photo by Jim Barcus
The versatile Kansas City actress just completed her best year ever, earning kudos from critics, audience members and fellow theater professionals in multiple productions
2024 was a nonstop year for actress Chioma Anyanwu.
Following an end-of-year trip to Nigeria to visit family and participate in her Aunt Ngozi’s Chiefing Ceremony, she was off and running, fortified by her favorite fufu and jollof rice.
“This year had quite a lot of ‘firsts’ for me that were terrifying, joyful, confusing, informative — all the feelings,” she said in a recent interview.
In January 2024 Anyanwu was part of “Women of Note,” a collaboration between Bach Aria Soloists and the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival honoring female Shakespeare characters and women composers. As part of the 1994 Project (see Arts News, KC Studio, July/August 2024), she took on Whoopi Goldberg’s role in “Ghost” and later performed in “Speed” and “Lion King.”
In March Anyanwu headlined the Unicorn Theatre’s “Backwards Forwards Back,” portraying a soldier tormented by PTSD. Facebook abounded with audience praise: “wonderful… A tour de force solo performance,” “it gave me insight into what soldiers experience when they come home,” “see the stunning Chioma Anyanwu act her face off!”
Also in March, Anyanwu’s first film, “Eden’s Twilight,” in which she played Eve in the story of Adam and Eve and what happens to them upon banishment from the Garden, debuted online. Anyanwu was contacted about the role by her friend, actor Eric Geil, whose father, Chris Geil, along with associates Justin and John Rizzo, wrote the “Eden” screenplay and music. (For more information about the film, visit firelightcreativeproductions.com.)
Anyanwu was also active in another film production last spring. “Rennie,” a locally produced spoof on the Renaissance Festival, premiered at the Folly Theater in mid-October. The Christopher Guest-like comedy about a group of Ren Fest performers trying to save their town was written, directed and produced by Jessica Dressler and Jen Frank Klenke and starred a bevy of local actors. (See our story about “Rennie,” page 48.)
In May Anyanwu exhibited her considerable singing and dancing talent as part of the three-woman chorus in KC Rep’s “Little Shop of Horrors,” earning an enthusiastic response from the Starlight Philanthropy team, who commented, “Seeing the amazing Chioma Anyanwu perform was icing on the cake.”
Over the summer she was cast as Calpurnia, Caesar’s wife, in the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival’s production of “Julius Caesar,” a role she played with grace and elegance.
In August she joined the Kansas City Actors Theatre cast of Alice Childress’ “Trouble in Mind,” playing a veteran actress forced to accept Black caricature roles.
Anyanwu’s resume is voluminous and includes work at Starlight, Arrow Rock, Late Night Theatre, Fountain Haus and Tybee Island off the coast of Georgia. She taught theater and directed productions at Avila College. She made her mark in productions of “For Colored Girls…,” “Little Women,” “The Pests,” “Men in Boats,” “The Revolutionists,” “DOT,” “the ripple, the wave that carried me home,” “Schoolgirls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play” and many more.
Anyanwu didn’t grow up dreaming of being an actress. Her first love was gymnastics, but seven years of it ended with a back injury at age 14. She tried replacing acrobatics with lacrosse and volleyball but was unsuccessful. It was seeing her older sister in a high school production of “Anything Goes” that sparked her attention and launched her theater trajectory. At age 16 she found herself in the ensemble of “Jesus Christ Superstar” at Arrow Rock Lyceum Theatre. Years later she triumphed as Mary Magdalene in a production by Arts Asylum.
Anyanwu grew up in Columbia, Missouri, the youngest of three children of Nigerian parents who had emigrated for her father’s university education. In Columbia they found a community with other immigrants and her father commuted to Lincoln University. Luckily for Anyanwu, nearby Stephens College was known for its theater program. She earned a BFA there and then an MFA at UMKC. Even a whole year in a leg cast at the Conservatory didn’t curb her stage appearances.
Anyanwu loves KC’s thriving artistic community but now feels ready to explore possibilities outside KC “for little sips of time here and there,” hoping the exploration will “maybe iron out some of the question marks.”
She’s limitless in her range — comedy, tragedy, musicals, men’s and women’s roles, period and contemporary settings, traditional and wild interpretations — and has earned the praise and respect of fellow actors and theater professionals. Kansas City Actors Theatre director Darren Sextro has called her “one of the finest, most skilled and most shapeshifting stage actors in this town.”
Watch for her in 2025 in “Emma” at KCRep in May and “Uncle Vanya” at Kansas City Actors Theatre in August, following a January/February appearance in “Doctor Moloch” at the Unicorn.
