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Photograph of Sybil Roberts

Sybil Roberts Director of African American and African Diaspora Studies Performing Arts

Bio
Sybil R. Williams has spent the past twelve years cultivating her craft as a playwright and dramaturg. Her work has been professionally produced by Chicago’s ETA Creative Arts Theatre; New York’s National Black Theater; Pittsburgh’s Kuntu Theatre; University of Pennsylvania; CALARTS; and Harlem’s Rebel Theatre. Her play DREAM OF OPHELIA was nominated for a prestigious JEFF Award in 2000; and LIBERATING PRAYER: A LOVESONG FOR MUMIA has been published in AUGUST WILSON AND THE BLACK AESTÂ鶹ӳ»­IC edited by Dr. Sandra G. Shannon. Her musical FROM U. STREET TO THE COTTON CLUB was produced in Washington, DC. Most recently, SEARCHING FOR GABRIELA, a play with music featuring the poetry of Gabriela Mistral was produced in Washington, D.C. by the IN-SERIES. ZIMBABWE: OR SHE TALKS TO BOB MARLEY was read as part of the Our Voices Women’s Playwriting Conference at Regis College in March 2011. Most recently, she was commissioned once again by the IN-SERIES to create a musical celebrating the influence of African-American, operetta, and other forms of American popular music on the Broadway stage titled SHUFFLE TO SHOWBOAT for the 2011 Washington DC. Intersections Festival. As a dramaturg, she completed a three-year project creating a docudrama to celebrate the lives of the Little Rock Nine on the occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Central High School Desegregation Crisis titled OUR LEGACY: IT HAPPENED IN LITTLE ROCK written and directed by Mr. Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre. She also continues to serve as dramaturg for the Latino/African-American Theatre festival VOICES AT THE RIVER. In 2011, she served as Humanities Scholar at Woolly Mammoth Theater on the CLYBOURNE PARK PROJECT. She also served as dramaturg for the Essential Theater’s New Play Development Program for BETTY’S WISH by La’Chris Jordan. Sybil R. Williams is currently Program Director for Theatre and Musical Theatre in the Department of Performing Arts.
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For the Media
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Teaching

Fall 2024

  • PERF-225 Afr Amer Exper-Perf Arts

  • PERF-420 Art, Performance, and Politics

Spring 2025

  • AFAM-200 African Americans in Diaspora

  • PERF-225 Afr Amer Exper-Perf Arts

  • PERF-316 Intro Perf Arts/Social Action

  • THTR-424 Drama of the Global Majority