CREATIVE PRACTICE &
CONSULTING SERVICES
black suffering / white pleasure — an experimental short film grounded in Afro-Pessimist theory, exploring how Black suffering operates not simply as an experience of pain, but as a structural condition through which whiteness, humanity, and social order are imagined and sustained.
Director, Film Editor, Performer: Tezeru Teshome
Song Writers: Tezeru Teshome and Bianca Maria
Producer: Angela Webb Pigg
Hold My Hand — A dance film developed from the larger research project Write About Your Mother: An Immigrant’s Daughter in Search of Empathy. Drawing from interviews with daughters of immigrant mothers, the piece uses movement to explore care, sacrifice, cultural inheritance, and misunderstanding across generations. Through dance, the film considers the body as a site of memory and translation, asking how empathy might be practiced when language, history, and lived experience do not fully align.
Performer, Choreographer, Director/Editor, Interviewer: Tezeru Teshome
Strange Fruit — An original play following a group of college friends who begin to uncover the histories buried beneath their university campus. As the past pushes into the present, they confront a legacy shaped by Indigenous dispossession, slavery, and institutional silence. Blending haunting with historical reckoning, the play asks what happens when a place refuses to forget—and what the living owe to the histories they inherit.
Assistant Director, Producer, Narrator: Tezeru Teshome
Professional experience includes work with Goodman Theatre, Free Street Theater, Congo Square Theatre Company, Chicago Dramatists, Pegasus Players, Kuumba Lynx, San Diego Repertory Theatre, Moxie Theatre, MPAACT, and the National Black Theatre Festival.
PHOTO GALLERY
Can’t Keep Me Down Theatre and Film Productions
CKMDT&F PRODUCTIONS
Services designed for schools, universities, nonprofits, public agencies, community organizations, individual artists and more:
Acting Coaching & Performance Development
Individual and ensemble coaching focused on character, interpretation, delivery, confidence, performance preparation, and more.Script Development & Writing Support
Support with original scripts, research, adaptations, structure, character development, dialogue, and narrative refinement.Theatre of the Oppressed & Devised Performance
Participatory theatre experiences that help groups explore real-world challenges, share perspectives, and rehearse possibilities for change.
Community-Engaged Research & Storytelling
Interviews, focus groups, listening sessions, and narrative-development processes that center community voice and inform public communication and organizational decision-making.Experiential Curriculum & Program Design
Theatre-based curricula, workshops, and learning programs aligned with academic, leadership, civic engagement, and career-readiness goals.Youth Leadership & Civic Engagement
Programs that strengthen youth voice, youth-adult partnership, shared governance, and pathways to college, career, and community leadership.