Education:
B.F.A., Howard Univ.
M.A., Adelphi Univ.
Glenda Dickerson is a director, writer, folklorist, and educator. She directed professionally at the Biltmore Theatre (Broadway), Circle in the Square (New York City), Lorraine Hansberry Theatre (San Francisco), Arena Stage, Ford's Theatre and the Kennedy Center (Washington, D.C.), among others.
Professor Dickerson is author of a new book, African American Theater: A Cultural Companion, which is available from Polity Press or Amazon. She also recently completed an educational 2-disc DVD, “What’s Cookin’ in the Kitchen: a global portrait 2001-2004”, which documents her "Kitchen Prayers" series. Until 2007, Kitchen Prayers Performance Dialogues on 9/11 and global loss were performed annually under the auspices of The Project for Transforming thru Performing: re/placing Black womanly images. The Project is supported by a generous grant from the Ford Foundation. The Kitchen Prayers Peace Archive is housed in the University of Michigan Libraries (Labadie, Askwith, Music and DeepBlue). The Peace Archive contains the “Cookin” DVD, together with DVD’s of the performance dialogues, scripts and resource material which document the life of The Project.
Freda Scott Giles’ essay, “Glenda Dickerson’s Nu Shu: combining feminist discourse/pedagogy/theatre”, is in Contemporary African American Women Playwrights, (Routledge). Dickerson is co-author of Re/membering Aunt Jemima: A Menstrual Show, which is published in Colored Contradictions: an anthology of contemporary African American plays (Plume). Her recent essays include “Let the People See What I’ve Seen: In Praise of Mamie Till” and “Katrina: acting black/playing blackness” in Theatre Journal. Dickerson is currently working on: Anabel’s Brush, an oral history of Georgia Sea Island descendants of African slaves; and a book The Saga of Lily Overstreet: Rhodessa Jones and the spectacular review.
Before coming to Michigan, Dickerson was head of the Department of Drama and Dance at Atlanta’s Spelman College and has also taught at Rutgers University both the New Brunswick and Newark campuses. At the University, she is Head of the African American Theatre Minor and served as Director of the Center for World Performance Studies until 2009.
