Ekundayo Bandele is a playwright, director, actor, producer, and founder and CEO of Hattiloo Theatre in Memphis, Tennessee. Since founding Hattiloo in 2006, Bandele has grown the organization from a 75-seat storefront into a nationally recognized, debt-free Black theatre institution. He led a $4.3 million capital campaign to build Hattiloo’s permanent home and endowment and later expanded its campus through long-term leases, including the Hattiloo Technical Theatre Center.

Bandele’s directing credits include Lydia Diamond’s The Bluest Eye, Katori Hall’s Hurt Village, and four plays from August Wilson’s Century Cycle. His original plays include Judas Hands, If Scrooge Was a Brother, Tumbling Down, and Take the Soul Train to Christmas. His play Speak, Salvation, Speak received a four-week Hattiloo production starring Harry Lennix in 2026. Bandele has also staged productions internationally in Milan, Italy, and taught theatre management in Khartoum, Sudan.

In 2021, he founded the Black Theatre Managers Fellowship, a three-year national initiative funded by the Black Seed Fund. In 2023, he established the Hattiloo Institute of Black Theatre Studies at LeMoyne-Owen College.

A Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude graduate of Morehouse College, Bandele studied theatre in Kigali, Rwanda, and Limerick, Ireland, and completed executive leadership training through the University of Maryland’s DeVos Institute of Arts Management, Leadership Memphis, and New Memphis Institute. He is a member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Incorporated, Epsilon Phi Chapter.