We recently connected with Andrea Trent and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Andrea thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Going back to the beginning – how did you come up with the idea in the first place?

I began my playwrighting journey writing skits for our youth group at church. At the time I didn’t really think too much about this skill. When I returned to Washington DC after college, my mom who was president of the Women’s Ministry at our church, thought we should use theater as a means to teach the youth at our church about black history. This came out of a discussion with the kids she previously had and discovered none of them knew about the Harlem Renaissance. On of our church members wrote the script to the show and I volunteered to help. The play was a huge success. We ended up doing a black history play each year. The 8th year we did a play about the Negro Baseball league. The kids had a lot of fund, some of them had never even played baseball before. At the end of the show, one of the girls asked me if the next year we could do a show that features more women. I thought it was a fair request, so I began thinking of different topics we could do. Only about a week or so had passed by and my mom asked me to join her and her sorority sisters of Delta Sigma Theta has they were celebrating the 100th anniversary of the1 913 women’s march on Washington. It was a cold morning in March but I was happy to join my mother and so many other women in this event. I was inspired by the fact that the women who were originally forced to march in the back during the original 1913 March on Washington were now the ones leading it 100 years later. This is when I got my idea for my musical Until We Vote. A play that would feature the black suffragist.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

When I was young I was very interested in technology and engineering. In my free time though I always enjoyed watching musicals. I never really had an opportunity to perform in a school production of a show until high school. Even then I didn’t do that until my senior year. I was more interested and focused in playing sports at that time.
With my love of musical theater, I finally decided in the spring of my senior year at high school to audition for the musical. It was a fun experience but after that I told myself, that performing was not for me. I was indeed quite wrong. I went on to study Information Technology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Right after college I got in job in IT in the Washington DC area. Shortly after I returned to DC, my mother had embarked on a journey to use theater as a means to teach the kids at our church about black history. One of our church members wrote a script about the Harlem Renaissance, and I volunteered to help. The play was an immediate success. Each year we did a play with the kids to teach them about different topics in black history. It wasn’t until the ninth year I decided to write musical for the kids. I didn’t have much musical background other than having grown up singing in the choir and play the flute for several years. Somehow myself and one of my other church members managed to put some songs together to create a show. The show was an amazing success, and from that performance I was compelled to continue to work on this musical titled, Until We Vote, a musical that features the black suffragists. I wasn’t sure how I was going to continue working on it, I just knew that I did. Shortly after I finished Until We Vote with the kids at my church I was headed off to graduate school to get my MBA at the SDA Bocconi School of Management in Milan Italy. After I finished my degree I was back in the DC area and decided to pursue working on my play and rewriting it for adults in my free time. I started by signing up with the Washington DC playwrights forum. This gave me an opportunity to learn more the structure of writing a play. I was part of the forum until we ended our sessions due to the pandemic in 2020. For me things didn’t stop there. I signed up with the Dramatist Guild and enrolled in a few musical theater courses online. I did a playwrighting intensive session in the summer of 2021 with the Kennedy Center. In the fall I enrolled in the BMI Lehman Engel institute in New York City as a librettist. I am still in the process of completing my final version of Until We Vote. I recently had a chance to share my work with the public in my first public reading at the Woodrow Wilson House in Washington DC.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I am not someone who comes from a theater background. As much as I love musicals, I didn’t really do any performances as a kids. I did one show in high school and one show in college. As I started to rewrite my musical for adults I thought it would be best to perform in a musical again to help give me some perspective. I decided to do a community theater show. This changed everything for me. I had so much fun doing a show. I ended up doing more auditions and getting more involved in theaters in the local area. I now serve as artistic director for a local theater in Bowie, MD. What has helped build my reputation is the connections I have made doing community theater shows in the area.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I hope to one get my show professionally staged. I am excited about the opportunity to share my work with a larger audience. And give an opportunity for actors to perform in a show that reflects a different side of the black community.

Image Credits
Photo Credit to Nate Jackson Photography for the photo in the orange skirt (Ragtime) and the one in the red dress (labeled AD photo). The Until We Vote cover design is by Courtney Ray