“Whatever the genre, my intention has been truth-telling, whether I’m on a stage or in a classroom, whether I’m in a prison yard or in a dance studio.”

Rhodessa Jones, Cornell’s Frank H.T. Rhodes Class of ’56 Visiting Professor, is a San Francisco-based theater performer, director, teacher, and writer whose five-decade body of work tells the stories of women. “Women face a threat that insists they relinquish their personhood, silence their voices, repress their fight for choice in health care and economics, and mute their calls for social justice, environmental health, and peace in our communities,” Jones says.

Since 1979, she has been the co-artistic director of San Francisco performing arts organization Cultural Odyssey. In 1989, she founded The Medea Project, for which she serves as artistic director, developing performance pieces with incarcerated women and women who are HIV-positive. Her solo work includes the Bessie Award-winning Big Butt Girls, Hard Headed Women, which has toured globally.

She has received numerous accolades and awards, including a United States Artists Fellowship, an honorary doctorate from California College of the Arts, a Theatre Bay Area Legacy Award, and a Montgomery Fellowship at Dartmouth College.  In addition to her position at Cornell, Jones is currently a 2022 Pew Center for Arts and Heritage Fellow.