Hilda Willis
Producer - Director - Performing Artist
Ms. Hilda Willis has been a performing artist since the age of 11 when she landed her first role with
the Children’s Theatre Company, a pre-professional company in Roanoke, Virginia. Ms. Willis
studied drama and sang in choirs all throughout junior high and high school. In her early years as an
artist, some of her most noted performances include the lead role in Trial By Jury (an operetta), A
Day To Remember, and as a featured soloist in the New Virginian’s. Voted “Most talented” of her
high school class, Ms. Willis participated in many other types of programs and projects that helped to
increase not only her artistic skills and abilities, but also her leadership skills. They include winning
the Roanoke Miss Black Teenage Pageant and first runner-up for the state of Virginia, being voted
President of Y-Teens, and head cheerleader during her senior year, to name a few.
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Ms. Willis was granted a scholarship to study with the award winning Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA)
Program at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, North Carolina. While at NCA&T
she received several awards and became known for her exceptional work on-stage at the historic Paul
Robeson Theatre. Those performances include: Lorraine Hansberry in Young Gifted and Black and
Nell Carter in Ain’t Misbehavin, where she was nominated to compete in the Kennedy Center
American College Theatre Festival (KCACTF) Irene Ryan Acting Competition and received high
honors on the regional level as a top 10 finalist. Christmas Is Coming Up-town, Tell Pharaoh, and
You Don’t Know Me But I’m Famous are also among some of her favorite performances as a student at NCA&T.
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Ms. Willis has performed on some of the most well-known stages in New York and other Regional
Theatres including: The Apollo, The Cotton Club, The Baby Grand, Sweet Waters, National Black
Theatre, The Mint, The Trilogy, Theatre Row, Billie Holiday Theatre, Lime Kiln, Mill Mountain
Theatre, 7 Stages, Jomandi Theatre, 14th Street Playhouse and The Great Bay Plaza (Antilles),
Highways Performing Arts Center, 4th Street Promenade Playhouse, The Beacon Theatre, and
Madison Square Garden. Some of her favorite professional roles include: Lady Capulet (Romeo and
Juliet), Dr. Charlotte (Falsettos), Amy (Stone Wall Country), Ancestor (The Legacy), Mother (Breath
Boom), Clorine (Glory Bound), and Woman #1 in Mad At Miles: A Black Woman’s Guide to Truth.
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Having co-written and directed two musicals, Ms. Willis’ work has been produced on several Off-
Broadway theatres. Other credits include the 2015 Atlanta Premier of Baptism by Fire, a new gospel
musical, and Spunk for Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre Company. A few of her favorite projects
in the past few years are the Atlanta Premier of Mad At Miles: A Black Woman’s Guide to Truth, an
adaptation by Donna B. Bradby of Pearl Cleage’s book of the same title, at 7 Stages Theatre; director
and lighting designer for the India.Arie and Idan Raichel Open Door Concert, The Tel Aviv
Performing Arts Center, Israel; writer/director of a short play about Afeni Shakur titled, Afeni
Shakur: In Her Defense; writer/director of Breathe: The Nicole Kelly Story; and, co-writer
of Conversations with our Mothers, with Sandra Hughes, a new play with music, which features both
women; The Way Out (Promenade Playhouse, Santa Monica, CA), and as producing director for a
celebrity reading of the play, The People Of Clarendon County, for the Ossie Davis Endowment for
Education, which was presented in New York, Chicago, Illinois, and Atlanta, Georgia. She has also
produced and directed for several televised specials.
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In 2007, Kenny Leon asked Ms. Willis to join the True Colors Theatre Company staff as the
Education Consultant. She served in that role for seven years and was responsible for developing the
pre-professional training mission of the company, which included her successful expansion of the
August Wilson Monologue Competition, both regionally and nationally. Under Ms. Willis's
leadership The August Wilson National Monologue Competition is now in New York; Chicago,
Illinois; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Boston, Massachusetts; Los Angeles, California; Portland and
Seattle, Washington; North Carolina and Texas.
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Willis initially moved from New York to Atlanta at the request of Jane Fonda, who garnered her help
to evaluate the staff and programming of the Performing Arts Program for Youth (PAPY). She
became the lead consultant for the PAPY program and worked with Harvard University's Project
Zero in a two-year program evaluation. Ms. Willis then went on to design an artist/teacher-training
model and was later hired as Executive/Artistic Director, where she wrote the curriculum guide for
the middle and high school level. Under the leadership of Ms. Willis, PAPY became a performing
arts school that offered full artistic training and development tools for youth and youth-serving
institutions and acquired it’s 501(c)(3) and 107(c)(2) status. Willis lives her art and has dedicated her
life to reaching and teaching all communities through the arts. Her arts and education methodology
has been recognized by educators and many a variety of youth-serving organizations and has afforded
her the opportunity to take part in conversations that address the needs of instituting more Arts-Based
Learning.