Nedra Dixon is a celebrated actor, singer, dancer, director, and choreographer. She has received critical acclaim in venues ranging from Broadway and Off-Broadway, national tours, and regional theatres with credits including Bubblin’ Brown Sugar, Tintypes, Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell, Into the Woods, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Oklahoma, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream—to name just a few. She has recently directed Listen, Wilhelmina! and the world premiere of Sketchbook for Ollie for Lyric Opera of Kansas City. Additional directing and choreography credits include Hair: Then and Now, In the Heights, Once On This Island, Grey Gardens, Sophisticated Ladies, Children of Eden, and Beehive. In an unexpected turn, Nedra can be seen in popular rapper Tech N9ne’s hip-hop music video “Fear,” which has been viewed over 2.7 million times on YouTube. For five years, she appeared as a featured vocalist and co-host on Kansas City’s NPR-affiliated jazz show 12th Street Jump. Nedra currently serves on the Board of Directors for Kansas City Actors Theatre. Nedra and her colleague and friend Pamela Basin-Watson are 2022 recipients of OPERA America’s IDEA Grant for the creation of a new musical work, A God • Sib’s Tale: A Folk Opera. This dynamic, exciting endeavor was presented as a staged reading in Kansas City in January 2022. As an artist who is ever-curious, ever-evolving, Nedra enthusiastically embraces the role of griot–a class of West African traveling poets, musicians, and storytellers who maintain a tradition of oral history–sharing rich, diverse stories, glorious sounds, beautiful movement from a cross-section of cultures, backgrounds, and identities. Storytelling is an inextricable part of her being, necessary as oxygen and so that all voices and stories are vibrantly, boldly expressed.
