By Chanel Cain
From an early age, Marjuan Canady was immersed in the arts. From dance classes, to free festivals around D.C., to shows at the Kennedy Center, she found magic in it all.
“I was a very shy child, so the thing I always say that saved my life was theater, because it gave me direction and discipline. It opened me up,” she said.
The only thing missing was more people who looked like her on the stage. Canady’s career would help fill the hole she saw as a little girl, and provide a pathway for others to discover the same magic she did.
Canady is a multi-hyphenate artist, ranging from stage to screen. She currently has two children’s shows on kweliTV: “Callaloo – Short Stories” and “How To With Callaloo”. Both are part of the overarching Callaloo brand Canady has created to “empower all children to take pride in themselves and expand their horizons.”
Callaloo originally started out as a play called “Callaloo: A Jazz Folktale”. After being workshopped and performed at the Ellington Theatre in Washington, DC and the IATI Theatre (Off- Broadway) in New York City, the project began to evolve. With the help of her business partner Nabeeh Bilal, the duo published a children’s book based on the play that expanded into the series “How To With Callaloo”.
All iterations of the project were deeply rooted in Canady’s Trinidadian background. She found it important to use her creativity to provide a show that was made specifically for and inspired by her culture.
“It was inspired by my own experience,” she said, “but as we continue to develop it, it became very clear that there was a need, and a huge need for this audience, not just in the Caribbean community, but throughout the whole African diaspora.”
Beyond Callaloo, Canady has proven herself to be a force within the theatre world. Her one woman show, “Girls! Girls? Girls.” was featured off-Broadway, for which she later created a short documentary exploring further examining the 21st century image of Black women.
Canday has found success both on and off the stage. While creating these projects, she has also worked as an independent producer for nearly 20 years. In 2020, soon after becoming a mother, she was offered the opportunity to study commercial producing at Columbia as part of a new Front Row Productions Fellowship. This helped open the door to the exclusive world of Broadway production for Canady, who made sure to keep it propped open.
I think we talk about [wanting] to see more diverse stories on stage, and on Broadway specifically, a lot of people don’t know that most of the time that is impacted by the people that are behind the stage,” she said.
Canady has been a co-producer for the Broadway productions of “Hell’s Kitchen”, “Death of a Salesman” and both the touring and Broadway productions of The Wiz. In this role, she was able to not only find funding for the productions, but find ways to help connect them to her community. Either through her non-profit Canady Foundation for the Arts or directly by the show, she was able to provide a combined total of just under 600 students from New York and D.C. with tickets to these productions.
While her foray into Broadway has differed from her past productions, Canady says “it’s been good to be part of other productions as I’m starting to build my own.” She is currently lead producer and co-bookwriter of the new musical “Tap In” which she describes as “a tap dance based musical that celebrates black and brown girlhood through coming of age stories.”
For Canady, this journey has been about following her own path. Through all her work she has carved out a space for herself in the industry, and in the process has given so many the opportunity to fall in love with the theatre world like she did.
“I have more respect and power in the rooms that I walk in now,” she said, “not because I’ve done stuff on Broadway, but because I’m respected as a professional, and I have created a blueprint to make things happen.”
You can watch “Callaloo – Short Stories”, “How To With Callaloo” and “Girls! Girls? Girls.” on kweliTV.
