How this Durham native is changing the face of local theater

The vision for the Black Ops Theatre Company is very simple: to create a space for black artists who want to take on theater arts as a profession, to explore, meet people, and live unapologetically.  JaMeeka Holloway-Burrell, the Founder of the Black Ops Theatre Company, is a Durham native. She attended Durham School of the Arts and North Carolina Central University.  After graduating college, she left her hometown a handful of times to pursue different opportunities.  She moved back from New York City in 2013.  

After coming back, she’d go see shows around the area and realized she didn't identify with many of the stories out there.  Creating more relatable stories was the impetus for starting Black Ops.  For her, looking for more fringe work for black artists and for them to be able to act in complex storylines and narratives is incredibly important.  Starting a theater company has always been a goal for her.  She felt the theater scene in Durham was thriving, and thusly, fertile ground to start the company.

JaMeeka lists a few people as her inspirations. Dr. Barbara Ann Teer started the first revenue-generating theater company in the country. That’s also one of JaMeeka’s goals. She wants to have an amalgamation of artists can come in and exist and thrive freely.  The only prerequisite is being black.

You might have seen news about the Bull City Black Theatre Festival. This year was the festival’s inaugural year.  When asked her proudest moment JaMeeka recounts, “I was really grateful that we had seven or eight workshop instructors that were all local black artists that committed to doing this without requiring any set form of compensation.  I think that says a lot about how people see Black Ops, that people were willing to give their time.  In the end, I was able to put something in people’s hand.”  She is planning for the festival’s return in 2018.  Other upcoming projects include a pop-up reading series where black playwrights will get to have their work heard, maybe in a beauty parlor or another culturally relevant communal gathering.

Learn more about JaMeeka on her website! 

From Jameeka Holloway-Burell