Today we’d like to introduce you to Wi-Moto Nyoka.
Hi Wi-Moto, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I started as music theater performer and always kept my writing and my love of genre as a hobby. I never even considered that it could be something I might share with my community, with an audience, with anyone. For some reason I assumed no one would be interested. I started writing plays to make work for myself and others. It was purely out of necessity and I thought it would be temporary. But I got into theater festivals fast, then moved to writing short films and was selected right out the gate. Seeing folks perform a story I wrote felt like sorcery. So I kept writing and I kept telling horror and sci-fi stories in theater, film, and audio. I am now the founder of a production company, Dusky Projects, making work, and learning the craft of being a producer.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Yes and no. It’s always a struggle when you think you’re supposed to be one thing and discover that you’re not. It’s a struggle to accept your own complexity I think. Being an artist is about fluidity and no one told me what growth would look like. In school they didn’t talk about change, adding disciplines to your skill set, what artistic growth might look and feel like, and that you may find yourself wanting to do something different and that’s fine. I think if I had known that earlier on things would have been smoother because I would have been less resistant to something that was happening organically.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am a Speculative Fiction writer and producer. I create genre projects for adult and young adult audiences in immersive theater, film, and audio. My production company, Dusky Projects, centers BIPOC stories and creatives in genre works as a way of exploring liberation. We face the monsters together.
Any big plans?
Currently, I’m in post production on my short horror comedy film “Affordable Housing”, about two women who fight a monster to the death to keep their cheap apartment. We’ll start our screening tour at the Philadelphia Latino Film Festival this summer and hit the road after to other genre film festivals that have already supported to project. I’m super excited to share this work and host game nights and talk backs about housing rights, home ownership, but also just getting together and having fun.
My musical “A Funeral For The Death Machines”, which was a commissioned work for the Future Without Guns exhibition currently on display, will be part of the Cannonball Festival in Philadelphia this fall. My hope is that we can continue to build on the piece until it is a fully produced production.
Contact Info:
- Website: wi-motonyoka.com
- Instagram: instragram.com/duskyprojects
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wi-moto-nyoka/
Image Credits
Logo by Madelyn Hernandez, second photo by Casey Moreno