Mwalim

Mwalim (Morgan James Peters I, born June 6, 1968), also known as "Mwalim *7", and Mwalim DaPhunkee Professor is an American artist, writer, and educator. He is an associate professor of English and director of African Americans studies at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

Born to a West Indian American (Barbados) mother and Mashpee Wampanoag father, Mwalim grew up in both the Northeast Bronx and Mashpee, Massachusetts. He studied music at Music & Art High School, and was interested in music and short-story writing from an early age. He went on to major in music composition and history at Boston University. During this time, he also worked as an intern and session musician at various recording studios around the city. He also became a part of the college's Black Drama Collective as a stage band musician and sketch writer. Mwalim joined New African Company in 1991, where he received his formal training in theater arts and management.

After moving back to Cape Cod, Mwalim worked with a small group of local performers to co-found Oversoul Theatre Collective, Inc., and became the group's artistic director. He has used music, theater and storytelling as a platform to explore the Black and Native American experience; and the American phenomenon of having to choose one race, despite the rhetoric of the American melting pot. He has called himself a "Black Wampanoag."

In 2000, Mwalim became a part of the Lincoln Center Theatre's Director's Lab program, and later held residencies at the Harlem Theatre Company, The Point CDC/Live From The Edge theater, and the Bronx Writer's Center, where he presented his original plays and performance pieces as well as taught workshops in creative writing, filmmaking and drama. His plays also began getting picked up for productions by various Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway theater groups as well as productions throughout the USA, Canada, the U.K. and the Caribbean.

His award-winning one-man show "A Party at the Crossroads" is subtitled the tales and adventures of a Black Indian growing up in a Jewish neighborhood, has been presented at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum in Connecticut and as a part of the Indian Summer series at the American Indian Community House in New York City. His performance piece, based on memories of Mashpee of the past, "Backwoods People" was presented at the 1999 National Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem, NC. His romantic comedy, Working Things Out was a hit at the 2005 festival.

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