From Broadway to D.C. youth development, Marjuan Canady is doing it all
Marjuan Canady is a woman of many titles. Canady is a writer, director, literary advocate, entrepreneur, performer, mother and Tony Award nominated Broadway producer.
“I wear many different hats. It can be a lot at times, but I love it because I don’t have to just do one thing,” says Canady, 38, who is currently a co-producer on the nationally touring Broadway revival of the musical “The Wiz” and “Hell’s Kitchen,” the Broadway debut of Alicia Keys’s musical.
Above all, however, Canady says what she finds most rewarding is how working with her nonprofit, the Canady Foundation for the Arts (CFA), allows her to give back to the community that raised her.
Canady, who grew up in the Shepherd Park neighborhood in the northern limits of D.C., established CFA in 2015 to provide young people of color and low-income status with arts education and professional development.
CFA gives D.C. youth — from elementary-aged children to young adults — opportunities to experience the District’s theater scene through sponsored theater trips and workshops.
The foundation supports these activities with funding from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the Theatre Communications Group, the Blackbaud Giving Fund and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, among others.
Growing up with a Trindadian mother and Black father, Canady says she never envisioned joining the arts until a middle school teacher encouraged her to apply to the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. It was studying musical theater at the elite D.C. high school where she first discovered how much impact the arts could have in a community.
“My gifts as an artist are not just solely for entertainment. [They’re] deeply linked to history, cultural and social movements and community activism,” says Canady.
Canady attributes her own artistic affinity to her mother, who exposed her early on to music and performances, and her supportive community in D.C.
“So many adults created safe spaces for me and my friends to do what we wanted to do, which is really a testament to why I am the way I am and do the things I do now,” says Canady. “It wouldn’t have happened without them.”
Canady’s community also inspired her to explore her Caribbean roots as the creator of the children’s media brand, Callaloo, and by writing and producing the original musical “Tap In,” which celebrates Black and brown girlhood.
“With so many immigrant communities in D.C., there was this understanding of such a beautiful culture and celebration” in the District, says Canady. “It’s such a welcoming city.”
Canady says she wants to help local youth embrace their identity, including the parts they might “shy away from” out of fear of being made fun of.
“When I started to investigate more of who I was as a person, my cultural identity and what made me unique…” says Canady, “I really leaned into that. I started to find more of my own voice and my own power.”
Canady went to college at Fordham University in New York City, where she discovered her love for producing. After receiving a master’s degree in arts politics from New York University, Canady started working as a theater producer in New York City, Los Angeles and D.C. while building her multimedia production company, Sepia Works.
Her friends say that her big smile, unapologetically authentic hairstyles and energetic vision brighten any room. Canady, who speaks humbly on her accomplishments, uses a tender-hearted tone fit for working with children. Yet her well-spoken manner and the attention she pays to the details in recounting her own story demonstrates an assertiveness fit to bring Broadway’s most popular productions and other stories to life.
Canady says her vision for CFA is a space sprawling with kids, artists, educators and art of all kinds. She hopes to build her foundation into a place where children have the support she had growing up. Ultimately, she wants to “open up new doors for underrepresented youth.”
A study published by the Arts Education Policy Review in 2022 determined that theater courses were found to be less available in high schools overall than other visual arts or music classes. Moreover, Hispanic participation in musicals significantly decreased from 2017 to 2022 by almost five percent, and participation in music festivals declined by seven percent, according to a survey from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Yan Carlos Colón León, 39, is a music manager for the District of Columbia Public Schools arts team. While he doesn’t know Canady personally, he shares a similar view of arts education, with it “geared towards social justice” that can give D.C. youth the opportunity to build skills to tell their stories on their own terms.
“It’s also a way to give the youth that are underrepresented a chance to fortify and strengthen their voice,” says Colón León.
Both Canady’s friends and educators who work with her speak highly of her ability to imbue those around her with her vision and work ethic.
“An excellentist,” is how Carl Gray, the chairman of CFA’s board of directors and a cybersecurity and IT entrepreneur, describes Canady. “She naturally does what she does with excellence.”
Gray, 42, met Canady through a mutual friend. From that moment, he says they became “fast friends.” He became her business manager before joining CFA’s board on its inaugural board of directors.
Since joining the board, Gray is proudest of the centralized focus on promoting life skills through arts education, such as implementing improvisational theater classes (improv) across their programming.
According to Gray, improv helps “supplement some of the things that go on in the classroom” and “translates to better grades, better participation and better [attendance] because they have something to look forward to.”
– Story by Avril Silva
– Copy edited by Michelle Benitez
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AMAZING!!!!!