Bridgeport’s first Black female firefighter is now a Reiki healer, minister and artist
An ordained minister and retired firefighter, the Rev. Ina Alisa Anderson is passionate about many things: her faith, theater, community activism, the arts and Reiki — so much so that she once found herself asking God what she was to do with all the gifts and talents she was bestowed. The answer that came was perhaps ironic, but not altogether surprising.
“The common thread is my voice and because it’s so heavy, as a child I never liked it. I thought it sounded more manly,” she said. “So when I opted to sing — and I used to sing lead — I would always opt for soprano notes and I could belt those out.”
As she grew older and into her voice, Anderson found people told her she sounded like she had something they wanted to hear. “I began to be more and more comfortable with it, using it for all of what I do — as a director, as an artist, as a preacher and as a Reiki master,” she said.
Anderson has been involved in the arts for about 20 years, as long as she has been practicing Reiki, a Japanese form of energy healing. Feeling a spiritual calling to use her gift to help people, she became a Reiki master, operating her own studio, The Reiki Room in Stratford.
A fixture in the state’s art scene, she is well known for her spoken word art and poetry. In 2021, she was an Artist of the Month on Bridgeport’s Art Trail, for which she produces an annual Black History Month event. Last month’s event focused on the Kwanzaa practice of Kuumba, which embraces creativity.
Anderson was licensed as a minister in 2000 and ordained as Reverend in 2008 by Senior Pastor Anthony L. Bennett of the Mt. Aery Baptist Church in Bridgeport. Her faith is at the core of everything she does, guiding her work in the arts to improve the world and build up humanity. She said her calling is “to
always say something, do something, sing something and help somebody in a way that is going to encourage them to be a better person.”
Born in South Carolina, she moved to Bridgeport with her family at age 2 and the city has long been close to her heart. Growing up in the Father Panik Village housing project, she has always had a fierce determination and strong work ethic. These attributes served her well
when she was newly divorced in the mid-1980s with two young children, working 80-plus hours a week, taking two buses, a train and walking each day to get her kids to school, herself to work and everyone back home again.
Seeing her brother’s schedule of three days on, three days off as a fireman, she had an “ah ha” moment. She remembers being intimidated as one of a few women taking the firefighter’s test among 3,000 applicants.
“You could count the women who were there, and I even had guys say to me, ‘What are you doing here?’ I said, ‘To take your job.’ It was my only comeback. I was there because I needed a job to take care of my family,” she said.
She passed the test and in doing so, became the first Black female firefighter hired in Bridgeport. After serving some 12 years, first at Wood Avenue, later Central and then finishing her career at headquarters, she retired as a lieutenant, another first for the city.
As founder and director of Emerging Voices Production, launched in 2017, she specializes in writing and producing community theater. Her shows have been staged in several of the city’s most beloved venues, including the Klein Memorial and the Bijou Theatre, as well as Housatonic Community College, Mount Aery Baptist Church and St. John’s Episcopal Church.
Her productions are all rooted in historical drama. “I deal in historical facts with current-day constructs to create conscious theater,” she said. Among her important projects was “Maafa,” which she has performed in and directed productions of. The Swahili word means “disaster,” and this show tells the story of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. “It’s not a telling of a story, it is an experience. You actually feel like you are a part of what is happening,” she said.
Another important play she wrote and directed was the powerful “One of Love,” which debuted at the Bijou and St. John’s in 2018, which tells the story of Jonathan Daniels, a white Seminarian who became a civil rights hero when he died protecting a young girl, Ruby Sales, from a deputy who was about to shoot her. Sales survived and was in the Bijou’s audience opening night. “It was a story based on the races, but how we don’t even discuss our white allies, so it was important,” Anderson said.
In her art making, Anderson feels a great responsibility as an artist.
“The responsibility of an artist is to document history, whether it’s in picture or theatrical form,” she said. “Now with social media and the internet, history kind of unfolds right in front of us, which makes it incredible but we still have a responsibility to lend our voices and our talents to help people to remember what these times are like in a hundred years to come.”
“THE RESPONSIBILITY OF AN ARTIST IS TO DOCUMENT HISTORY.”