Peggy Jones
- Associate Professor
- Theatre
Background
She is an award-winning playwright/visual artist and theatre professor at UNO with interdisciplinary interests in playwriting, visual art, Medical Humanities, Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Africana Studies, and Human Rights. One of her most gratifying experiences has been teaching UNO’s Intro to Creative Writing at the Omaha Correctional Center. She is thrilled to be an Anastasis Theatre Company Board member.
She wrote the book for the dance/arts performance Omaha’s Forgotten Century for Omaha Performing Arts Voices Amplified 2021-22. The inaugural production was at the Orpheum Theatre on June 24, 2022. Over the next few years, she’s working on two major playwriting/arts projects: first, revising her award nominated short play on Florynce “Flo” Kennedy into full-length piece with larger themes including Afro-Futurist/Afro-Punk elements, and second, creating Battle Lines: A Redlining Project, telling the story of housing discrimination in Omaha and points beyond. This collaborative piece will create theatre “of, by and for the people.”
She received a Nebraska Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship for her play, The Journey, about the father of modern Black American art, Aaron Douglas. She’s working on its follow-up, 409 Edgecombe Avenue, which will explore routes of Black agency and liberation. She was in the inaugural cohort of GPTC’s Commoners playwright program.
Her most recent play is Tales from the AfroCosmos, a full-length piece with themes including Afro-Futurist elements.
Research Interests
- Intersections of language, gender and racial identity- White privilege
- Media and African American language
Recent Activity (Selected Highlights)
- Playwright, Flo, “Centering the Margins,” The Union for Contemporary Art. Omaha, NE.- Playwright, The Journey, The Rose Theater And Performing Arts Center. Performed by Young, Gifted, and Black Teen Theatre Program.
- Playwright, In What America Do You Live? Collaborative performance piece, Jindra Fine Art Gallery, Peru State College.
- Performer, The Blues of Knowing Why, Staged reading, Kimmel Harding Resident Artist Chris Maly
- Performer, North Omaha Neighborhood Tapestries, Performed original work in collaboration for Great Plains Theatre Conference PlayFest.
- Scholarly Feedback. Red Summer After the Show, Blue Barn Theatre.
- The Whipping Man, Malcolm X Festival, UNO.
- Race, Omaha Community Playhouse.
- Panelist, The Whipping Man, Omaha Community Playhouse.
- Scholarly Feedback. Clybourne Park, Anti-Defamation League and SNAP! Theatre.
Publications and Creative Activity
“The Journey.” The Rose Theater and Performing Arts Center, Omaha, NE. Performed by Young, Gifted, and Black teen theatre program. February 2013. (Individual Artist Fellowship Nebraska Arts Council, $1000, received for writing the play, an artistic interpretation of how Aaron Douglas, first black graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln art department, decided to become an artist.)Article for edited volume “Tenuous Veneers: Women of Color in the Academy --Narratives of Distress and Success in the Tenure Process.” (Accepted in 2012 and in progress.)
Essays on African descended artists Charles Alston, Aaron Douglas, Barkley Hendricks, Loïs Mailou Jones, Jacob Lawrence, and Louis Sloan for Sheldon Art Museum catalog of paintings in permanent collection. University of Nebraska Press. (Under contract with expected publication in 2013)
“My Mother Tongue: A Linguistic Autoethnography.” Book chapter in African American Women’s Language: Discourse, Education, and Identity. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009. Pp. 35 – 50.
“Toward Achieving the ‘Beloved Community’: Lessons for Applied Business Research and Practice from the Teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr.” with Drs. James R. Jones at UNO and David C. Wilson at University of Delaware. [Status: submitted to special issue of Business & Society titled "Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Contributions to Management Scholarship and Practice") Summer 2007.
“My Mother Tongue: A Linguistic Autoethnography,” for African American Women’s Language Conference, University of Texas-San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, March 2008.
“We are the Ones We’ve Been Waiting For.” Culminating Arts Event for Urban Bush Women Summer Institute. Visual Designer, Artist, and Performer Brooklyn, NY. 2007.
“2nd Annual African American Artists Exhibit.” Loves Jazz and Art Center, Omaha, NE. 2007.
“The Journey.” Staged reading of original play, Nicholas Street Gallery, Omaha, NE. 2005.
Visual Art
“A Greater Spectrum: 100 Years of African American Art in Nebraska.” (2010-11) Museum of Nebraska Art, Kearney, NE.“Solo Retrospective.” Nicholas Street Gallery, Omaha, NE. 2005.