Tolu Ekisola, a 2019 theater arts major and graduate of the bachelor of fine arts program at UMD, is working to make the world a better place on several fronts and has recently moved back to Minnesota. She arrived in the Twin Cities during the summer of 2022, after she graduated with a master of fine arts in the Department of Drama at the University of California - Irvine (UC Irvine).
As an actor, director, activist, and entrepreneur, it is important to her to bring people together. After landing a position teaching theatre classes at Normandale Community College in Bloomington, Minnesota, she directed her students in a performance of “Bulrusher” in February 2023.
“The story’s about a real town in California where the residents speak their own historical dialect called Boontling.” Ekisola says. There are some that still speak the dialect today. “The story centers around a multiracial girl, named Bulrusher, who grows up in this predominantly white town. The girl has a totally unique voice… and it’s wonderful.”
Ekisola appreciates the passion and the humor of the play, and the subject matter dovetails with her activism at UC-Irvine, where she and three of her fellow students started a group, Students Mobilizing for Change. The group responded to recent national police brutality, racial violence, systemic racism, and the isolation caused by the pandemic. “We wanted to create a safer and more inclusive campus as a whole,” she says. “Our philosophy was to create change within ourselves and then with the people around us.”
Ekisola brought the lessons with her to Minnesota. When she was back in Minnesota during the summer of 2021, she worked with Yellow Tree Theatre, a group that specializes in representing diverse stories on the stage. Last summer, after graduating from UC-Irvine, she worked with the Children’s Defense Fund. She’s also been working with a few people she crossed paths with while she was at UMD, including Daniel Oluwaseyi Oyinloye and Sandra Gbeintor Oyinloye of DanSan creations. She’s currently in contact with Mixed Blood Theater and the Guthrie.
Ekisola gives the UMD Theatre Department credit for providing her with four years of opportunities, including playing the title role in Sophocles’ Antigone. “It was one of the most challenging roles of my life and it was my first time doing a Greek play.” Ekisola and the play got great reviews and Ekisola was recognized at the Irene Ryan awards during the Kennedy Center Theater competition.
“I connected with Antigone because I know what it’s like to have two brothers and I love my brothers so deeply,” she says. In the play, the father and the two brothers fight against each other and Antigone was forced to take sides. “I’m a black woman. A black woman who is the niece of a white monarch, that's a complex story to tell.”
She encourages everyone to “treat everybody with kindness and learn from your mistakes. Keep in mind we’re all just doing our best.”