Phylicia Rashad won the 2022 Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play for SKELETON CREW.
Phylicia Rashad brought laughter to millions of viewers around the world, moved viewers to tears, thrilled moviegoers, opened up new perspectives for students by teaching masterclasses at renowned educational institutions such as Howard University, Julliard and Carnegie Mellon, served on the boards of prestigious organizations and broke new ground as a director. She is one of the most extraordinary performers in the entertainment world.
She became a household name when she portrayed Claire Huxtable on The Cosby Show, winning numerous honors and awards for over two decades. She teamed up with Bill Cosby years later on TV as Ruth Lucas on Cosby. She performed the role of Dr. Vanessa Young in the NBC series, Do No Harm.
She has also been a force on stage, appearing both on and off Broadway, often in projects that showcase her musical talent such as “Jelly’s Last Jam”, “Into The Woods”, “Dreamgirls” and “The Wiz” as well as dramatic roles in August Osage County (Violet Weston), in Tennessee Williams‘ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Big Mama – a role she reprized on the London stage), in August Wilson‘s Gem Of The Ocean, (Aunt Ester – Tony Award nomination) and in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline (Queen Britannia) at Lincoln Center.
She received both the Drama Desk and the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play, as Lena Younger in the Broadway revival of Lorraine HansberryIt’s A Raisin In The Sun. She appeared in Tyler Perry‘s Good Deeds, and starred in its highly acclaimed film version of Ntozake ShangeIt’s for girls of color who’ve thought about suicide when the rainbow isn’t enough. She received rave reviews from critics for her directorial debut at the Seattle Repertory Theater with August Wilson‘s Gem of the Ocean and for the Ebony Repertory Theater’s production A Raisin in the Sun in the spring of 2011. She recently directed August WilsonCome and Gone by Joe Turner at Forum Mark Taper in Los Angeles.
She is the first recipient of the Denzel Washington Chair of Theater at Fordham University and received honorary doctorates from Spelman College, Fordham University, Carnegie Mellon University, Howard University, Providence College, Morris Brown College, University Clark Atlanta, Barber Scotia College, St. Augustine College and Brown University. She sits on the advisory board of the PRASAD project and on the board of directors of Theater of True Colors, the Broadway Inspirational Voices, the Actors Center, the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University, and the ADEPT Center, which is leading the restoration of the historic Brainerd Institute. Originally from Houston, Texas, she graduated magna cum laude from Howard University.
A gripping and timely Broadway premiere from the Tony Award® nominee Dominique Morrisseau (That’s not too proud, Pipeline). In 2008 Detroit, a small auto factory is on the verge of foreclosure and a tight-knit working family is at stake. With uncertainty everywhere, the line between blue-collar and white-collar workers is becoming blurred, and this working family must reckon with their personal loyalties, their survival instincts, and their ultimate hopes for humanity. The New York Times awarded this astonishing work a Critics’ Choice and applauded: “A very fine new play…hot-blooded, shrewd, profoundly moral, and profoundly American.” And The Amsterdam News hails it as “a great example of how theater imitates life…intense, touching and funny”. Management is MTC’s Tony-winning artistic advisor Ruben Santiago-Hudson (Lackawanna Blues, August Wilsonis Jitney).