Arts Leadership Award Program

Representing Alameda County Supervisorial District Five —

Ayodele Nzinga of Oakland, is an active member of the East Bay theater community for over four decades. As the artistic director of the original Recovery Theater she directed the cult classic, One Day in the Life, the longest-running North American African theatre production in North America. Ayodele, described as a renaissance woman, is an actress, director, poet/lyricist, theater producer, dramaturge, author, and playwright. As the founding director of The Lower Bottom Playaz, Inc., Oakland’s oldest North American African Theater Company, she and her troupe made theater history in 2016 by becoming the first theater troupe and director in the world to stage August Wilson’s entire, American Century Cycle, in chronological order.