{"id":59196,"date":"2019-11-10T03:31:54","date_gmt":"2019-11-10T03:31:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=59196"},"modified":"2019-11-10T03:31:54","modified_gmt":"2019-11-10T03:31:54","slug":"interview-01-charise-sowells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=59196","title":{"rendered":"Interview 01: Charise Sowells"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interview 01: Charise Sowells<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Caffeinated Cinema<\/a>
\n2019-10-31<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

Charise Sowells<\/a> is a biracial singer-songwriter, scriptwriter, and<\/em> filmmaker. As a New York University graduate, she has found acclaim in all her fields. Her work has led her to be praised by names such as NPR, San Francisco Weekl<\/em>y, and many more. Sowells\u2019 scripts have been put up for the screen and the stage. Most currently, her newest play An Ocean In My Soul<\/em><\/a> sold out the Santa Monica Playhouse<\/a>, and she is raising funds to support an extended run. Additionally, her production company, #UNABASHT<\/a>, enables her to find her place as an artist in her multitudes of creative pursuits. She kindly accepted to be interviewed on her experiences as an artist.<\/p>\n

Q. You\u2019re quite the jack of all trades\u2013\u2013 from music to film. You\u2019re an acclaimed songwriter, playwright, and you\u2019ve worked in both film and television. Have you decided to continue in just one field or are you upholding them all and why?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A. There was definitely a period where you really needed to put yourself in a box or other people would do it for you. Since I\u2019ve never been one to limit myself that way personally, I struggled with it career wise too. And that was the impetus behind me starting my company ten years ago, Unabashed Productions<\/a>. Our motto is, \u201cDon\u2019t just think outside the box. Live there.\u201d<\/p>\n

#UNABASHT functions as a record label, an online store, a production company, and a publisher which allows me to release all my projects independently and switch gears as the muse moves me, without any hiccups. As the years have gone on, more people seem to be open to the idea that things aren\u2019t so inflexible. In fact, the more you do, the better in some circumstances. So I\u2019ve been embracing all my passions and letting things flow freely.,,<\/p>\n

…Q. What was the inspiration for An Ocean In My Soul<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A. It\u2019s two fold – I\u2019m mixed myself and after struggling with my identity throughout my youth, I joined a group in high school that traveled around the U.S.<\/a> and Canada<\/a> raising awareness about race as a social construct and the concepts of systemic racism and white privilege. When I decided to study playwriting at NYU, I had hopes of expanding people\u2019s horizons about experiences and characters not typically seen onstage or screen through my work. To better inform myself, I took classes about the African Diaspora<\/a>. One of those classes introduced me to the idea of the Black Atlantic, a graveyard of African souls who died while crossing over to the Americas against their will and in horrendously inhumane conditions. That was the seed for this play…<\/p>\n

Read the entire interview here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I struggled with it career wise too. And that was the impetus behind me starting my company ten years ago, Unabashed Productions. Our motto is, \u201cDon\u2019t just think outside the box. Live there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,13743,8,23674,20],"tags":[30479,30477,30478,30480],"class_list":["post-59196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-interviews","category-media-archive","category-social-justice","category-usa","tag-unabasht","tag-caffeinated-cinema","tag-charise-sowells","tag-unabashed-productions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59196"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59198,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59196\/revisions\/59198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}