Annette Daniels Taylor is a theater artist, playwright,singer, poet and storyteller.
Annette, a native of the forgotten New York City borough of Staten Island started her performance career in her mama’s bedroom; and read romance novels as she practiced putting on lipstick. After many quarrels about going out to the playground for fresh air, she would retreat to her bedroom. There she would create elaborate stories that involved herself, dolls and movie stars that were in color and black and white. After her grandmother taught her to sew, she embarked on a journey of dressing people who were much more fabulous than she would ever have the energy to become.
While working as a fashion designer and music video stylist in N.Y.C. with such well known celebrities as Ruby Dee and the late Ossie Davis, Queen Latifah, Lenny Kravitz, Prince Raheem a.k.a the RZA, Missy Elliot, Martin Lawrence, Living Colour, and Russell Simmons she kept writing and acting and received a scholarship to attend the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute. Annette realized she was spending more time contributing to the development of already well known artists while trying to squeeze time in to develop her own craft.
Four years ago her husband fine artist Rodney Taylor came up with the idea of moving their family out of New York City to his native Buffalo. After making Buffalo their home they have both been able to devote much more time to their art and their four children .
Annette has performed in such notable venues in New York City as La Mama, the Apollo Theater, Nuyorican Poets Café, Harlem School of the Arts, The Marilyn Monroe Theater, St. Michaels Church, Aaron Davis Hall, Henry Street Settlement, and BMCC Performing Arts Center. In New Jersey at the Trenton College Theater and in Western New York at The Alleyway Theater, Buffalo Ensemble Theatre, Rockwell Hall, Niagara Falls Performing Arts Center, HallWalls, Langston Hughes Institute, Nietzche’s, Buffalo’s Juneteenth Festival and The Albright Knox Art Gallery.
Her playwright credits include Mama Songs, a musical-memory-hip-hop- love poem about 3 generations of Mama’s, originally commissioned by the Arts In Education Institute of Western New York; ASymphony Down In My Soul, a historical timeline of the American Negro told through poetry and song ; 3 Women, the story of a girl who grows up longing to be in love; Boat Leaving in Ten Minutes, about a chance meeting between two former high school friends at the Staten Island Ferry and The Bus, about the overheard conversations of various characters on a New York City metro bus Annette is writer-in-resident at The Langston Hughes Institute. She is also a teaching artist for The Arts in Education Institute of Western New York, Irish Classical Theatre Company and The African American Cultural Center.
listen to "Grandma Said" and "I'm Still workin'" at
