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RyanNicole, an African-American woman in overalls and a patterned red top, stands smiling at the camera in front of a zebra-print background. She is posed so that her left arm wraps around her waist and her right hand rests on her shoulder.

Photo by Khattab McIntosh for The Green Balloon.

Artists

RyanNicole Austin

She // Her // Hers

Multi-hyphenate Creative

Oakland, California

RyanNicole Austin is a Grammy-nominated polymath who finds her most fulfilling experiences at the intersection of art and activism. Austin has led productions as an actress, director, and playwright at theater companies throughout the Bay Area, and she is a writer and producer on the developmental teams for the upcoming musicals Curren$y and CoFounders and streaming series American (G)race. As a writer and performer, Austin is a two-time alumnus of New York’s Public Theater Fellowship #BARS Workshop facilitated by Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs. She has been featured on TEDx San Francisco and ESPN’s NBA at Christmas with Daveed Diggs and has performed for Google, Sony, LinkedIn, Apple, and Barack Obama.

Austin’s California State Assembly-recognized career in music, theater, and media empowers the community, and she has served her community as an organizer and activist for two decades. She holds the distinction of becoming one of the youngest non-profit executive directors in the Bay Area, where she received a two-year fellowship in the prestigious leadership program LeaderSpring, and she currently supports various community organizations and initiatives as a consultant. Her partner list includes KALW, EastSide Arts Alliance, San Francisco Foundation, and California Alliance for Safety and Justice.

Donor -The Rainin Arts Fellowship is supported by the Kenneth Rainin Foundation.

This artist page was last updated on: 08.20.2024

Theater & Performance
A medium dark-skinned woman in a long, lightly colored patterned dress and blue heels stands in front of a white building. Her hands are in front of her chest and she is speaking to the camera. The subtitles on the the bottom of screenshot read “Reduced to negligible is all I can hope.”

Labor (still) written by RyanNicole Austin and directed by Niema Jordan, 2021. Short film, 3 minutes, 41 seconds.

A medium-dark skinned woman in a checkered dress and plaid coat sits between the legs of a medium-dark skinned man on the floor of a stage while a third person in the background looks over at them. The woman hugs herself while looking to the side of the stage and the man looks at her with his mouth open.

Native Son by Nambi E. Kelley, based on the novel by Richard Wright and directed by Seret Scott, 2017. Presented at Marin Theatre Company. Pictured: RyanNicole Austin and Jerod Haynes.

Photo by Kevin Berne.

A medium-dark skinned woman wearing a jacket, scarf, and pants kneels behind a pair of black Nike shoes that sit diagonally to her left, gazing down at them with a pained expression. A medium-dark skinned person in white clothing kneels behind the shoes with their mouth open and arms raised to the air.

Xtigone by Nambi E. Kelley, 2015. Presented by African American Shakespeare Company. Pictured: RyanNicole Austin.

Photo by Eric K. Arnold.