Avery Brooks(I)
- Actor
- Director
- Music Department
Avery Franklin Brooks was born on October 2, 1948 in Evansville,
Indiana to a musically talented family. His maternal grandfather,
Samuel Travis Crawford, was a tenor who graduated from Tougaloo College
in Mississippi in 1901. Crawford toured the country singing with the
Delta Rhythm Boys in the 1930s. Brooks also is musically inclined
having played jazz piano, and has performed as the great
baritone/actor/scholar Paul Robeson in the
play entitled "Paul Robeson". He sang the lead in the
A. Anthony Davis opera "X: The Life and
Times of Malcolm X", and performed as "Theseus" and "Oberon" in
Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at Washington's Arena Stage.
Long affiliated with Rutgers University, he was the institution's first
Black MFA graduate. Additionally, he served as the National Black Arts
Festival's (NBAF) Artistic Director throughout the 1990s in Atlanta,
Georgia. An actor, activist, musician, director, and educator of epic
proportions, Brooks was quoted in an interview about his work with NBAF
and his performances: "If I were a carpenter, I'd find a way to empower
using that skill. I'm using as much as God has given--my mind, my
voice, my heart, my art forms. This is the highest form of expression
on the planet from God, to me, to you".
