An epic story … An epic journey

Nikè Imoru is a Renaissance person, and we mean the actual Renaissance: She’s a scholar of 16th century Shakespearean theater.

Yet she’s also a Renaissance person in the broader sense: a Spokane actress, university professor, director, literary scholar, personal coach and a film casting director for North by Northwest.

Her life journey has taken her to some surprising places:

• An ancient Greek theater in Delphi, where she portrayed Medea.

• A movie set with Samuel L. Jackson.

• Covent Garden in her native city of London, where she performed political street theater.

• Nigeria, where she spent several years of her childhood.

• Europe, which she toured with experimental “fringe” theater groups.

So, how did she end up in Moscow, Idaho, and finally Spokane?

“People find it strange that I was in Idaho, but I don’t think it’s strange,” Nikè (pronounced Nee-kay) said in her rich, cultured, Royal Shakespeare-like voice. “It makes sense, in the context of the whole story.”

So we hereby present the context:

Imoru was born in 1966 in London. Her Nigerian parents had come there to study and they lived in a one-room apartment in the Finsbury Park area – not entirely welcoming to people of color.

“ ‘No Irishmen, no dogs, no blacks,’ those signs were perfectly legitimate then for rentals,” said Imoru.

Her mother became a nurse and her father an accountant. When Imoru was 5, the family moved back to Nigeria.

“I remember it feeling very strange and gradually getting used to it,” she said. “I think of those years as the golden years of my childhood. We were in a village; I enjoyed living in a small town. My mum said I always took well to villages.”

Yet it was also the time of the Nigerian-Biafran War, and Imoru remembers seeing military firing squads on TV. She says her family was “incredibly protected” from any of this unrest – or so she thought at the time. One morning, suddenly, they were spirited out of Nigeria.

“I remember very dramatically being bundled out of the house at 4 a.m. and lots of people all around, crying,” she said. “It was like being whisked away and suddenly being back in London.”

Her mother always said it was because she and her brother “didn’t adjust” to Nigeria, but later Imoru found out that it was because their dad’s life was in danger, because of the war.

Imoru started attending London’s public schools. She wasn’t a particularly academically inclined child. In fact, she struggled in school.

“It felt like a ghetto-ized experience, not just economically, but it felt isolated,” she said. “And that’s when I escaped to places, to reading and dreaming and fantasizing.”

She was already mesmerized by what would become the two enduring themes of her life: literature and theater.

“One of my teachers took me to see ‘Peter Pan’ and I was utterly transfixed,” Imoru said.

Also, her father was having her read Shakespeare at age 9.

“He threw these books at me,” she said. “But I didn’t understand it.”

Then suddenly, at age 14, she “just got it.” Thus began a lifelong passion for Shakespeare.

Imoru began her performing career in high school, in an unlikely role: Hamlet in “Hamlet.”

“It was an all-girls school,” she said. “I still have such a memory of it. We studied it (Shakespeare) for two years. … It has never left me.”

She also embarked on an unsanctioned theatrical project with three of her high school pals.

“We would bunk off school and go to Covent Garden (a London outdoor market) where Europe’s best street theater artists perform,” she said.

“I would write these sketches – political theater about unemployment and the government – and we would perform them. It was a testing ground; people would only gather ’round if you had something to say. And we got an audience. Not as big as some of the world-class acts, but it was good.”

Something clicked in her mind at age 19, and she decided she wanted to become an academic. She got her doctorate in theater history and contemporary critical theory in 1994 from the University of Warwick. She went on to become a professor at the University of Leeds and later at the University of Hull. She was the only British-born black theater scholar in the United Kingdom.

Meanwhile, Imoru continued to act and perform, including an experimental show called “MedeaSexwar,” a rewriting of the Medea myth.

“We took the show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and then took it all over Europe,” she said. “We were on the road for six months.”

Later, she was invited to do a one-woman show of a new translation of “Medea” at the European Cultural Centre of Delphi, in an ancient Greek theater.

“It was indescribable,” Imoru said. “Humbling. Performing before Nobel laureates. It was a pinnacle, but it was a beginning.”

Her life had already taken an unexpected turn. She always said there were two things she would never do – go to America, and work in film – and soon she was doing both.

The University of Hull had a teacher-exchange program with Western Washington University in Bellingham, so Imoru agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to an exchange. She ended up loving the experience, mainly because she was able to form her own experimental group called The Possibilities.

The group toured the Northwest, including Idaho, which is how she came to the attention of the University of Idaho.

In 2001, Imoru said goodbye to Britain and took a job as a professor at the University of Idaho. She directed “The Tempest” and “As You Like It” at the Idaho Repertory Theatre, and also started directing shows for Interplayers Theatre, Spokane’s professional theater.

In 2004, she was asked to take over as Interplayers’ artistic director, a job she held for a year and half. It was a tough time for the theater, in the midst of a financial crisis, yet also a time of creative ferment, culminating in a searing performance of Sam Shepard’s “True West,” featuring members of her old WWU group, The Possibilities.

“As an artist, it was fantastic,” Imoru said. “As a producer, trying to raise money, it was very frustrating. It got in the way of the work. I’m used to challenges, but it impeded the flow of the work.”

So she left Interplayers, went back to London to visit her parents and brother, and then, somewhat to her own surprise, found herself back in Spokane.

“I said to my mum, ‘I’ve found someplace I can call home,’ ” she said. “It’s because of love, in many ways. Love of the falls and the river. … I can think here. There is space here.”

Imoru taught classes at Gonzaga University and other area universities. Meanwhile, she was asked to audition in 2006 for the Samuel L. Jackson movie “Home of the Brave,” which was shot in Spokane by North by Northwest.

She got the part and played Jackson’s psychotherapist. It was one of the “exquisite” acting experiences of her life – “the perfect balance of actors who know what they’re doing.”

That led indirectly to a job with North by Northwest as casting director, where she fills roles for the many movie projects that come to Spokane.

“I make it my business to know the talent pools right across the region, in Spokane, Coeur d’Alene and Seattle,” Imoru said.

She also works on-set as an acting coach, which led to her newest endeavor as a personal and performance coach.

Imoru coaches actors in their craft, but also coaches anybody who seeks “simple, direct and effective ways of coming ‘unstuck’ in their lives.” Her business is called Act With Inspiration; contact her by writing nikeimoru@hotmail.com.

Imoru’s life has flowed like a river, through varied terrain and interrupted by the occasional “shadowy periods” and pools of “deep reflection.”

Yet, she said, it all springs from three sources: “Teaching, theater and communication.”

More than enough to sweep a person all over the world.