Namibia Broadcasting Corporation), Unfair Justice (August Wilson Center), Jabberwacky World and many others. Composer and vocalist credits include Stand Your Ground on the album Two and a Half Years produced by Robert Hodge and Tierney Malone featuring Robert Glasper (Tidal, Soundcloud, iTunes), and the single Mama Afrika produced by Emmy™ winning Emmai Allaquiva and collaborations of voice work for AWC. Her camera and editing credits are many and include Wade in the Water/Kuomboka, a collaboration with Haitian American composer Daniel Bernard Roumain funded by the Heinz Endowments, Pittsburgh Foundation and Fundación Legorreta Hernández. This show will tour Mexico in 2024 through her non-profit global posse productions, inc. Short-form video content includes kinetic texts, animated digital landscapes and digital haiku.
A Sundance Fellow with the South African Screenwriters Lab (SCRAWL)she has written several screenplays, stage plays, and adaptations from novels.
Mukwae is a journalist and contributor to afropop and reviews, articles, and blogs for ITVS and Paris-based peer-reviewed journal on African Art and Design, Afrikaada.
Her scholarly profile as a professor of Theatre Arts at Towson University, University of Namibia, The Norwegian Theatre Academy, Østfold University College reflects exploring Orature (African
spiritual and performative practices), to engage the public to redefine
representation and citizenship. This informs her work in social
policy and advocacy as a diplomat with Unrepresented Nations and
Peoples Organization (UNPO), Brussels, and the Chairperson General of
the Barotse National Freedom Alliance (BNFA). She is the recipient of multiple awards including a Virginia Hero and Tazama Heshima Lifetime Achievement Award for her contributions to Women in African Cinema. She is featured in the book published by Africa World Press, Inc. Sisters of the Screen: Women of Africa on Film, Video and Television, by Beti Ellerson as well as Staging New Britain: Aspects of Black and South Asian British Theatre Practice edited by Geoffrey V. Davis, Anne Fuchs.
