12 Facts About Kamilah Forbes

Kamilah Forbes created and directed the Hip Hop Theater Festival from 2000 to 2016.

Kamilah Forbes was born and raised in Chicago to Jamaican immigrant parents.

Kamilah Forbes attended Howard University with the intention of attending medical school but changed her major to theater to pursue acting.

In 2000, Kamilah Forbes wrote and directed Rhyme Deferred, a play that used a mythic fairy tale format to explore the existential nature of hip-hop.

Kamilah Forbes oversaw the development of the nonprofit called Hi-ARTS, which produces the festival.

In 2014, Kamilah Forbes was associate director for the Broadway show Holler if Ya Hear Me and assistant director for the revival of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun.

Kamilah Forbes left Hi-ARTS in 2016 and became executive producer for Harlem's Apollo Theater that year.

Kamilah Forbes stated that her goal as director would be to preserve the heritage of the Black cultural institution, and has made efforts to add a diversity of Black art to the Apollo Theater's offerings.

Kamilah Forbes is set to direct the Broadway musical Soul Train based on the variety television series, which was scheduled to be released in 2021, but due to COVID-19 production delays, is scheduled for a fall 2022 debut.

Kamilah Forbes has directed and produced several television productions that center the intersection of Black narratives and music.

In 2020, Kamilah Forbes directed the HBO adaptation of Between the World and Me based on Ta-Nehisi Coates book of the same name.

On June 23,2021, President Joe Biden nominated Kamilah Forbes to be a member of the National Council of the Arts.