Growing up in the south as the child of migrant laborers, Rhodessa Jones learned what it meant to be an outsider. "The migrant worker lived outside of every town. In fact, we were truly the outsiders. The outsiders in African-American culture, the outsiders, you know, in rural urban culture, and part of what I started to see really early was the kind of vaudevillian aspect of that life."

Ms. Jones' early observations of itinerant performers had a lasting impact. Today Rhodessa Jones is an internationally acclaimed performance artist, director, singer, dancer, actress, writer and teacher. As Founder and Director of The Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women, Ms. Jones works with imprisoned women to write and produce theatrical pieces that both illuminate and transform their lives. She credits the theatre with saving her life, when she was a pregnant teen who was "going down slow."

Jones' recent project, From Whores to Matriarchs: Black Women Survivors on the Edge, is a powerful testament to women's strength in surviving sexual and domestic abuse and defying stereotypes. She recently directed Trail of Her Inner Thigh, which premiered at Intersection for the Arts and The Gathering, seen at the Black Theater Festival and Theater Artaud. Jones wrote and directed Hot Flashes, Power Surges and Private Summers, which was performed at the National Black Theater Festival in Winston Salem in August, 1999.

To learn more about Rhodessa Jones as Co-Artistic Director of Cultural Odyssey, go to http://www.culturalodyssey.org/

For an interview with Ms. Jones by Opal Palmer Adisa, go to: http://www.sirius.com/~koncepts/Koncept/Interview/rjones_l.htm