Dudley Cocke
Bio (download as MS Word file)

Dudley Cocke, director of Roadside Theater, is a stage director, teacher, writer, and media producer. He recently directed Betsy, a Roadside collaboration with Nashville jazz musicians and New York’s Pregones Theater.

International work includes directing the company’s innovative performances in the Czech Republic (1992), directing Junebug/Jack for England’s Festival of the American South at London’s South Bank Centre (1994), and conducting dance/story workshops for the 1996 Baltic Dance Festival in Poland.

Under Mr. Cocke’s direction, Roadside has toured its original plays to 43 states and performed in big cities from London to Los Angeles.

He has taught theater at Cornell University, the College of William and Mary, and New York University, and often speaks and writes as an advocate for democratic cultural values. His policy remarks and essays have been published by the Urban Institute, Yale University, American Theatre magazine, Americans for the Arts, Grantmakers in the Arts, the Community Arts Network/Art in the Public Interest, among many others.

He co-edited, From the Ground Up, Grassroots Theater in Historical and Contemporary Perspective (Cornell University, 1993), and several of his speeches are collected in Voices From the Battlefront: Achieving Cultural Equity (Africa World Press, 1993). Red Fox /Second Hangin’, which he co-authored, is one of seven plays in Alternate Roots: New Plays from the Southern Theatre (Heinemann, 1994), and he recently co-edited Journeys Home: Revealing a Zuni-Appalachia Collaboration (Zuni A:shiwi Publishing and the University of New Mexico Press, 2002).

Mr. Cocke was executive producer of Roadside’s latest CD, "Wings to Fly" (Copper Creek Records), and has produced several of Roadside’s plays for public television.

He received his B.A. from Washington & Lee University; his graduate work was conducted at Harvard University. He is a recipient of the 2002 Heinz Award for Arts and Humanities.

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