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About

Nikki Giovanni is a prolific writer (over 40 books) and cultural figure who has been an activist for minority rights, LGBTQ+ and human rights in an extraordinary career as a writer and lecturer. She won 7 NAACP Image awards, amongst innumerable other glories, throughout wrestling with all the great minds and arguments of her day. Telling her story on the stage allows the audience to experience her words and the words of all the great authors she both admired and reviled. We will explore her friendship with James Baldwin, Angela Davis and Muhammed Ali. The stage will incorporate the great jazz, art, writing, activism, music of her time... and the show will climax in one of the most extraordinary, influential speeches (not uttered by an American president) in American history - "We are Virginia Tech."

Impact

I think I can bring theater to a new generation with this production. Using the techniques of "Immersive Van Gogh" and other immersive art experiences, the script will be designed to tell Nikki's life almost as if you are witnessing it from inside her mind - deep research on the music, art, posters, video clips, books, speeches, on and on... will be presented in a kaleidoscope of light, dialogue and music. Scenes with actors will have the feel of a Robert Altman movie, lots of cross-dialogue... many, many, many moving parts. And at the center of it all, played by two, maybe three actresses, is Nikki, this immoveable force of nature who is absorbing it all and creating brilliant prose and poetry in contrast to the madness of her day. And then, as the audience slides with Nikki into her final, comfortable perch at Virginia Tech, they will go through the same horror, then triumph, that she went through when 32 souls were lost to the Virginia Tech shooter... and Nikki Giovanni, a woman of her time, stood up and gave one of the greatest (and shortest) speeches in modern American history. Put me in, coach, I can regenerate modern theater with the story of Nikki!

Team

Chip Fortier - [contact redacted] - writer - 4 produced plays -- "God, No..." "1607: First Landing" "The Space" "The Eulogist" - 3 produced by Generic Theater Norfolk VA - 1 produced by First Landing Foundation 2 screenplays, optioned, not produced Linda Cataldo - researcher - Linda had research career at The Family Channel

Funding

No displayed figures preserved for this project.

Season totals as displayed on the platform's public accounting — not a statement of amounts paid out. V2 = Venus sales + Venus extras. The original page also broke each season down by fund drive and showed an Available (unclaimed) balance; that level of detail survives only on the preserved snapshots.

Leaderboard page (offline): https://artizen.fyi/projects/1670453197140x585092744285752600
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Not recovered: creator, tags, links, funding, drives, submissions, snapshot. Sources: "snapshot" = verbatim Internet Archive page · "platform metadata" = archived artizen.fund page metadata · "leaderboard" = the artizen.fyi public accounting tables · "match catalog" = the platform's public fund-matching catalog (captured 2026-10-15, generated 2026-09-07) · "community catalog" = a June 2026 platform scrape preserved in a community repo.