D. Amy-Rose Forbes-Erickson

Part-Time Lecturer of Theater
Ph.D. University of Texas, Austin

forbes-erickson.com
d.amyrose.forbeserickson@rutgers.edu

 

Biography

D. Amy-Rose Forbes-Erickson is a Jamaican-born artist, theatre designer, and performance scholar. She is currently designing and teaching an exciting, thought-provoking online course in African American Theatre at Rutgers University, Camden.

Forbes-Erickson holds a PhD in Theatre: Performance as Public Practice with a Doctoral Portfolio in African and African American Studies, specializing in the African Diaspora from the University of Texas at Austin, 2013. She earned a MA in Theatre from the University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, 2006; a BA (Hons) in Theatre Design from the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, England, 1999; and a Diploma in Sculpture from the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston, Jamaica, 1990.

Forbes-Erickson has worked across various disciplines in the visual arts, design, theatre practice, and scholarship, and has exhibited welded-steel sculptures and designed for theatre in England, the Czech Republic, Canada, the Caribbean, and the United States. She has designed sets for ProArts Collective, the premier African American Theatre Company in Austin, Texas, Theatre Centre Company in London, England, and the Little Theatre Movement National Pantomime Company of Jamaica. She has exhibited theatre designs at the Royal College of Art in London, England in 1998, participated in the Prague Quadrennial in the Czech Republic in 1998, and the National Gallery of Jamaica in 2004 among several exhibitions and designs.

Forbes-Erickson specializes in teaching African, African American, and Caribbean theatres and performances, and has six years teaching experience in theatre design, life drawing, sculpture courses at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in 1995, 1999-2004; and the Fundamentals of Acting at the University of Texas at Austin from 2009-2011.

Her pedagogy focuses on various learning strategies with dramatic literature, live theatre, film, visual arts, photography, discussions, short paper responses, devising, and creative projects in order to develop critical thinking and analytical skills for undergraduate learners. She has presented scholarly papers at several national and international conferences in the United States, Brazil and England. Research interests include critical race theory, women’s and gender studies, feminisms, postcolonial theory, performance studies, African diasporic performances, and Caribbean studies. Her publication record includes a book chapter, “Sexuality in Caribbean Performance: Homoeroticism and the African Body in Trinidad.” Africans and the Politics of Popular Culture. Ed. Toyin Falola and Augustine Agwuele in 2009. Forthcoming publications include a book project based on her dissertation, and critical analyses of African American and Caribbean performers and plays.