The Pan-African Theatre Ensemble (The PATE)
Theatre Practice-as-Research
Artistic Director: D. Amy-Rose Forbes-Erickson
"I am so glad to see the fine work you are doing on behalf of our students and the university.
Your artistry and activism are appreciated, especially now. Great show!
Proud to call you colleague!" -- Daniel Nadon, Professor of Theatre, School of Theatre and Dance,
Kent State University, Kent, Ohio - Venus Production, March 2017
The [Pan-African Theatre Ensemble] always puts on distinctive productions, and The Purple Flower is no exception. This play should be seen for its unique and nuanced writing, themes and elements of production. Ashlynn Thompson, The Burr, March 2018
D. Amy-Rose Forbes-Erickson
Peer Reviewed Publications: Academic Papers
Forbes-Erickson, D. A-R. “The Running ‘Black Man’: An Afro-Dystopian Praxis in Directing Jackie Sibblies Drury’s We are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, From the German Südwestafrika, Between the Years 1884–1915,” the Black Theatre Review (tBTR), Vol. 2, Issue 1, 2023, pp. 23-55. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2458/tbtr.5552
Forbes-Erickson, D. A-R. “Performance ‘Art’ - Dismantling Structural Racism in Colonial Monuments.” Nakan: A Journal of Cultural Studies, 2022.
https://nakanjournal.com/performance-art-dismantling-structural-racism-in-colonial-monuments/
Forbes-Erickson, D. A-R. ““Balls at Kingston to the ‘Brown Girls’,”1: A Palimpsest for Bleached Brown Skins in Jamaican Dancehall.” Anthurium A Caribbean Studies Journal, vol. 17, no. 1, 2021, p. 9.
DOI: http://doi.org/10.33596/anth.368
Forbes-Erickson, D. Amy-Rose. “Theatre Practice-as-Research in Staging Black Feminist (Re)Memorials in Pan-African Plays: ‘Vejigantes’ by Francisco Arriví and ‘The Purple Flower’ by Marita Bonner.” Theatre/Practice: The Online Journal of the Practice/Production Symposium of the Mid America Theatre Conference. Vol. 8. 2019.
Forbes-Erickson Theatre_Practice_as_Research.pdf (theatrepractice.us)
Forbes-Erickson, Denise Amy-Rose. “Sexuality in Caribbean Performance: Homoeroticism and the African Body in Trinidad.” Africans and the Politics of Popular Culture. Ed. Toyin Falola and Augustine Agwuele. New York and Suffolk: University of Rochester Press, 2009. 237-260.
Sexuality in Caribbean Performance: Homoeroticism and the African Body in Trinidad
Book Review:
Forbes-Erickson, D. A-R. “Sampling and Remixing Blackness in Hip-Hop Theatre and Performance by Nicole Hodges-Persley.” 37 (1) 95-96 Sept. 2022.
Theatre Directing (Selected)
October 2023
Director, by Suzan-Lori Parks, Department of Theatre and Film, Bowling Green State University, October 19-28, 2023.
April 2023
Director, “A Dramatic Reading by The Pan-African Theatre Ensemble,” Toledo Museum of Art (GlasSalon), Saturday, April 15, 2023.
September 2022
Director, “The Pan-African Theatre Presents …” Elsewhere Production Season 2022-2023, Dept. of Theatre and Film, Bowling Green State University, Sept. 9, 10, 2022.
May 2022
Director, Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 by Anna Deavere Smith, Black Swamp Players (BSP), Bowling Green, Ohio, May 25-28, 2022.
April 2021
Director, We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884–1915 by Jackie Sibblies Drury, virtual production, Department of Theatre and Dance, California State University, Sacramento, opening and streaming online – on demand, April 21-25, 2021.
March 2020
Director, “Griot Ballads” (Parts I-IV), devised production and films, a Scholarly and Creative Activity Award for community performances at the Sojourner Truth African Heritage Museum on March 20, 2020. Created filmed performances - Griot Ballads (Part I), Griot Ballads (Part II), Griot Ballads (Part III), Griot Ballads (Part IV). Performance at the Fringe Theatre Festival, Edinburgh, Scotland, Summer 2020 (Postponed to August 2022 and canceled – Due to COVID-19).
April 2019
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– Workshop and Performances in the African Community Theatre (ACT) Solo Performance Festival – Special Guest, solo performer, poet, playwright, Dr. Mary Weems. African Community Theatre, Kent State University, April 2019.
March 2019
Artistic Director – Digital Masks to Africa – a devised performance of Cheikh Anta Diop: A Poem for the Living by Mwatabu Okantah. African Community Theatre, Kent State University, March 7, 2019.
November 2018
Artistic Director – An Echo in the Bone by Dennis Scott – the Pan-African Theatre Ensemble, African Community Theatre, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio. Thursday, November 15, 2018.
April 2018
Festival Coordinator – New Black Plays – Invitational calling playwrights, theatre artists, and enthusiasts to write and produce new plays about the Black experience - During the Pan-African Festival and Conference, Dept. of Pan-African Studies, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio. April 12-15, 2018.
March 2018
Artistic Director, The Purple Flower by Marita O. Bonner – the Pan-African Theatre Ensemble, African Community Theatre, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio. Thursday-Saturday, March 8, 9, 10, 2018 at 8pm and Sunday, March 11, 2018 at 2pm.
November 2018
Artistic Director - Vejigantes (Devil Mask) by Francisco Arrivί - the Pan-African Theatre Ensemble, African Community Theatre, Kent State University. Kent, Ohio. Thursday-Saturday, November 16, 17, 18, 2018 at 8pm, and Sunday, November 19, 2018 at 2pm.
April 2017
Artistic Director, Tahinta!: A Rhythm Play for Children by Efua Sutherland, The Pan-African Theatre Ensemble and the Kent State University African Theatre Ensemble, Virginia Hamilton Conference, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio. April 2017.
March 2017
Artistic Director – Suzan-Lori Parks’s Venus. Performed by the Pan-African Theatre Ensemble, The African Community Theatre, Department of Pan-African Studies, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio. March 2017.
December 2016
Artistic Director – Efua Sutherland’s Tahinta!: A Rhythm Play for Children. Performed by the Pan-African Theatre Ensemble in collaboration with the Kent State African Ensemble and Musical Director Professor Janine Tiffe, In-the-round, The African Community Theatre, Department of Pan-African Studies, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio. December 9, 2016.
November 2016
Artistic Director – Wole Soyinka’s The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite (1957), performed by The Pan-African Theatre Ensemble, Musical Director Darryl Lewis – Proscenium Arch, The African Community Theatre, Department of Pan-African Studies Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, November 2016.
About
"...a world of international experience."
D. Amy-Rose Forbes-Erickson is a Caribbean American scholar, born and raised in Jamaica. She is an Assistant Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies in the Department of Theatre and Film, Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio, USA. She is the founder and artistic director of the Pan-African Theatre Ensemble dedicated to Black theatres in the African continuum featuring African, Caribbean, and African American plays and performances. Other creative works include previous sculpture and theatre design commissions and exhibitions. Current scholarly research focusses on the social constructs of race, gender, sexuality, coloniality/decoloniality, and Black feminisms, African and Indigenous spiritual practices, and sacred queer spaces in masquerades. Her peer-reviewed scholarly research has been published in areas of African, African American, Latin American, and Caribbean theatres and performances. She serves as guest editor with Dr. Frédéric Lefrançois for the thematic issue: “The Pioneers of TransAmerican Art: In the Footsteps of a Caribbean Diaspora Aesthetic” in Angles: New Perspectives on the Anglophone World, Paris, France. Her book (in progress), Caribbean Masquerades as Palimpsests: A Chronological Survey from the 16th Century to the early 21st Century (Edwin Mellen Press), traces the emergence of masquerade figures in carnivals, balls, and parades from the point of contact between European conquest, and Indigenous and African peoples in the Caribbean from the 16th century to the early 21st century. This book features new studies on Diablo Cojuelo masquerades in the Carnaval Dominicano in the Dominican Republic, Junkunnu, Brown Girls Balls and Set Girls parades in Jamaica, and Black Indian Mas in Trinidad carnival, Trinidad and Tobago with references to African and Indigenous spiritual practices, the circum-Atlantic Caribbean, Mardi Gras Indians, Fancy Girls, and Quadroon Balls in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.
Her 2nd book project, A Sacred Queer Treatise on Masquerade Devils in Caribbean Dramatic Literature, Mid-20th century to the 1970s analyzes post-colonial dramatic literature derived from masquerade devils in carnivals and folk life in Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago. Other scholarly projects include performance historiographies on popular Caribbean women’s masquerades of La Mulata, Dougla, and Ship-yit-(t)diam in Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago.
She is a proud member of the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR) in the African and Caribbean Performance Working Group, the Comparative Drama Conference, and the Caribbean Studies Association among other academic memberships. She holds a PhD in Theatre: Performance as Public Practice from the University of Texas at Austin with a doctoral portfolio in African and African American Studies, specializing in the African Diaspora (African, African American, Latin America and the Caribbean) performances.
Dr. Forbes-Erickson has taught at Kent State University and California State University, Sacramento before joining the faculty in the Department of Theatre and Film at Bowling Green State University.
Education
PhD, Theatre: Performance as Public Practice, University of Texas at Austin, Texas, USA, 2013
Doctoral Portfolio in African and African American Studies, specializing in the African Diaspora (Africa, African American, Latin American and the Caribbean) performances
MA, Theatre, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, USA, 2006
BA (Hons), Theatre Design, University of London - Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London, England, 1999
Diploma, Sculpture, Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, Kingston, Jamaica, 1990
Professional Memberships
African Theatre Association (AfTA)
International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR)
Caribbean Studies Association (CSA)
American Association of University Women (AAUW)
Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD)