Today we’d like to introduce you to Marla Louissaint.
Hi Marla, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Since we last spoke, I’ve been on a thrilling journey of reclaiming my space and story as an artist. Reconciling my professional creative life with my commitment to continue organizing community (even when most of the world moved on) to save All Black lives ALL while trying to survive through late-stage capitalism did a number on my overall health.
It wasn’t until this summer when it hit me. I’m no martyr. Before I’m an organizer, I’m an artist. Leading a movement for our collective survival shouldn’t detract from my ability to be the star that I left the Jehovah’s witnesses, my family, and all I knew to be. I had to create boundaries for myself within my expansive multihyphenated works to be able to live my unapologetic Black, Queer, Hoe, & Creative truth. Something had to give!
In my reclamation and journey inward, I’ve been sharing my story of lifelong liberation from different inflection points in conversations and I always get the same humbling feedback. People near and far have expressed being inspired to the point of taking decisive action toward liberation in their own lives through my testimony of survival. So much so I’ve been inspired to tell it myself in my debut cabaret show, “A Goddess Reborn.”
During a recent writing session, my director Pauli Pontrelli put my story into a phrase I’ll be using from this point on, “Spiraling Upward.” Since July 23rd of 2018, the day I called my rebirth and the day I left the Jehovah’s Witness faith, I have been on a spiraling journey of returning to self and making my inner child proud as I continue a legacy of revolution that my Haitian ancestors and greater family can stand tall in. Spiraling upward.
My ascending story features happy accidents that triggered metamorphosis as I heal from losses aloud, experiences that demand I follow my gut, and the presence of the fiercest chosen family to see and shepherd me through each step of the way. Now, I am no longer restrained by the Jehovah’s Witness faith and have a renewed focus that allows me to expand myself as I make space for and build the world we need with comrades in the struggle for our collective liberation. With this fortified sense of freedom within myself reflecting outward…honey…the world is gonna be seeing and feeling a whole lot of Marla Lou! This journey is one I chronicle through my platform, with chosen family, and through community organizing.
For folks looking for more deets, definitely check out my first time chatting with Voyage LA and secure tickets to let me serenade you through the B-Roll of the last five years since my rebirth, from misfit to an icon. See you there 😉
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Since untethering from my family’s faith on July 23rd of 2018, I lost the only community I knew and was allowed to frequent with, but I also lost family. I was treated like a ghost. I’ve been cut out of family trees, when I came back from tour to finish my computer science degree in January of 2019, I found myself doing things to try and get my mother’s attention to show her that I am doing just fine. Things like gigs, dating, going out with friends, anything that might get her to reach out.
In the journey of adulting without my mother, I had to learn to do my hair (which is why I’ve changed it a million times), paying bills, and juggling finishing a degree while auditioning for the next gig and survival gigging. I often found myself couch surfing in the latter half of 2019 and throughout the pandemic when I was rooming with my grandmother.
No one likes to be abandoned and no one likes to be ignored, but it was in that discomfort while finishing my degree remotely that gave way for the self-determination to pick my life up and become the star I’ve always daydreamed about before I even gave myself permission to. It was that year that I gave birth to Claim Our Space NOW when my modeling career skyrocketed when I wasn’t doing it for my mother’s attention but for myself.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I’m an award-winning performer signed with A3 Artists Agency in NY/LA (Theater/TV/Film/VO/Commercial), an internationally published freelance model, and the founder and CEO of the abolitionist organization Claim Our Space NOW.
I specialize in making radical Black art across my disciplines and using my STEM femme brain to think dynamically about ways to create community. Many people know me as a model because it was the flashiest part of my healing journey, healing from 20 years in the Jehovah’s witness faith. The OGs know me as the Jimmy Award winner from 2015, who went on to begin a Computer Science degree while developing my craft as a multidisciplinary artist over the years.
I’m most proud of my work as a community organizer. I like to think I’m a single mother raising Claim our Space NOW with a village of family, friends, and liberators jumping in to make this dynamic resource hub to save all Black lives a reality. After 2.5 years, I have found myself reflecting more and more on the origins. There is something so sacred about how COSpace was founded during a period of so much loss. In my immediate family, a lot of them know me to start projects/skills and never finish them – my dad actually said when I first started sharing the vision, “I’m proud of you. We’ll see how long this lasts!”
What sets me apart is that I’ve reintegrated skills I’m sure I’ve accrued through my many incarnations on this planet – the creative, the advocate, the mad scientist, it girl, the truth-teller – I’m an icon and I’m finally embracing that. And damn, does it feel GOOD!
What makes you happy?
Seeing my people win. My grandmother living another day. Taking a day to stroll in the park. Engaging with brilliant Black artists across all mediums.
I am happy when I am traveling. I am happy when my face feels the warmth of the sun. I am happy when I see Black babies dancing and giggling. I am happy when my man comes home. I am happy when I get to explore my queerness. I am happy when I see a flame flicker from a candle.
The little everyday things make me the happiest but so would a benefactor who paid all the loans I’ve already forgiven myself for, lol.
Pricing:
- $88/hr model
- $25 ticket – virtual access to A Goddess Reborn [https://thegreenroom42.venuetix.com/show/details/pU99z5ecpFosjt6VF5bX/1673913600000]
Contact Info:
- Website: www.marlalou.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marlalou_/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marlalou
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/marlalou_
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBP1jx4FWIVtM2Pz85KH_ow
- Other: https://thegreenroom42.venuetix.com/show/details/pU99z5ecpFosjt6VF5bX/1673913600000
Image Credits
Vogue photo – Sasha Stavilla
