Nikkole Salter Comes Home With Off-Broadway Hit

Actor/playwright Nikkole Salter talks the talk, walks the walk, spits the rage and bleeds the vulnerability of the African American women she portrays on stage at the Kirk Douglas, as if she were channeling the entire black female experience. Salter is back in Los Angeles, where she grew up and graduated from Palisades High School in 1997, performing in ‘In The Continuum,’ which she co-wrote and co-stars with former NYU classmate Danai Gurira, through December 10. Directed by Robert O’Hara, who received a 2006 Obie for the Off-Broadway production, the play follows the lives of two women: Abigail, an ambitious, confident, happily married black professional living in Zimbabwe, and Nia (Salter), an at-risk 19-year-old from South Los Angeles. While their life stories unfold separately on stage, embellished by conversations with friends and relatives (seamlessly portrayed by each actress), their experiences converge when they discover that they have contacted HIV/AIDS. Abigail, infected by a philandering husband, and Nia by her basketball star boyfriend, are left with few hopeful options. All of a sudden, as the differences between them fall away, they, and we, comprehend the devastating reality of being a woman in a patriarchal world. More than a story about the disproportional number of black women infected with HIV/AIDS, ‘In the Continuum’ defines the succession of events leading from past to the present, and sadly into the future of oppressed women. ‘Abigail’s story typifies the new cases of HIV among women in Zimbabwe,’ Salter told the Post, having performed ‘In the Continuum’ in Harare, Zimbabwe and in Johannesburg, South Africa. ‘Zimbabwe is a Christian and moral country, where the probability of women being promiscuous outside their marriage is rare,’ Salter says. ‘Moral outrage is not known; women do not have autonomy over their lives. By 40, 90 percent of Zimbabwean women are married and become part of the man’s family. So to ask them to separate from that norm is to ask quite a lot.’ In America, the stereotype of the strong black women raised to believe that you have to do it alone is undercut by the culture. Despite all the independence you’re supposed to have, not to have a man is still important,’ Salter says. Salter’s ambition, faith and passionate dedication to her acting career contrast sharply with the lives of the characters she enlivens in the play, except the reality of having grown up with a single mom in a household where money was scarce and opportunities slim. ‘My mother was a construction worker most of her life,’ Salter says. ‘She was an anomaly because she did typical male jobs. She drove trucks, poured concrete, and has a black belt in karate. Although she never found what she was good at and wanted to pursue, she instilled in me that you must follow your passion. If you’re going to be broke, you may as well do what you want.’ Salter discovered what she wanted when her mom took her to a high school play when she was 8. ‘The play wasn’t great, but the theater was magic,’ she said in a 1997 interview with the Palisadian-Post. She launched her theater career at theater camp at Southwest College, where she starred in ‘Cinderella’ at 10. ‘It ignited my life.’ Singing and dancing through high school, Salter stoked her passion in a number of workshops, including the Crossroads Arts Academy in Leimert Park and the Amazing Grace Conservatory in the Crenshaw area. Back in Los Angeles for the first time in eight years, Salter has been retracing the steps of her high school days. She visited PaliHi last week, where she reconnected with her Spanish teacher Est’ban Cacicedo, ‘my favorite teacher of all time.’ She was disappointed in her efforts to see Rose Gilbert, but pays her superlatives on her blog: ‘She honed my writing skills’she gave me books to read and concepts to consider. She challenged me and included me in her honors and AP classes with all the white people. She treated me like I was white, and I appreciated that’it meant that I was worthy of the best opportunities and inherently capable of achieving whatever I tried to achieve. I felt smart. I felt relevant. Who knows if I was, but feeling that way made it so.’ Salter earned her bachelor of fine arts degree in theater from Howard University, studied classical theater at Oxford University with the British American Drama Academy, and recently received her master of fine arts degree in acting from New York University’s Graduate Acting Program, under the chairmanship of Zelda Fichandler. Understanding the quixotic nature of the theater, Salter is nevertheless ebullient about traveling with the show, and is especially happy to be performing ‘In the Continuum’ in her home town. ‘Everyday turns into a countdown to showtime,’ she says. ‘I try to stay connected to the subject matter, to the people–these are actual stories–and finally I am grateful for this opportunity. I want to give this everything I have.’ ‘In the Continuum’ plays at 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m., Saturdays; and 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City. Contact: (213) 628-2772.