Cheryl Lynn Bruce (she/her)

Veteran director, writer, and performer Cheryl Lynn Bruce has staged productions for Victory Gardens Theatre, Teatro Vista Theatre Com­pany, Illinois Humanities, the Chicago Sym­phony Orchestra, Columbia College, the Uni­versity of Illinois, Indiana University, DePaul University, and the Creative Arts Foun­dation. She developed and directed Sandra Delgado’s La Havana Madrid and Para, Graciela and Misty DeBerry’s Milkweed, and directed Before the Pop, Pop, Pop for Collaboraction’s inaugural citywide Peacebook Festival (2016). Bruce also developed and directed Kerry James Marshall’s bunraku-influenced urban comedy Rythm Mastr for the Wexner Center for the Arts (2008). She won both the African American Arts and Black Theatre Alliance Best Direction Awards for From the Mississippi Delta, and earned a Joseph Jefferson Award nomination for her direction of Jitney, both Congo Square Theatre productions. Other recognitions in­clude the Illinois Public Hu­mani­ties Award (2019); a Robert Rauschen­berg Residency (2015); a Yale Art Gallery residency (2013); and the Jane Addams Hull House Woman of Valor Award (2010).