Board Member, Film Curator, Film Juror
Mkawasi was born and raised in Kenya. She debuted her directing career with Moliere’s Tartuffe at the University of Nairobi and wrote her first play, The Scroungers, in 1992. Since then she has written over a dozen plays which she has also produced and directed in Kenya, Ethiopia, New York City, Washington DC and Baltimore. Mkawasi recently settled in Baltimore where she and her husband established Tictocmind Studios in the Overlea-Cedmont area. She hopes to grow it into a hub for Baltimore artists, with the help of the studio’s manager, Sigourney Frazier. She also started producing documentaries, and has so far screened Abundance of Being I. She is working on Part II and III of the same. Her works can be seen at tictocmind.com and baloziproductions.com. Mkawasi has worked with Queens Theatre in the Park in New York, taught film and TV arts at the John Robert Powers School in Rockville, MD, and is now a lecturer at Howard University’s Dept. of World Languages and Cultures.