Biography

Pippa  Fleming was born a civil rights baby on the south side of Chicago, Illinois in 1963. At age six, she declared herself an actress after seeing Yul Brynner in “The king and I” and politely informed her mother, girls clothes no longer suited her. 

Pippa’s early creative interests lead her to study theater, photography and television. By the time she graduated from high school, she was an On-Air director and camera operator at WGBY TV in western Massachusetts . After a brief stint in the Army as a Media Specialist, Pippa attended the University Of Massachusetts where she studied African art and history and was awarded a Pearl Primus dance scholarship. 

Pippa’s exploration of improvisational dance and theater lead her to her most influential teachers, Joi Gresham, Executive Director of the Lorraine Hansberry Trust and Andrea Hairston, award winning science fiction writer. To sustain herself during these years of study, Pippa began her career as a social worker. She was a fearless advocate in the battered women’s and HIV and Aids movements, from the streets of San Francisco in California, to the boogie down Bronx, in New York.

In 1989 Pippa co-founded Aché Magazine, a journal and non-profit for black lesbians and launched DaddiGirl Productions, after taking advice from Audre Lorde, who told Pippa “It’s OK to be with black lesbians.” Pippa’s work with Aché, is on permanent collection at Yale Universities Beinecke rare book & manuscript library. In 2017, Aché Magazine was celebrated at Yale Universities Art of Collaboration Exhibition, that showcased artists and writers such as Andy Warhol and Langston Hughes.  Pippa has written for the Economist magazine, Dispatches from Lesbian America, an anthology and hosts her own WordPress blog.   

DaddiGirl productions has amassed a plethora of radio, film, theater, music and dance credits. An avid club promoter, DJ and MC, Pippa curated Klub SheRotic in Oakland, California and The Mothership in Brixton, England. While living in London, she produced Money Talks, with black British filmmaker Alrick Riley and won the Grand Prix award at the Brest film festival.  Never shy about flaunting her butch identity, Pippa was featured in Debra Wilson’s Showtime award winning documentary Butch Mystique and recently finished filming its second installment Beyond The Butch Mystique. 

In 2007, Pippa premiered “Living in The Mainstream” the story of a Drag King time traveler, at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco. Continuing to refine her vision of the male impersonator. Pippa’s current artistic work is an amalgamation of improvisational dance, poetry, multi-media, comedy and vocal compositions, that reflect the beauty and complexities of living out loud, as a gender non-conforming, black butch lesbian. In the of Fall 2022, Pippa launches her cabaret "The Ms. K.I.A. Chronicles", tales of a woman who walks the streets looking like a man!