About Marie Casimir | Djaspora Productions

photo by Day Still

photo by Day Still

I make artistic work and community-based programming through an Afro-diasporic lens.

“The dyaspora are people who have their feet planted in both worlds” - Jean Dominique

Bio

Marie Casimir is a Haitian-American interdisciplinary artist, producer, writer, and lecturer. Her practice is rooted in improvised movement, set choreography, and performative text. She claims Theatrical Jazz as a performance lineage and creates work that straddles the body's multiple cultures, languages, and ancestral memories. She is the recipient of a  Ragdale Artist Fellowship, OneLove Nola Residency, SixTwelve Artist in Residence, and a National Performance Network Mobility Grant. Casimir’s work has been featured at Links Hall, Constellation, Chicago Home Theater Festival, Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, The Music Box Village, Neustadt Literary Festival at the University of Oklahoma, and more.  She has collaborated artistically with many artists, including Sharon Bridgforth, Meida McNeal, Michael Zerang, Joe Mcphee, Lara Oppenheimer, Charles Rumbach, Crystal Sabbagh. 

Casimir is committed to creating and organizing bold new works and placing artists of color at the center. She is the founder and Director of Djaspora Productions, a company producing the development and presentation of interdisciplinary arts and cultural exchanges connecting artists of color both locally and globally; Co-founder and producer of the Instigation Festival, a week-long festival of improvised music and dance in both Chicago and New Orleans; and the Producing Partner for Black Arts Retreat. Casimir is a Lecturer in the Clara Luper African & African American Studies Dept. at the University of Oklahoma and has served as the Communications and Associate Director of Links Hall (Chicago). She earned her B.A in Journalism from Ithaca College and M.A. from North Park University in Non-Profit Administration. 

*Pulbished works

Met Fanm Sou Ou, WorldLiteratureToday.org The Piece bean before you were born...Take a Nap, Links Hall 40th Anniversary Essay Series

In the Making, a response that has nothing and everything to due with performance, ImaginedTheaters.com

Contemporary Women of The African Diaspora: Identity, Artistic Expression & Activism, Ebony Imad Dallas, Marie Casimir, Dr. Jeanette Davidson, African American Studies Volume 2, Dr. Jeanette Davidson, Edinburgh University Press