The August 2014 death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, aroused a sweeping reappraisal of race and social justice issues.
Geovonday Jones recalls the ruminations suddenly became clearer and more intimate for him a few months later, when he learned about the death of a cousin nearby.
Geovonday Jones
Jones cultivated a promising profession as an actor and performing arts teacher at The City College of New York, where he found himself instructing theater students with whom he participated in creative projects. As part of one project, he says, he wrote and shared a poem about his cousin who was killed in St. Louis, six months after Brown’s death, by an off-duty officer.
“It was well-received,” says Jones, who gathered confidence to approach City College leadership. He successfully pitched the 2020 creation of a new class exploring racism through the theatrical lens. He says that, while classes vary year-to-year, the culminating class project is consistent — sharing a meal in which each student brings a dish from their family’s tradition or culture and shares stories about their plates.
Jones says the course introduces students to playwrights they may not otherwise experience in their studies; it exposes them to plays not often afforded space in predominately white institutions.
“I like to call it ‘The Playwrights of Color’ course,” he says. “The objective is to provide students an opportunity to experience a diverse array of playwrights. It also gives students experiences that they may not get to empathize with [elsewhere].”
The St. Louis, Missouri, native attended Missouri State University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in acting. He was initially unsettled on what to study — at one point, considering a degree in psychology — but he continued to take theater classes as an undeclared major, and he kept auditioning for various productions.
“Theater was always on the radar,” says Jones, whose tenacity fed into a dynamic career in the performing arts.
“I always like to say that first, by trade and skill, I am an actor,” he explains. “Then, I am an acting teacher. And after that, I am a director.”
Jones says he moved after graduation with his now-wife to New York City, where he got work in independent films and at small film festivals.
In 2017, he enrolled at Brooklyn College, where he earned an MFA in acting. In short order, he became a certified teacher of the Michael Chekhov Acting Technique with Great Lakes Michael Chekhov Consortium. He also landed a role on “Law and Order: Organized Crime.”
Jones got the opportunity to teach on the faculty at The Peoples Improv Theater and serve on adjunct faculties in the department of theater at Brooklyn College and in the department of theater and speech at City College, where he developed the “Theatre and Racism” course.
The course continues to be a hallmark of his career, examining racism in America through contemporary plays that confront issues such as prejudice, police brutality, hate crimes, and oppression. It exposes students to playwrights of color like Amiri Baraka, Lorraine Hansberry, Larissa FastHorse, Ayad Akhtar, Anna Deavere Smith, David Henry Hwang, and Dominique Morisseau.
Jones carried his focus on social justice and cultural competence to his latest appointment as an assistant professor of acting/head of theater performance in Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s Department of Theater and Dance.
The professor has already made an impact in just three years at the university, according to Dr. Kevin Leonard, the university’s dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. He describes Jones-directed plays as “both a pleasure and a thought-provoking experience.”
“His casts are intentionally multi-cultural and inclusive, and it is clear that he has encouraged the actors to consider how their identities intersect with the identities of the characters they are portraying,” says Leonard. “I always leave the theater thinking not only about the message of the play but also about what the performance reveals about racism and social justice in the United States.”
Jones says he wants his students to experience and emulate love, joy, and empathy through the performing arts.
“I meet the students where they are and leave space for their lived experiences in my classroom and studios,” he says. “No matter if they go into this industry or not, I want them to find that peace. I want them to become good global citizens.”
Jones says he has found that peace partly exemplified in his work as an anti-racist and implicit bias facilitator for River & Rail Theatre Company in Knoxville, Tennessee; his starring in The Black Rep’s theater production of August Wilson’s “King Hedley II” about the Black experience; and an upcoming film project regarding Michael Brown, 10 years after the teen’s death.
#Training #Culturally #Conscious #Performing #Artists
