Rhodessa Jones

Rhodessa Jones (born 1948) is a San Francisco-based director, teacher, writer, and political activist. She is the Co-Artistic Director of the San Francisco performance company Cultural Odyssey, and best known for her work as Founder and Artistic Director of the Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women, a performance workshop designed to uplift incarcerated women and women living with HIV in the United States and South Africa. In 2015, she was appointed as a Visiting Professor at Saint Mary's College in Moraga, California. From 2017 to 2020, Jones served as the Frank H.T. Rhodes Class of 1956 Visiting professor at Cornell University. Jones has also been involved in other productions, such as The Mother of Three Sons, Perfect Courage (1991), and Raining Down Stars (1992).

Awards Jones has received numerous awards for her work. In 2002, she was given the Otto Rene Castillo Award for Political Theater and the GOLDIE Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003. In 2016, she received the Theatre Bay Legacy Award for her contributions to theater in the San Francisco Bay area. That same year, she was named the Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College.