Caroline Jackson Smith is Associate Professor of Theater and African American Studies at Oberlin College and won a prestigious 1993 fellowship for early-career directors from the Theater Communications Group and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1995 Ms. Jackson Smith made her New York directing debut for Signature Theater Company directing Adrienne Kennedy's Funnyhouse of a Negro at the New York Public Theatre. Most recently, she has directed for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf at Oberlin College and a staged reading of a new play, Crossroads Dancing for Cleveland Play House. In March of 1998 she directed Love Letters for Karamu Performing Arts Theater. She is also currently consultant and director of an historical tour based on the fictional character Addy for the Pleasant Company and the Ohio Village.

Ms. Jackson Smith has directed a number of shows for Oberlin College including To be Young, Gifted and Black, Gospel at Colonnus, The Tapestry, The Resurrection of Lady Lester, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, The Owl Answers, A Movie Star Has To Star in Black and White, Spell #7, Feeling the Blues, and an original piece, Malcolm X.

Professionally, Ms. Jackson Smith has directed and/or worked as a dramaturg for Cleveland Play House, Great Lakes Theater Festival, Karamu Performing Arts Theater, Cleveland Public Theater, Portland Stage Company (Maine), and the Women's Project and Productions in New York. Her directing work includes From the Mississippi Delta (Portland), The Talented Tenth and the world premiere adaptation and staging of Delores Kendrick's The Women of Plums (Karamu), A Rat's Mass and The Life of a Worm (CPT), and a staged reading of The Dream (Women's Project). Her work as a dramaturg includes Ma Rainey's Black Bottom for Cleveland Play House, Hamlet for Phoenix Rising Productions starring Michael Early, and People Who Led To My Plays for Great Lakes Theater Festival. Ms. Jackson Smith has also given numerous lectures and has produced many plays, symposia, film festivals, jazz concerts, art exhibits and special events. For many years she was a contributing editor and writer for Black Masks, a New York-based theater magazine.

Born in New York, raised in Englewood, NJ and Cambridge, MA, Ms. Jackson Smith received a BA with distinction and graduate training in Afro-American Studies form Yale University. She taught secondary school English in New Haven Public Schools and served as Executive Director of Yale's Afro-American Cultural Center for eight years before joining the Oberlin College faculty in 1989. She is married to Michael T. Smith and is stepmother of three adult children and mother of two daughters. In 1998, she became a grandmother for the third time.

 

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