Master Theatre Artist: Director, Performer, Script Writer, Educator, Researcher, Author, Development Editor, Grant Writer
Sonia Williams is a critically acclaimed Barbadian Master Theatre Artist and Educator in Theatre Arts, Researcher and Writer. Born January 17th in 1967 at Pleasant Hall, St. Peter, Barbados, at the age of 12 Sonia migrated to Brooklyn, New York. Sonia saw this first step of her journey in getting to know the culture of the “white man.” She attended Walt Whitman Junior High School and Brooklyn Technical High School where she majored in Chemistry. Supported by the Higher Education Opportunity Program and a scholarship from Hamilton College, she moved onto its campus in Clinton, New York. Her intention was to study Law, but in her search for a space where she could “do something she would love” she sighed up for Theatre Production with Carol Bellini- Sharpe. This feminist-humanitarian-activist Inuit Master Director fuelled Sonia’s artistic investigation and development of Theatre Arts. Passionate about the total experience of Theatre, Sonia switched majors to Theatre Arts and Women’s Studies; she graduated with Bachelor of Arts 1989. She was awarded the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to Nigeria, Ghana, Trinidad & Tobago and Barbados to gain insight into how performance functioned in West Africa in comparison to Theatre in Europe and America in 1989. Sonia went to Nigeria in search of retentions of West Africa culture in the Caribbean culture. This continued her pilgrimage through the triangle/ the Maafa and has been a great influence on the conceptualization of, practice of, and the ethos of her art. Sonia returned to Barbados in 1990. She has since earned a Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education Teaching and Learning in 2012 from the University of the West Indies Cave Hill, Barbados. Between 1990 -2020 Sonia has worked as an artist/researcher nationally, regionally and internationally.
