ella turenne | bio
Ella Turenne is an artist, activist and educator. Her creative work spans over 20 years as an artist. She has been described as a “one-woman army of culture.”
Ella has been involved in the television and film industry for over ten years. One of her first projects was her own television talk show, The Ella Show, which at the age of 19, she starred in, directed and produced. Later she took that experience and became the host and producer of a live talk show called Not for Nothin’ at Cambridge Community Television. Some of her film credits include Arrangements, woodshed, The Viagra Dialogues, One More Try and recently Big, Dark, Scary Girl, which won an experimental film award at the Reel Sister’s Film Festival. In 2000, she was selected as an Actor-in-Residence at the acclaimed International Film and Video Workshops.
Ella is also a theatre veteran, having performed in her first play at the age of 5. She has since performed in On Striver’s Row, Raft of the Medusa, Blood Wedding, Africa Atunbi!, Shades of Blue, Love Child and most recently Come Back to Me, featured in New York’s Fresh Fruit Play Festival. She was also seen in the Downtown Urban Theatre Festival in the play Working Things Out.
Ella has been writing for as long as she has been performing. She was an Arts and Culture Journalist with the Haitian Times for four years. She has also written articles for Visual Voice Magazine and Stank Magazine. As a poet, her work has been showcased in various publications including Tanbou Magazine, The Anthology of Haitian Poets in Massachusetts, The Nubian Chronicles, i got somethin' to say and most recently Check the Rhyme: An Anthology of Female Poets and Emcees (nominated for a 2007 NAACP Image Award). In 2006, she was selected to participate in the prestigious Cave Canem poetry workshop led by acclaimed poet, Willie Perdomo. Ella’s first book, revolution|revolisyon|révolution 1804 - 2004: An Artistic Commemoration of the Haitian Revolution was published in January 2004 (Liv Lakay Publications). Her work was recently featured in Letters from Young Activists: Today’s Rebels Speak Out. Her most recent academic essay on murals and prisons was published in an anthology by Cambridge Scholars Press. She is currently working on an anthology of short fiction by Haitian women and an empowerment book about the struggles of being a young woman and surviving the crucial “twenty-something” years. She is completing several screenplays including one that seeks to dispel myths about vodou culture. Together with Jessica Nyel Willis and Maureen Aladin, members of SistaPAC Productions (an organization she co-founded) she is in the process of developing several dramas, comedies and reality pilots.
Ella is also a spoken word artist and has performed nationally at venues such as The Nuyorican Poets Café in New York City, The New Jersey Performing Arts Center Hip Hop Planet 2 Series and the Da’ Poetry Lounge in Los Angeles. She was featured on the Black Family Channel show Spoken, hosted by renowned poet Jessica Care Moore.
In addition to being a performer, Ella is a visual artist and curator. Her work has been displayed at the Boston Center for the Arts, the Long Island African-American Museum and the Salmagundi Art House. She has co-curated the Exposed, Echoes of our Ancestors and Remember Amadou exhibits.
Never losing sight of the struggle for social justice, equality and positive social change, especially through the arts, Ella co-founded the SOULFINITE Entertainment Group, an organization dedicated to creating independent art. She is director, co-producer and actor in SOULFINITE's first independent short film, woodshed, completed in 2006. woodshed was accepted into several film festivals and recieved two "Best Short Film" nominations. As an activist, she is an advisory board member of the BLACKOUT Arts Collective, a grassroots organization whose mission is to empower communities of color through arts, education and activism. With Blackout, Ella toured with Lyrics on Lockdown, a national tour where she performed and facilitated workshops educating communities about the prison industrial complex. She currently works with incarcerated youth and has developed arts based workshops with youth whose parents are incarcerated.
Ella is a member of the YB Literary Foundation, an organization dedicated to promoting literacy and enhancing the reading experience among underserved populations of students. She teaches art and activism at New York University, where she is an adjunct professor at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study. She is also a co-founder of SistaPAC Productions, an artist collective whose mission is to pursue artistic clarity through performance and the written word. With SistaPAC, Ella has completed 4 short films.
Ella received her BA from Stony Brook University, majoring in psychology and minoring in studio art. She also minored in theatre arts (acting), studying with Deborah Mayo, Thomas Neumiller and John Cameron. Ella was awarded honors in studio art and theatre at Stony Brook. She holds an MSW from Boston University and in 2004 was given the “Outstanding Contributions to the Field of Social Work” Award. She is a trained singer and dancer, having studied tap with the likes of Savion Glover and Adele Weisntein, African Dance with Robin Gee and voice with Efrem Chanel. She also studied acting at the Harlem Theatre Company with the great James Pringle and One on One Productions and is a member and facilitator of the Harlem Screenwriters Workshop.