McKenya Dilworth Smith

Activist, Artist, Connector, Educator/Teacher, Entrepreneur

Dilworth is an educator, community activist, youth advocate and creative. Her plays include KUL CHA (Signature Theatre in partnership with Negro Ensemble Company Dramatic Readings, New York City), In Defense of Jezebelle (United Kingdom, Hudawi Centre), The Press Conference & Homeboy’s A Terrorist (Purdue University Black Cultural Center) and Contemporary Scenes of Age-Old Ills (DC Black Theatre Festival, Battle Winner). Dilworth has performed and produced shows that she has written throughout the Midwest and internationally: including Belgium (Kairos Jeunesse) , Poland (Mirsk Festival) and England. She founded the Theatre of Purpose (TOP), a performance ensemble theatre, where she has practiced regularly in local jails (Lake County Work Release in Indiana), using techniques learned from her participation in Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed Workshops. Fluent in German and conversational Arabic, Dilworth uses her fascination with languages to create ways to use the arts in the pursuit of language mastery and acquisition. Honor graduate of Simpson College with undergraduates degrees in Theatre Arts and German, Masters of Education from University of Phoenix and Doctoral Candidate in Organizational Management and Leadership, December 2021, Dilworth takes education seriously and still believes in its equalizing ability within American society. She is also an adjunct faculty member of Ivy Tech Community College (Valpo Campus) , teaching beginning and advanced German. As a creative, Dilworth has turned structures in Gary into small, intimate theatre, creative spaces and was the first to do so on Lake Street in 2005. Morning Bishop, her beloved departed mother, friend, mentor and confidant, was a trailblazer in the arts and keeping the arts and culture alive and thriving in Gary; and so she carries the torch, that torch onward into Gary’s bright, bright future.

I am passionate about creating and providing platforms for people and communities to become the best versions of themselves through positive, active progressive actionable planning and implementation.

REJUVENATION through INNOVATION-The Idea is to mobilize people to think about the resources available that can be used to improve their neighborhood, community, city. The operational definition of the resources is anything that can be recycled and/or up-cycled the benefit of improvement of the community. For example, we will take used tires and up-cycle them into park seats, trash cans and planters for teh purposes of beautifying the city's parks. We will take the trash of our city and transform it into treasures and in that process plant seeds of community buy in and ownership. DEMOCRATIC DRAMATIC DIALOGUE-The idea of teaching the art of exchanging ideas in this new age of alternative facts in three acts. The first act is the introduction of one's viewpoints starting with the claim and reasoning to strengthen that claim and also actively listening to opposing viewpoints or alternate claims and reasoning. Act 2 is the practicing of actively internalizing the opposing (alternate claims) viewpoint by restating what it is and how the speaker substantiated the claim. The rationale behind this exercise is simple. It is to reinforce the active listening skill of recording and regurgitation the key ideas and points of the opposing exchange of ideas. Act 3 is all about audience engagement or one could say the actual presentation of the original ideas (with potential deviations based on Act 2). This Act is especially important because the audience becomes actively involved in the act of idea formation into actionable plan. I have taken practices and ideals from the Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed to come up with this idea. MUSEUM MUSINGS is an idea of documenting Gary's history through soliciting everyday people to tell the stories of their families' migration to Gary (usually from the South), memories of Gary's hay day and stories of the historic people who frequented Gary. We would record stories of Gary's citizens and later develop a curriculum to be taught in schools of Gary's history.

ARTS integration, Community Organizing, Curriculum Development, Education, Organizational Managment, Programming

People do not know that I love to participate in Sports!