About
Valerie Isaiah Sadoh
Founder of She's Diverse
The birth of She's Diverse really came from a lack of representation of powerful, interesting and well written female characters for women and even more so women of colour. As someone who had just finished their acting training and wanted to take the theatre world by storm, there never seemed to be enough fuel or material to gather momentum.
I knew that if it I was in the room with at least four other black actors that at least two of us would have the same speech or text to audition with.
I knew that in a room full of female performers the majority would have to tweak their speeches in terms of age, location or time. Just so it could fit the everyday woman, I eventually found out that there were other women who felt the same as I did and a buzz of change was along the horizon. Others were also tired of playing the defiant school girl or unruly street kid. Tired of the damsel in distress waiting to play the bitterly scorned wife. We were more than that, there were more stories to tell and we wanted to be challenged.
So She's Diverse was birthed to produce my first play Pussy Liberty and we've been producing phenomenal female work ever since
Facilitator
Alongside She's Diverse, Valerie is a qualified facilitator having facilitated drama and movement workshops with theatres such as Watford Palace, The Almeida and Gecko. In my experience of working with all three companies as well as freelance is to expect the unexpected. Groups vary from schools, to youth groups to paid drama slots. however, one thing stays the same passion is contagious. I have such a passion for creating work from scratch and devising scenes and plays by pushing participants to levels they didn't know they could reach. It's such a rewarding feeling to be able to watch participants partake in something that was only a dream, weeks or months ago. I ensure that I create a rehearsal space that is safe and open to get the best out of everyone.
Writer & Actor
Writing is a life long passion that manifested in the form of writing songs and poems as a child and me eagerly wanting to perform or recite them for my family. It was a mechanism I used to understand the world and process emotions. I loved the really of creating new worlds and ideas and taking not only myself but whoever read my pieces of a journey to wherever. This notion of wherever would be something that became dear to me as a preteen and adult. In 2017 I debuted my first full length play 'Pussy Liberty' which won The Bread and Roses Company Award, Pussy Liberty had a successful week long run in Aug 2017 and is now published. The therapy and the adrenaline that came from writing a play about a woman like me and in one reviewers words writing for 'the lost women of theatre, unmarried, childless woman in their twenties' felt like I was directly affecting the world and making sure History does not forget us and that it remembers our stories and our contributions to life and art.
I trained at Identity School of Acting for three years and worked professionally as an actor with companies such as The Lazarus Theatre Company, Tamasha and Purple Moon Drama on shows like Tis Pity She's a Whore, A Perils of the Sea and Cabaret.
