Meet Tiana Randall-Quant | Actor, Educator, Collaborative Storyteller

We had the good fortune of connecting with Tiana Randall-Quant and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Tiana, why did you pursue a creative career?
Art has always been at the center of how I perceive and understand the world. I’ve been an avid reader since I learned to read and discovered my passion for acting at a very young age (The first full length play I was in was Toy Story 2 in the second grade–I played Ham.) When I was a teen and in the process of deciding what I wanted to do with my life, I had it in my mind to study psychology but couldn’t shake that irresistible draw to literature and performance. I realized then that acting was my way of connecting my interests of literary creativity and the study of human behavior. I was also raised by storytellers. I grew up listening to my grandmother’s stories about growing up in Joplin, Missouri and my understanding of Los Angeles during the Civil Right’s Movement is shaped by my mother’s tales of girlhood and coming of age during that time. I am connected to ancestors like my paternal grandfather and maternal great-grandmother–people I’ve never met but who shaped my world before I got here–because of my parent’s stories about them. I have titled the profession direction I am pursuing that of a “Collaborative Storyteller” because storytelling is intrinsic in understanding human nature, in understanding our collective past and collective future, and I want to be a force for empowerment and equity in the spaces where storytelling happens.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
When I first started my career as an actor after having graduated from UC Berkeley, I found that the dominant was of thinking was that pursuing acting was an insular, independent thing–that when someone decides to be an actor, they decide to be a business. So I threw myself into that mindset, of being my own business, because I didn’t think I had a choice otherwise. But on that path I found that I was being very affected by the anxiety that comes with competition or the insecurity that came with the constant scrutiny I put myself under. I was constantly smothered by feelings of not being good enough, despite all of the investments I put into myself as a business, and was too ashamed to talk about how deeply I was affected by it. The mainstream mindset was that these feelings were a normal experience in navigating the entertainment business, and I felt weak for not being able to cope. I was also deeply affected by the racism, misogyny, and queerphobia I was constantly encountering in my experiences as an actor. While I found community with other Black people and other genderfluid femmes who were having similar experiences, I could not cope with these experiences as the norm or the expectation put on me that they would always color my experiences working on a craft I otherwise deeply loved. This led me to invest my creativity and labor in helping to create safe environments for artists where they can be authentic and vulnerable. I am so grateful for my sisters-in-action Celia Mandela Rivera and A’raelle Flynn-Bolden, with whom I’ve done some work I’ve really proud of. Celia reached out to me after the summer of 2020, a summer full of grief and reckoning, to brainstorm creating an organization that would make tangible the accountability and change our community so desperately needed. A’raelle joined us and as a trio we were able to create a solid infrastructure and rally an awesome collective around us who believed in our mission.
In starting my work as Co-AD of Ammunition Theatre, I’m finding that the trio model really works for me, and that I am really only interested in being a part of spaces that model more balanced and equitable power structures.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
If it is a week long trip, then we’re going to a different museum every day, like the California African American Museum, the Museum of Jurassic Technology, LACMA, The Science Center, The Natural History Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art. On each day we would also visit a different cultural neighborhood in LA, like Little Tokyo or Japantown, Chinatown, or Little Ethiopia, and make a day of eating at different places in those neighborhoods. Of course, we’d also set a day aside to visit Venice Beach to people watch, shop for trinkets and art, and let the waves wash over our feet.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
There are so many people and entities whose encouragement, support, and love have been intrinsic to my creative and personal growth. I am always shouting out my brilliant and bad ass sister Jade. I’d also like to thank my BLKLST co-founders Celia Mandela Rivera and A’raelle Flynn-Bolden for their love, support, and sisterhood. I’d like to thank the whole BLKLST collective for their dedication and friendship. I’d like to thank Ammunition Theatre Company for electing me as one of their new co-Artistic Directors, and shout out my co-AD’s Dr. Daphnie Sicre and Diana Wyenn, I am so excited for the future of our collaboration!

Website: bio.site/trquant

Instagram: t_quant

Twitter: TianaCarol

Youtube: The 354 Squad

Image Credits
Rebecca Aranda, Andrew Chenault, Nick Dee