Jennifer Cendaña Armas is a NYC born, raised, and based poet/actor/dancer/singer
/writer/violinist/community worker. She has extensively organized and taught political arts and activist workshops in schools, prisons and community based organizations stateside and internationally, including Brooklyn Academy of Music, El Puente Academy of Peace & Justice, Harvard University, and Riker’s Island Prison, Presbyterian Secondary Boys Academy (Ghana), and Casa De Milagros (Peru). She facilitates poetry and theatre workshops for Brooklyn Academy of Music and Arts Horizons and is production manager for We Got Issues!, feminine centered leadership organization, where she also facilitates rantfest workshops and red tents. Her show, skinimin12, premiered at 2004’s Downtown Urban Theatre Festival and later featured at 2006’s New York City Hip Hop Theater Festival at the Public Theater. She is company member of We Got Issues! and feature contributor of the We Got Issues! A Young Woman’s Guide to Leading an Empowered Life (Inner Ocean, 2006). She has been blessed to share the stage with powerhouses such as reg e. gainese, Willie Perdomo, and Rha Goddess. Poetry features include: Lincoln Center’s La Casita, Joe’s Pub’s Urban Griots, the world famous Nuyorican Poet’s Café, Bowery Poetry Club, Culture Project’s Women Center Stage Festival, Museum of Contemporary Art and Louder Than A Bomb (Chicago), World Stage and ‘da Poetry Lounge (L.A.), Lizard Lounge (Boston), Esperanza Peace and Justice Center (Houston), Sista’hood Festival (Vancouver),Ladyfest Bristol, Speakeasy and Poetry Café (London), Poetry Vandals Present…(Newcastle,UK). University performances and performance workshops include: University of California- Berkeley, Harvard University, University of Virginia, New York University, and Vanderbilt University Jennifer’s televised poetry features include: Spoken (Black Family Channel), Word (FreeSpeech TV), Curvations (PSA). Publications include: My Mouth May Not Know the Words But Everything Else Understands (self-published), NYU Review for Law and Social Change, AWOL, Aesthetica, X, Monsoon. Theatre credits include: We Got Issues!(national company), co-creator/performer in Mango Tribe’s Sisters in the Smoke (HERE/touring company) and Creation Myth (Henry Street Settlement/ABRON ARTS CENTER), dancing with Urban Bush Women’s Are We Democracy? (Brooklyn Museum of Art), The Vengeance of Mami Wata (Theater for a New City), Queens Theatre in the Park’s Black Theatre Festival, Movement Choreographer- BLAK (HERE Theatre).
Jennifer’s creative workshops are interactive and link the personal and political.
She specializes in creating multi-lingual work, analyzing and fortifying the relationship between art, politics, and nurturing women’s voices as an integral component of social change.
She graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts with a degree in theatre and politics.
