Rotimi Agbabiaka

Bio

Rotimi Agbabiaka is an actor, director, writer, corporate coach, and teacher of acting, solo performance, and theatre-making. Most recently, Rotimi played the EmCee in Cabaret (Center Repertory Company), Hook in Peter Pan (Panto In The Presidio), Oberon and Theseus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Folger Theatre, Washington D.C.), and Cellphone/Narrator in If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhf*cka (Playwrights Horizons, Off-Broadway). 
 
Other acting credits include roles at Yale Repertory Theatre, American Conservatory Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, California Shakespeare Theater, Marin Theatre Company, Shotgun Players, and TheatreWorks. Rotimi is a company member of Word for Word, Black Artists Contemporary Cultural Experience (BACCE), the Tony Award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe; and is a resident artist at Brava Theater Center and the Magic Theatre. 

Rotimi most recently directed The Tempest (San Francisco Shakespeare Festival), The Red Shades: A Trans Superhero Rock Opera (Z Space); and assistant directed the opera Harvey Milk Reimagined (Opera Parallèle).
 
As a playwright, Rotimi penned and toured the solo shows Homeless, Type/Caste (Theatre Bay Area award), and MANIFESTO; the musical, Seeing Red—co-written with Joan Holden and Ira Marlowe and produced by the San Francisco Mime Troupe; and workshopped a new play, The Soul Never Dwells In A Dry Place, inspired by the art of Romare Bearden, at Cutting Ball Theater in 2024. 
 
Rotimi has taught acting, movement, and play creation at the Yale School of Drama, Middlebury College, Bennington College, Southern Illinois University, the California Institute of Integral Studies, and American Conservatory Theatre, among others. Rotimi trained at the Moscow Art Theatre, received an MFA in Acting from Northern Illinois University, and has presented work at museums (the deYoung), in parks (with We Players), on street corners (with Jess Curtis’s GRAVITY), and on nightlife stages around the world (as alter ego Miss Cleo Patois).

Academic Appointments

• Lecturer, Theater and Performance Studies