In 1999, I had an idea to start a group of screenwriters called "Colored Ink." The purpose of this group was to back me up and support me whenever I would write scripts. They would be a multicutural group of folks who could write on various topics at the drop of a hat. This was an idea that I thought would take years to put together. Then I had told this idea to a friend of mine by the name of Andre who was a fellow screenwriter and playwright. When I told him, he gave me this funny look and said "That's nice, but why not start a theater group by that same name and concept and start it now." That wasn't a bad idea, but as a 19 year old at the time, my mind couldn't conceive such a thought so soon.
Then in 2001, I returned to Brava after the building had been renovated and got back into the youth theater academy. I saw some old friends and came across some new folks that were mad talented and on my same level of thinking. We had a great teacher by the name of Sarah Mayper who really got us building together as artists and doing work that was relevant to our lives. After she left for Boston before the summer, we then started working on a new youth-run project. The show became chaotic due to us losing our director, cast members, and the rights to the show. So a couple of us became really frustrated.
Throughout that frustration, some how the idea of Colored Ink started to come up again, and so we began to recruit people from the cast that carried over from Sarah's class, as well as some new folks, and began getting more people to collaborate on Colored Ink's vision. We decided that we needed to start our own group and do work that's relevant to our cause; writing from the perspectives of people of color who've been through the trials and tribulations of inner city living, and then communicating those same messages through poetry, spoken word, MCing, and music . So on July 31st, 2001, Colored Ink was born.