Multimedia theatrical artist working at the electric intersection of live performance, cinematic video, spoken word, and original music — with 33 years of fearless creative fire.
Live Visual Theatre
An immersive visual album and live theatrical experience. Blending raw live performance with breathtaking cinematic projection, Standing on Business is Renita's defining creative statement — weaving original music, spoken word, piano performance, and video into a fully immersive theatrical event.
Now booking residencies, festivals & mainstage seasons — 2026 / 2027
She is riveting to watch onstage. Her work is by turns brash, lyrical, and funny.— Bay Windows
Current Touring Repertoire
Three decades of award-winning theatre — each show a fully realized world.
Renita's signature one-woman tour de force. Several distinct characters — all inhabiting the mind of a woman whose sanity has been challenged — must learn to coexist, heal, and integrate. Critics describe her seamless character transformations as nothing short of mesmerizing.
An evocative meditation on arrival, identity, and the moment a woman steps fully into her own power. Lyrical and highly theatrical, this work moves through the emotional landscapes of women who have been overlooked, underestimated — and ultimately unstoppable. Developed during Renita's MFA fellowship at Brandeis University.
A new play centering civil rights icon Myrlie Evers Williams — a portrait of grace, perseverance, and the radical courage required to outlive grief and still choose hope. A work about what it means to be a witness, a keeper of history, and a vessel for justice.
Trusted Stages & Institutions
Washington, DC
New York City
Commission on Status of Women
University Stages
International Tour — India
The Composer & Pianist
Renita is a professional pianist and composer — from the concert halls to cathedrals, from prisons to classrooms. Every Standing on Business performance is built on original music she has written, arranged, and performed. When she plays, the stage becomes something else entirely.
About
With 33+ years of professional artistry, Renita Martin is one of the most singular creative forces working at the intersection of art, justice, and the human spirit.
A Kennedy Center performer, three-time Telly Award winner, and Amazon #1 bestselling author, Renita commands every form she works in — theatre, music, spoken word, film production, and the written page. Her works have appeared on Good Morning America, in The New York Times, Ebony Magazine, and The Boston Herald.
She holds an MFA from Brandeis University and an MA in Audio Technology from American University, and is a proud member of SAG-AFTRA and Actors' Equity Association (33+ years). A 2021 Art Matters Foundation Fellow, she is also an Ebony Magazine & Pine Sol Unsung Hero honoree for three decades of arts leadership.
Her Amazon #1 bestselling poetry collection It Is the Seeing (Wildheart Press, 2021) invites readers to view the world through diverse eyes — merging her passion for language, music, and Black love. Her play Shotgun Wedding is published by Concord Theatricals / Samuel French.
Kennedy Center
Faces of Freedom: A Black Woman's Love Story — Oct 2024
Telly Awards
Three-time winner — 2014 · 2023 · 2026
Published Author
It Is the Seeing · Shotgun Wedding · Multiple anthologies
Art Matters Foundation
Artist2Artist Fellow, 2021
Book a Performance
Every engagement is personally reviewed. Whether you're programming a mainstage season, curating a festival, or building a residency — this is a partnership.
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Music, performances, poetry, and dispatches — as they happen.
