GREEN & GROWING LIBATIONS Iyalosha Adekola Adedapo Starting off Green & Growing The community activist, actor, storyteller and jazz vocalist has 55 years experience in performing arts
Iyalosha Adekola Adedapo, a native of Chicago, has a fifty-five year long career in performing arts. She is also a community activist. All during high school and into college she took up the causes of underprivileged and underrepresented people of color with emphasis on her own African American communities. She adopted an African persona during her college years that carried into her life- time mission of preserving and promulgating Af- rican (West Africa – Nago/Yoruba people) culture and indigenous African religions. She was initiated to Shango (k’owo) in 1977 in Oyotunji, South Car- olina and became Iyanifa, Omo Awo Ifa, in 2017 through Fasina Folade and IyaIfatola Adesanya. Through all of her community activism and com- munity building, she became a renowned actor, storyteller, and jazz vocalist and has notoriety in Chicago and Milwaukee. She has worked with the following theatrical com- panies: A.L.E.C., Theater X, Renaissance Theater Company, Milwaukee Public Theater (MPT), The Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Milwaukee Cham- ber Theater, The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra (A.C.E.), Ko-Thi Dance Company, Hotel Milwau-
kee (Radio Theater) and ETA Theater Company in Chicago, IL. She is an acclaimed jazz vocalist in Milwaukee and Chicago. She has also produced, directed and written numerous plays for children through MPT, the Inner city Arts Council and the African American Children’s Theater. After 17 years as a reading specialist at Lloyd Street Global Elementary School, she achieved her BA in Community Leadership Development in 2010 and a master’s degree in Professional Development /Adult Education in 2021 from Alverno College where she worked as the Mul- ticultural Program Coordinator since October 2011 until her recent retirement. She frequently uses her microphone time to inform the public of values and the necessity or working with our youth, especially how to use the arts to inform and engage them. She has reputation at Alver- no College as a community builder by creating alumni “affinity” groups for the African American and Latinx communities through her coordina- tion of the rites of passage ceremonies at Alver- no for graduates. Bestowing of the Kente is in its 28th year and Latina con Fuerza is in its fifth year.
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