Terrence Spivey, a native Texan, graduate of Prairie View A&M University (HBCU), and former artistic director at Karamu House, is a 2018 Alan Schneider Directors Award nominee, 2017 Best Director and 2005 Best Theatre Honcho by Cleveland Scene.
Terrence Spivey, a native Texan, graduate of Prairie View A&M University (HBCU), and former artistic director at Karamu House, is a 2018 Alan Schneider Directors Award nominee, 2017 Best Director and 2005 Best Theatre Honcho by Cleveland Scene. He was given a proclamation in 2010 by Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson for his artistic contributions. He was keynote speaker for USITT Annual Conference and Stage Expo 50th Anniversary in 2015, in Cincinnati. He garnered multiple awards at Karamu, which was honored as Repertory Company of the Year at the Vivian Robinson AUDELCO Awards in New York City. He directed numerous critically acclaimed productions such as Dream on Monkey Mountain (2006 Best Drama), The Blacks: A Clown Show (2008 Best Drama), God's Trombones (multiple awards), Cut Flowers, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, and The Wiz. He also directed Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill (2018 Chandelier Best Drama), Bootycandy, convergence-continuum (2016 Plain Dealer Top 10), the acclaimed Objectively/Reasonable: A Community Response to the Shooting of Tamir Rice, 11/22/14, Christopher Johnston's Live Bodies for Sale, and Peter Lawson Jones' The Phoenix Society. He has been Director/Professor-in-Residence on Black Theatre History at Allegheny College and Kent State University, directing Bourbon at the Border, Master Harold and the Boys, and No Niggers, No Jews, No Dogs. His short film, Resurrection of the Last Black Man in 08:46, won numerous awards and was an official selection at the Toronto Black Film Festival in 2020.
Spivey wrote and directed An Ocean in My Bones, which premiered in Africatown, in Mobile, Alabama in 2022, garnering national attention on PBS and in American Theatre. The play was commissioned by the Clotilda Descendants Association, descendants of enslaved Africans smuggled on the Clotilda, the last illegal slave ship. In 2023, he was recipient of the Preserving Truth in Education Award by Color of Change. COC is one of the nation's largest organizations on racial justice.
Spivey and New York Times Magazine journalist Nick Tabo's oral history recording in collaboration between Africatown Heritage House Museum and Story Corp will be archived at the Library of Congress and the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC.
He is a selected member of The History Makers and 2023 Who's Who in Black Cleveland. Spivey once served on the board for Cleveland Arts Prize and Community Partnership for Arts and Culture, and he is a current board member for AUDELCO in New York City. He is a member of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC) and Dramatists Guild.
Spivey is founding director for the Cleveland-based theatre company Powerful Long Ladder and its outreach program, The Ultimate Reach (TUR), which provides art activities for afterschool programs.
