Meet Kyra Higgins

Kyra Higgins, 25, of Redfox, was selected as a Firestarter for her innovative work in radio theatre. She creates art in the areas of theatre, poetry, dance and audio production, and focuses on topics such as mental health, Eastern Kentucky Black history, folklore, religion, spirituality and identity expression.

Kyra does radio broadcast and radio theater as well as theater work in general. She hosts a radio program on Appalshop’s community radio, WMMT 88.7 called ‘Word on the Street.” She is currently working on developing a radio drama where the audience will make choices about the story line and become part of telling the story. It is a ‘choose your own adventure’ storytelling style that was inspired by a live performance she did last October at the Red Fox Storytelling Festival. In this new show, she is developing characters that will face conflicts and trauma using healthy coping mechanisms. The audience will get to choose which characters to focus on and help decide what happens next in their journeys. She hopes the story will help audience members overcome the stigma of seeking mental health services, and learn healthy coping mechanisms for themselves.

Her nominator bugz fraugg said, ““Her work focuses on mental health and inclusion, her theater work and radio work-in-development is an absolute inspiration about how we can move forward together in loving community and the stories we share and co-create. This demonstration of resilience is a breath of fresh air, and what I believe we desperately need as a whole nation.”

Kyra is getting certified as a folklorist and is part of the Kentucky Community Scholars program through Appalachia-Science in the Public Interest (ASPI) and brings community oral history into her radio work that she hosts through Appalshop. Her oral history work is about Carr Creek Lake. It was destroyed and displaced three African American communities and disrupted the growth of the town she grew up in. Her nominator bugz fraugg says, “Ensuring the histories of Black communities are well documented and kept alive through respectful storytelling, especially when it’s about rural Black communities, which many people don’t even believe exist, is sacred work!”

In addition to her radio and theatre work, Krya is also a poet and dancer. She has not only learned flag dancing but is teaching workshops on how to make the flags and how to move with them, as well as pursuing partnerships and collaborations. She has a workshop planned for the Fall in which she is partnering with a farmer to teach natural dyeing of the flags. “I hope for people to have creative movement and design their own flags as a form of expression as well,” she said.

Kyra said of her work, “I write poetry. I teach storytelling and tell stories. I love hearing from folks about how they grew up. I’m in the planning stages for creating my own traveling theatre and hope for every performance to be based off of the area I’m living in and community members.”

Her nominator expressed inspiration and enthusiasm about Kyra’s risk-taking work. “She is putting herself out there, every week on the radio. This, in the era of cancel culture is in itself a risk. But furthermore, she risks hyper inclusion in her art, choosing to trust her audience, and people in general, rather than keeping tight control over what is produced and its outcomes. This is quite brave, and joyfully so!”

Kyra’s response to being nominated? “I think I am still in shock.”

You can learn more about Kyra in her bio for her Appalshop Fellowship  https://appalshop.org/people, and listen live on WMMT’s website, or search a couple weeks back for previous airings: https://wmmt.org/listen