Justina Kehinde

Justina Kehinde is a writer, director and award winning poet. Her directorial debut Til Death Do Us Part (Theatre 503) won Best New Production at the 2022 London Pub Theatre Awards and in 2023 she assisted Rebecca Frecknall in her 5 star production of Romeo and Juliet (Almeida Theatre). A member of the Young Vic Director’s programme, in 2017 she was one of eight selected onto Damsel Productions directorial development scheme where, under the mentorship of Paulette Randal (MBE) she co-wrote and directed her first original play, UMUADA, which debuted at the Bunker Theatre before headlining the King’s Head Theatre’s PlayMill Festival to 5 and 4 star reviews.

An alumna of the Soho Writer’s Lab (2021-2022), Royal Court Writer’s Group (2019) and BBC London Voices (2020), her debut radio play Red Tide was commissioned by the Southwark Playhouse (2020). She has also worked with several production companies on thought-form short films and is developing several T V projects. 

In 2021 she collaborated with the UNFPA on an original poem raising awareness around Harmful Traditional Practices, and in 2019 was commissioned to perform a poem to open Prof. Angela Davis’ keynote speech at the inaugural, international conference on #METOO in Reykjavik. Winner of the 2012 Benjamin Zephaniah Poetry Prize and a keynote speaker at the 2013 TEDx Youth Conferences, she is a graduate of the University of Cambridge where she directed the first all-black-all-female production on a Cambridge stage and the first African musical. She has professional proficiency in French.