Tonya Pinkins
Tonya Pinkins is an award-winning actress, singer, author, education, filmmaker, podcaster and essayist.
She won the Tony Award in 1992 for her performance in Jelly’s Last Jam and was also nominated for her performances in PLAY ON and CAROLINE, OR CHANGE. She has appeared in nine Broadway shows and won the Clarence Derwent Award, Drama Desk, NY Drama Critics and Outer Critics Circle Awards. Her numerous Off-Broadway performances have garnered her three Lucille Lortels, an Obie, and an Audelco. Additionally, she has been the recipient of a Franky Award for Outstanding Leadership in Theater, Rachel Crother’s Leadership Award from the League of Profesional Theater Women, the Stage Raw Award, the Brooklyn College Alfred Drake Award, and was named a Beinecke Fellow at Yale University.
Her essays on Leaving Mother Courage and Why I am Fed up with Performative Activism from Black and White Theater Makers; and her Open Letter to NY Times Critic Jessie Green have been lauded internationally and are required reading in many universities. She is the author of two books GET OVER YOURSELF: How to Drop the Drama and Claim the Life you Deserve published by Hyperion Books in 2006 and Red Pill Unmasked: a movie making memoir which she narrated for Audible.
Her debut feature RED PILL garnered numerous international best feature, director and writer awards. The film has been translated into Spanish, Catalonian, Russian and Greek. She has just completed her sophomore feature Game Nite GAME. Her podcast You Can’t Say That on the Broadway Podcast Network receives tens of thousands of listeners a year. She co-hosted Wellness Wednesday with Karen Hunter on Sirius FM from 2021-2022. She has produced two albums from her concerts and appeared in concert this summer at the Glade at Little Island in New York City. She produced 46 interviews for the Shift Network and the METoo Dialogues with solutions to sexual assault and harassment in the workplace.
She is the mother of four adult children all birthed at home.