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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 29, 2022

Playwright, Filmmaker, Novelist Peppur Chambers First Performing Artist Appointed to Chandler Cultural Foundation Board

PHOENIX - Writer, film and theater producer and educator Peppur Chambers has been appointed to the Chandler Cultural Foundation's Managing Board.

Chambers is the first performing artist to serve on the Board which provides oversight for the Chandler Center for the Arts. She was appointed by City of Chandler Mayor Kevin Hartke, with the Board's unanimous recommendation.

Early in her career, Chambers studied advertising and marketing at Marquette University in Wisconsin and worked for a mutual fund firm in Chicago until she decided to pursue her artistic and creative passion. She moved to New York City in 2000, where she took her first acting and writing lessons.

"For my day job, I worked for an entertainment firm with David Bowie and Shakira as two of our clients. Then in the evenings, I would go on auditions and perform," says Chambers. "That experience really taught me what it takes to be a performing artist, both from the management side with budgets, operations, and marketing, as well as what is required to thrive as a working artist. I came to understand what it takes to create and present art, but also that as an artist you need help; you don't need to do everything yourself."

After several years in New York City, Chambers moved to Los Angeles in 2004 and started to create her own work. Now an international writer, producer and educator, she strives to live her voice and inspires others to do the same, especially women.

She’s the creator of an award-winning web series, Brown Betties Guide: How to Look for Love In All The Wrong Places; women’s empowerment workshops, Be Your Own Bettie; a  dinner-theater  show,  “Harlem’s  Night:  A  Cabaret  Story”  and  her  published novella, Harlem’s Awakening (Black Hill Press, 2013; Amazon), with the second installment Harlem’s Last Dance coming in 2023 on Spaceboy Books.

An alum of Moving Arts MADLab, Circle X Emerging Playwrights Group, and a current Antaeus Playwrights Lab member, she uses her voice to amplify women’s issues, social justice and love. Her commissioned radio plays The Fire In-Between, (LA’s 1933 Griffith Park fire), End of the Line (human trafficking) and The Boll Weevil &Chester Higgensworth (reparations) can be found wherever you listen to podcasts.

Her plays For the Love of You, House Rules, The Build UP, Dick & Jayne Get a Life and one-woman show, Harlem’s Awakening: Storytelling Live, have been produced in L.A. and Prague. Her most recent play, F/K/A Meridian was a top 15% finalist for the 2022 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, and a semi-finalist for the 2021 Garry Marshall Theatre New Works Festival.

Chambers has also directed film and theater. Her most recent film (director, co- writer/producer), Do Something, about protest and social justice can be found on Tubi.com.

As an educator, Chambers taught journalism at Prague College, has taught drama and ESL classes to adults and children, and has developed various workshops around creative writing, acting and empowerment. She has presented at PHX Works, The Pan African Film Festival, Support Women Artists Now (SWAN) Festival, The American School of the Hague (Netherlands) and many others.

Known affectionately as “The Hot One,” Peppur Chambers is also a three-time valedictorian and record-holding athlete who has been inducted into the Kenosha Athletic Hall of Fame and danced for thousands as a former World Champion Chicago Bulls Luv-a-Bull dancer.

"Peppur possesses an unusual combination of not only being a successful artist, but one with an acute business acumen," says Board Chair David Woodruff. "Chandler Center for the Arts is always balancing those two forces - how to present new and interesting artists for the community, while maintaining strong fiscal responsibility. Having a voice from the artist's perspective, one that understands how to weigh those two objectives, will be a real asset to the Foundation."

For more information about Peppur Chambers visit peppurchambers.com.

For more information about the Chandler Cultural Foundation visit chandlercenter.org/CCF