Cheryl Lynn Bruce

Veteran director, writer, and performer, Cheryl Lynn Bruce has staged productions for Victory Gardens Theatre, Teatro Vista Theatre Company, Illinois Humanities, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Columbia College, University of Illinois, Indiana University, DePaul University, and Creative Arts Foundation. Cheryl directed the world premiere of Terence Anthony’s The House of the Negro Insane at the 2022 Contemporary American Theatre Festival. She directed Angélique Kidjo’s Yemandja: A Story of Africa at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in March 2022. Cheryl developed and directed Sandra Delgado’s La Havana Madrid, Para, Graciela, and Misty DeBerry’s Milkweed (both solo works), as well as Before the Pop, Pop, Pop for Collaboraction’s 2016 Inaugural Peacebook Festival. She also developed and directed Kerry James Marshall’s Bunraku-influenced urban comic Rythm Mastr for the Wexner Center for the Arts. Cheryl won both the African American Arts and Black Theatre Alliance “Best Direction” Awards for From the Mississippi Delta, and earned a Joseph Jefferson nomination for her direction of Jitney (both Congo Square Theatre productions).

Awards & Accolades Include: Illinois Public Humanities Award (2019), Robert Rauschenberg Residency (2015), Yale Art Gallery Residency (2013), Jane Addams Hull House Woman of Valor Award (2010). Select Credits Include: From the Mississippi Delta (Circle in the Square), The Convert (McCarter Theatre, Kirk Douglas Theatre), Death and the King’s Horseman, Nomathemba (Kennedy Center), Gem of the Ocean (Ensemble Theatre), The Story (Milwaukee Rep). Film & TV Credits Include: Stranger Than Fiction, Daughters of the Dust, The Fugitive, Prison Break, There Are No Children Here, Separate but Equal, To Sir with Love, 2.