Toyin Moses

Bio

Award-winning actress, Toyin, was born and raised in San Francisco by her Nigerian father and American mother. She comes from a long family line of artists, teachers and world travelers.  Since childhood, Toyin has lived in a world of art and creativity. She first took to acting at 10 years of age with the Young Performer's Theater Company in San Francisco. Since then she has performed in film, television and on stages all over the country as well as London, England. Toyin won the Best Lead Actress NAACP Theatre Award for her role as Yolande in the Robey Theatre Company's production of Knock Me A Kiss. In addition she was nominated for the NAACP Theatre Award Best Lead Actress and Best Supporting Actress in the Robey Theatre Company's The Reckoning and Playwright's Arena's Bonded. 

If She Had to Choose:
Color: blue
Flower: peonies and dahlias
Music: Don't Smoke in Bed - Nina Simone
Book: Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke and Kindred by Olivia Butler
Time of day: dawn
Marathon she has run: New York City Marathon
Food: my father's Nigerian egusi stew with eba. (Runner up: hush puppies and fried okra)
Favorite City she has visited: Havana, Cuba
Favorite sound: my father speaking Yoruba
Person I admire: my 3 siblings
Inspiration: stories from my mother's childhood

Advocacy

Toyin is currently teaching theatre arts at a California State Prison. She also works with California Lawyers for the Arts to secure funding to expand Arts in Corrections programs throughout the country.

Since 2010, Toyin has served on the Young Professionals Advisory Board for Inner-City Arts, a non-profit organization located in Los Angeles' Skid Row that provides arts education to low income youth.  

Through Toyin's work in prisons and at Inner-City Arts, she has come to see that if arts education was more accessible to all youth there would be fewer adults in prison.