Ina Anderson

Bridgeport's first Black female firefighter, now writing and directing what she calls Conscious Theater.

Before the theater, Ina became Bridgeport's first Black female firefighter. She has now spent more than twenty years writing and directing plays, and in 2017 founded Emerging Voices Production Company, where she works as a playwright and director on what the company calls Conscious Theater: historical material carrying a present-day construct, written to educate rather than simply to stage the past.

She was the writer and director of MAAFA Influence Productions, now in its twenty-ninth year. It began in Brooklyn at St. Paul's Community Baptist and Mt. Pisgah churches and has been presented in Bridgeport by Mount Aery Development Corporation since its nineteenth standalone year. Roughly 20,000 people have seen it nationally, more than 3,000 of them students across several school systems. Audiences have included Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III, Randall Robinson, Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary, Bishop Johnny Ray Youngblood, Rev. Al Sharpton, Na'im Akbar and the actor Ben Vereen.

Her earlier work includes Can These Bones Live, I Am A Man, Healing the Land, Sankofa; Looking Back Moving Forward, The Journey of Shoes, Shaking the Tree and For Every Mountain. Emerging Voices made its debut at the Klein Memorial in Bridgeport in 2017. Her current production is The UBUNTU Project, I Am Because We Are.

Alongside the stage work she consults with a Teen Fathers Program, using theater and monologue writing to help young fathers find their own voice, and runs Podcast 101 programs for city youth both online and in person.