Vinnette Justine Carroll

Vinnette Justine Carroll (March 11, 1922 – November 5, 2002) was an American playwright and actress, and the first African-American woman to direct on Broadway, with the 1972 musical Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope.

Born Vinnette Justine Carroll in New York City, to Edgar Edgerton, a dentist, and Florence (Morris) Carroll. She and her family moved to Jamaica when she was three and she spent much of her childhood there as well as in the West Indies. She has two sisters in New York. Carroll was fortunate in having a great strong mother, now deceased, who raised her family on Toscanini and wise admonishment. Carroll’s father encouraged his daughters to become physicians, and as a compromise, she chose psychology. She left the field of psychology to study theater, and in 1948, she accepted a scholarship to attend Erwin Piscator’s Dramatic Workshop at the New School for Social Research and studied with Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, Margaret Barker, and Susan Steele. Ms. Carroll remains the only African-American woman to have received a Tony nomination for Direction. She founded the Urban Arts Corps, a non-profit, interracial community theater where, as artistic director, she was able to provide a professional workshop for aspiring young actors in ghetto areas. She founded the Urban Arts Corps, a member of the Black Theater Alliance and the Off-Off Broadway Alliance, with support from the New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment of the Arts, the Edward Noble Foundation, and CBS. Productions through the Urban Arts Corps include Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope, The Flies, Slow Dance on a Killing Ground, and many others. The Urban Arts Corps Theater provided a space to foster participation by minority groups and "to nurture emerging playwrights and showcase their works." Later on, Carroll would join the New York State Council on the Arts upon the request of the executive director, John B. Hightower, in 1968. She had been appointed director of the Ghetto Arts Program for the State of New York.

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