Mostly Melanin Arts

Founding (2017)

Darryl Akins founded MMA Improv in Anchorage, Alaska in September 2017 as a nonprofit organization with an explicit mission of increasing representation for performers of color in the Anchorage improv scene. The company offers both performance and training programming designed to be welcoming and accessible to the full range of Anchorage's diverse population.

Programming

MMA Improv runs classes and workshops alongside regular shows, building a performer community centered on inclusion. As one of the very few improv organizations operating in Alaska, MMA Improv serves an underrepresented geographic market while also addressing the demographic gap in improv nationwide.

MMA Improv is an Anchorage nonprofit committed to racial representation and inclusion in improv comedy, providing training and performance opportunities for the full diversity of Alaska's largest city.

Short-form improv shows at venues including Koot's Ice Bar in Anchorage, featuring games similar to Whose Line Is It Anyway? Ensemble cast of singers, dancers, rappers, poets, authors, and stand-up comics integrating their specialties into improvised scenes. Performances as part of Obsidian Moon Entertainment programming.

Darryl Akins founded Mostly Melanin Arts in September 2017 in Anchorage, Alaska, assembling a core group that initially included himself and fellow improv veterans Jana Lage and Sonya Senkowsky before expanding to include performers from Anchorage's Black community, among them Corinthia Rabb McCoy, Sunshine Mebane, and Briana Marie Thibodeaux. The ensemble was organized as a project of Obsidian Moon Entertainment, a nonprofit dedicated to providing performance opportunities and onstage representation for people of color in Alaska. Akins positioned the group as giving voice to African Americans in a city where Black improv performers had little visibility, describing the interactive nature of improv as a form that draws its material directly from the community in the room.

Mostly Melanin Arts distinguishes itself through an ensemble that encompasses singers, dancers, rappers, poets, authors, and stand-up comics, who bring those disciplines to improv games and scenes. By April 2018 the group had completed five performances and performed a set at the Anchorage Wakanda Ball, a community fundraiser for the city's Juneteenth Celebration. The organization centers representation as a structural principle rather than a secondary consideration, making it a distinctive presence within the Anchorage arts community and among improv organizations in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.