Jaronzie Harris
Jaronzie is an educator, playwright, and musician who uses theatre as a pedagogical tool to explore issues and topics that reflect the social and cultural interests of youth in Afro-diasporic communities. She has spent the past decade teaching and developing new works of theatre in the Greater Boston area. Her primary interest lies in using arts-based methodologies to build models for education, spiritual formation, and community care. Her teaching artistry is grounded in the values of justice and love, and through extensive collaboration efforts has produced five original works of theatre including, A Hip Hop Story, a play exploring the legacy of hip hop and its impact on mitigating violence in street culture; Rebel, a play about the Haitian Revolution; The Way, a work linking gentrification in Cambridge to neo-colonial trends; Sankofa, a history of Africans in America; and Book of Shadows, a work that revisits issues of gentrification and displacement of residents and businesses in the Port Neighborhood of Cambridge. Jaronzie is originally from Durham, North Carolina and has resided in Boston for the past 15 years. She lives in the Codman Square Neighborhood of Dorchester with her growing family of plants.