As a performance artist, writer, educator, and integrative healing practitioner Piper Anderson has dedicated the last 10 years of her life to holding the space for community, peace, and power to manifest. From detention facilities, public schools, and non-profits to Ivy League universities Piper Anderson is well known for her dynamic, inspiring performances, workshops, and lectures.
Piper’s performance work blends poetry, song, movement, storytelling, and video to create work that explores the experiences of women and their relationship to Spirit, Healing, and Power. In 1999 she premiered the Hip Hop performance work, “Black Girl Speak!” at Frontera Fest in Austin, TX. The show is inspired by the harsh and sometimes-bittersweet realities she witnessed while growing up in Philadelphia. In 2006 she wrote and performed her second solo work “In Her Memory” in honor of two family members lost to domestic violence. She has toured nationally with the show utilizing her performance work as a catalyst for community dialogue about intimate partner violence.
As an author Piper’s writings have been published in two books, How To Get Stupid White Men Out Of Office (Soft Skull Press 2004) and Growing Up Girl: Voices From Marginalized Spaces (Girl Child Press 2007) in addition to numerous journals and publications. Her most recent book project is Seeking Wisdom: Tools for Inner Peace And Spiritual Healing slated for release in July 2009.
In 2001 Piper joined Blackout Arts Collective (BAC) a national organization committed to using the arts as a tool for social change in communities of color. Piper worked with BAC in a number of capacities coordinating youth development programming, and organizing four national tours around prisons and policing under the banner of Lyrics On Lockdown. Eventually her dedication to the organization led to her appointment as National Program Director. She served in that capacity until September 2006 when she stepped down to focus her energy on touring “In Her Memory”.
Anderson is a highly sought after presenter at universities, secondary schools, and non-profits offering workshops and lectures on topics ranging from the power of the arts & activism, using popular culture as an educational tool, and engaging communities in ending gender violence. Just a few of the places her work has taken her include Harvard University, UC-Berkeley, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Columbia University, Bard College, and New WORLD Theatre.
Piper owes her tremendous accomplishments over the last ten years to the teachers and mentors who made it their duty to pass on their wisdom, tools, and inspiration to her so she makes it her duty to do the same for the next generation of artists and leaders. Anderson is a Master Teaching-Artist with American Place Theatre, serving as an artist-in-residence in New York City schools, and facilitates a youth drama ensemble at El Puente Leadership Center in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY.
She majored in Community Studies with a minor in Theatre at The University of Texas-Austin before moving to New York City and transferring to The New School where she was a Riggio Writing Democracy Fellow and received a Bachelor’s Degree in Creative Writing.
