Amy-Rose Forbes-Erickson

D. Amy-Rose Forbes-Erickson is a Caribbean American scholar, born and raised in Jamaica. She is an Assistant Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies in the Department of Theatre and Film, BGSU. Her research has been published in areas about African and the African Diaspora (African, African American, Caribbean, and Latin American theatres and performances). A record of recent publications is featured in links below with studies intersecting in theatre practice-as-research, digital media, ethnographic musical and visual cultures, Afrofuturism, and Black technoculture. Her research focusses on performance historiographies on race, gender, coloniality/decoloniality, genocide, Black feminisms, sacred queer spaces in masquerades. Her book (in progress), Caribbean Masquerades as Palimpsests: A Chronological Survey from the 16th Century to the early 21st Century (Edwin Mellen Press), traces the emergence of masquerade figures in carnivals, balls, and parades from the point of contact between European conquest, and Indigenous and African peoples in the Caribbean from the 16th century to the early 21st century. Her 2nd book project, A Sacred Queer Treatise on Masquerade Devils in Caribbean Dramatic Literature, Mid-20th century to the 1970s, analyzes post-colonial dramatic literature derived from masquerade devils in carnivals and folk life in Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago. Other projects include performance historiographies on popular Caribbean women’s masquerades of La Mulata, Dougla, and Ship-yit-(t)diam in Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Dr. Forbes-Erickson has presented scholarly papers at the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR), the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), Mid-America Theatre Conference (MATC), Caribbean Studies Association, the Black Theatre Network (BTN), the Comparative Drama Conference (CDC), and the British Forum for Ethnomusicology Annual Conference.

Working from a Black feminist practice of cultural activism, her artistic work includes directing and theatre design. She is the founder/artistic director of the Pan-African Theatre Ensemble dedicated to Black theatres in the African continuum. Selected directed plays with the PATE include Suzan-Lori Parks’s Venus, Wole Soyinka’s The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite, Francisco Arriví’s Vejigantes, Dennis Scott’s An Echo in the Bone, and a devised production, based on Mwatabu Okantah’s epic poem Cheikh Anta Diop: Poem for the Living called “Digital Masks to Africa” that traveled to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Edinburgh, Scotland in August 2019. Other directed productions include California State University, Sacramento’s production of We Are Proud to Present … by Jackie Sibblies Drury in April 2021, and Black Swamp Players’ 30th anniversary production of Twilight, Los Angeles, 1992 by Anna Deavere Smith in May 2022.

Dr. Forbes-Erickson has taught at California State University, Sacramento, Kent State University in Kent, Ohio; and two years in the Caribbean at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston, Jamaica, and the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine in Trinidad and Tobago before joining the faculty at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio, USA.

Courses Taught

THFM 2150 - Exploring Cultural Diversity Through Performance

THFM 6630 - Introduction to Performance Studies

THFM 6620 - Black Feminisms and Performance

THFM 6700 - Contemporary Black Theatre and Performance

Professional Memberships

African Theatre Association (AfTA)

International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR)

Caribbean Studies Association (CSA)

Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD)

American Association of University Women (AAUW)

Links to Peer-Reviewed Publications