Nikkole Salter

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Nikkole Salter is an American actress, playwright, and advocate from Los Angeles. She trained in theater at Howard University (BFA) and earned an MFA from New York University.

Salter co-wrote and co-starred in In the Continuum, an Obie Award–winning and Pulitzer Prize–nominated play with Danai Gurira. Its success led her to co-found The Continuum Project with Glenn Gordon Nsangou, a nonprofit that brings innovative cultural programming to empower the global African Diaspora.

As a playwright, Salter has written seven full-length plays. Her works have been produced Off-Broadway and in five countries. As an actress, she has performed Off-Broadway and at major regional theaters across the U.S.

Salter began acting in Los Angeles around age eight and found her voice as a writer when she drafted a monologue for class. She and Gurira created In the Continuum in 2004 as part of NYU’s FREEPLAY program, when they were third-year students in NYU’s Graduate Acting Program.

In the Continuum follows the parallel experiences of an African woman and an African American woman diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. It premiered in 2005 at Primary Stages in New York City, directed by Robert O’Hara, with Salter and Gurira in the original cast. It later moved Off-Broadway to the Perry Street Theatre and then toured nationally and internationally, including venues in Africa and Europe.

Salter’s play Carnaval focuses on three African American men and their choices regarding sex tourism in Brazil. It premiered at Luna Stage in 2013 and was remounted in New York’s National Black Theatre in 2014.

The Continuum Project’s Legacy programs began in 2009 with The Residency, created in partnership with African Ancestry and Piper Theatre Production to bring theater residencies to Brooklyn public schools. In 2010, The Reflection initiative began, commissioning original plays from teachers who participated in the Residency.

Salter is active in theatre advocacy. She serves on the Board of Directors for Theater Communications Group and on the Council of The Dramatists Guild of America. She has also contributed other works, including Unknown Thousands for Every 28 Hours Plays and pieces for UNTAMED: Hair, Body, Attitude.

Her honors include an Obie Award, the Outer Critics Circle’s John Gassner Award, the Seldes-Kanin fellowship, and the Global Tolerance Award from Friends of the United Nations. In 2005, In the Continuum was named a top play by The New York Times, Newsday, and New York Magazine. She has received nominations such as Helen Hayes Best Actress and the Black Theatre Alliance, and won an AUDELCO nomination for Carnaval. She received a MAP Fund grant in 2014 and has been a finalist or nominee for other programs including the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center National Playwrights Conference, USA Fellowships, and Playwrights of New York Fellowships.