Featured CSA Member

Sonia Williams

Sonia Suzette Williams

Sonia Suzette Williams (1967-2024) Fly in power to your resting place. The ancestors are welcoming your laughter as we honor your life. Until we reunite again.

“The National Cultural Foundation is deeply saddened by the passing of multiple-award winning actor, director, writer, theatre arts educator, inspirational speaker and activist Sonia Williams.

Sonia was a lover of the arts and had a deep passion for developing and molding emerging talent. In an interview, in celebration of NIFCA’s 50th anniversary, she said that one of her most satisfying tasks was helping creatives reach their full potential.

The NCF enjoyed an excellent working relationship with Sonia which spanned over three decades. Her skills and expertise were used in varying capacities in literary arts and theatre arts. She taught creative writing workshops at Dodds Prison. She was an entrant/actor, writer, director, coach and judge with NIFCA.

In recent times, she gave of her time and energy in the area of theatre production. Her most recent public performance with the NCF was during the Barbajan production which culminated NIFCA 2023.

Sonia migrated to Brooklyn New York in 1979, from Pleasant Hall, St. Peter, where she received a B.A. in Theatre Arts and Women Studies and a Watson Fellowship to Nigeria 1989.

In 1990, she returned to Barbados and worked under the direction of Earl Warner in classics such as Lights, Your Handsome Captain, Fatpork; Austin Tom Clarke’s Growing up Stupid Under the Union Jack; and Ntozake Shange’s Crack Annie.

She wrote and directed full length plays including: From Bussa To Barrow and Beyond, and The Ritual; her one woman shows: Pilgrimage to Freedom and Three Points of Center; and the Choreopoem Embodied Knowings.

As a director her credits include: Odale’s Choice, Return to the Source, (excerpts from Mask) written by Kamau Braithwaite, Children of Negus with writings from Kamau and Bruce St. John and Shepherd by Rawle Gibbons of Trinidad and Tobago. She published a novella: This Too Will Pass.

She taught in the Caribbean at the Edna Manley College for the Visual and Performing Arts in Jamaica, Youth Training Entrepreneurship Scheme in Trinidad, in Antigua and at the Barbados Youth Service, the Barbados Community College and UWI Cave Hill.

The Chairman and Board of Directors, Chief Executive Officer, Management and Staff of the NCF extend sincere condolences to her family, loved ones and colleagues. May she rest in eternal peace.”

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