Taiwo Sokan is a proud Nigerian-American Actor, Singer, Podcast host, and all-around artist. Naija gyal by birth, Jersey girl by circumstance, and Philly Jawn by choice, Taiwo’s unique life experiences have led her to where she is now. Taiwo affectionately refers to herself as a half-gen immigrant due to the fact that she was born in Nigeria but moved to the U.S. as a child. From a young age, she gravitated towards the arts, singing and dancing to her favorite movies such as The Sound of Music and Disney’s Hercules, playing the viola, and acting in class plays. But her desire to provide for her family and her excellent math and science grades found her abandoning her love of the arts for a more stable career in medicine. That is until 2015 when she took a class at Penn that combined her passion for theatre and her love of neuroscience. After that class she and six of her classmates formed a cohort under the tutelage of Marcia Ferguson and created a show called Naked Knotted Neurons that they premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. And the rest was history!
After that amazing summer, Taiwo dove headfirst into her passion for performance and all it encompasses and has been steadily rising since. She worked extensively in Philadelphia, New York, and New Jersey as an actor, stage manager, and theatre technician for years after graduating from undergrad. In 2019 she commenced on her first national tour and in 2020 she started a podcast with her best friend and fellow actor Adaeze Nwoko. The Spring portion of her tour was cut short due to Covid-19 the same day she found out she got into her top choice grad school. She completed her MFA in acting at the University of California, San Diego in 2023 and moved to LA to pursue her dream of film/TV acting.
UC San Diego credits: Thicker Than, Winter’s Tale, Limp Wrist on the Lever, In the Red and Brown Water, Twelfth Night, Farside (audio play), Town Hall (virtual). Regional: As You Like It (La Jolla Playhouse) Marry, Marry, Quite Contrary (Paper Dolls Ensemble), Operation Wawa Road Trip, Fly Eagles Fly (Tribe of Fools), The Bluest Eye (u/s, Arden Theatre Company), All’s Well That Ends Well (UPenn), No Exit (Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble), Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (Limelight Theatre Company) Tour: Peter Rabbit Tales (Enchantment Theatre Company), Devised: Naked Knotted Neurons (UPenn Players ).