Wambui Bahati - Domestic Violence & Mental Health Speaker

This is not a lecture with slides. It is a performance that happens to save lives.

Wambui Bahati spent fifty years learning stagecraft — at the New York University School of the Arts, on Broadway in Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar, on national tours of The Wiz and Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope. She brings all of it to the two subjects most speakers can only talk about.

In I Am Domestic Violence, she becomes seven different people using nothing but a rack of coats and blouses — proving that abuse crosses every line of race, class, and age. The audience is laughing one moment and holding its breath the next. After one college performance, the counseling office reported a measurable rise in student appointments. That is what this show does: it gives people permission to tell their own story and go find help.

In Balancing Act, she tells the true story of how severe bipolar disorder took her Broadway career, her home, and nearly her life — and how she took it all back. It toured ten cities under a grant for the National Alliance on Mental Illness and earned her the national Lionel Aldridge Award.

Every performance is built around your audience — students, advocates, survivors, clinicians, a whole community — and can be paired with a talkback, workshop, or Q&A.

Her line, and she means it: "Whatever they say you have — that's not who you are."

[Fees vary by program and format. A solo keynote performance sits at the lower end; the full musical production of Balancing Act, with live musicians, is at the upper end. Every event is quoted individually.]

Wambui Bahati was born John-Ann Washington in Greensboro, North Carolina, at the center of the civil rights struggle. She trained at the New York University School of the Arts, made her professional debut in Godspell at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., and went on to perform on Broadway in Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar, and on national tours of The Wiz, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope.

Then severe bipolar disorder took it all. She went from Broadway to welfare, to homelessness, to hospitalization. Doctors told her she would spend the rest of her life in and out of institutions. Her daughters, for a time, were the ones taking care of her.

She rebuilt. She changed her name — Wambui means "singer of songs," Bahati means "my fortune is good." At the suggestion of her therapist she wrote Balancing Act, and turned the worst years of her life into a show that has helped thousands of people feel less alone.

Her programs:

I Am Domestic Violence — Seven characters, one performer, a rack of coats. Created for a single YWCA performance in 1998; word spread until it became a national phenomenon, performed for more than two decades across three countries. 35–60 minutes. Pairs with talkbacks and advocacy programming. Ideal for October — Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

Balancing Act — The Musical — The true, funny, unflinching story of surviving severe bipolar disorder. Toured ten cities under a National Alliance on Mental Illness grant. Winner of the Lionel Aldridge Award. 50–75 minutes. Available as a solo performance or, for larger events, as a full musical production with live musicians.

Both shows exist to do the same thing: hold an audience with real theater, then send them out ready to talk about what nobody wants to talk about.

Recognition: Lionel Aldridge Award (National Alliance for the Mentally Ill). Woman of Achievement Award (Greensboro Commission on the Status of Women). Belle Ringer Image Award (Bennett College). North Carolina President's Award. A mayoral proclamation from the City of Toledo. Commissioned work for The Carter Center, the National Organization for Women, and Habitat for Humanity. Featured in The New York Times, More magazine, and Contemporary Black Biography.

She is the author of You Don't Know Crazy, a memoir of life before, during, and after mental illness. She lives in New York City.

Booked by the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps Family Advocacy Programs, universities, and domestic violence coalitions nationwide.

Recent engagements include the Tennessee Peer Support Conference (2023), the Marion County Children's Alliance Night of Hope (2021), and domestic violence programming for the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps.

Audio

One professional wireless headset microphone (preferred), or a high-quality wireless lavalier. This is a moving performance — hands must be free.
One onstage monitor (wedge) facing the stage.

Visual

Projector and screen, sized to the room.
One wireless slide advancer.

For Balancing Act as a full musical production: staging and sound for live musicians — discussed per venue.

Wambui travels nationwide. Performances of I Am Domestic Violence can be paired with a survivor talkback, an advocate workshop, or a campus counseling tie-in.