Despite the limitations of COVID-19, the CHS continues to recognize and support artists in all media whose work engages with ancient Greek culture. Over the next six months, the CHS will share profiles of the 2020-2021 cohort of CHS visiting artists.
Rhodessa Jones is Co-Artistic Director of the acclaimed San Francisco performance company Cultural Odyssey. She is an actress, teacher, director, and writer. Ms. Jones is also the Director of the award winning Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women and HIV Circle, which is a performance workshop designed to achieve personal and social transformation with incarcerated women and women living with HIV.
Rhodessa was appointed as the Frank H.T. Rhodes Class of 1956 Visiting Professor at Cornell University. Rhodes Professors are appointed with the purpose of strengthening the undergraduate experience by bringing individuals from every walk of life who represent excellence of achievement to the university. In the Fall Quarter of 2017, she was invited to join August Wilson, Cornel West, Yo-Yo Ma, and Anna Deavere Smith as a prestigious “Montgomery Fellow” at Dartmouth College, fostering “the advancement of the academic realm of the College in ways that will significantly add to the quality and character” of the institution. In December 2016 Rhodessa received a THEATRE BAY AREA LEGACY AWARD, presented to individuals that have made “extraordinary contributions to the Bay Area theatre community.” In 2014 she received THE SUI GENERIS FOUNDATION Achievement Award for “one of a kind contributions, which benefit society in unique ways.” In January 2016 Ms. Jones was hired by the University of California, Berkeley to teach the BLACK THEATER WORKSHOP entitled “Performance: An African American Perspective”. Rhodessa received the Theatre Practitioner Award presented by Theater Communications Group during July 2015. The award recognizes “a living individual whose work in the American theatre has evidenced exemplary achievement over time and who has contributed significantly to the development of the larger field.”
Learn more about Rhodessa Jones at http://www.culturalodyssey.org/.
