ANDRENE BONNER is an educator, award winning author, producer, director, singer, songwriter, poet, folk life specialist, and an accomplished actress. She was born in Kingston, Jamaica where she attended Merl Grove High School, and Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts. Soon after entering high school, Bonner had the privilege of getting her feet wet in theatre under the guidance of the great Trevor Rhone -- an unusual amount of freedom for a teen Jamaican girl during that time period. She was among the lucky handful touring local high schools supporting Rhone in his community outreach efforts as he demonstrated acting principles.
During and after college in Jamaica, Bonner performed the range on a very vibrant theatre scene building her considerable experience in Caribbean theatre. She has gotten rave reviews for her work in classic plays among them Antigone, Lysistrata, Macbeth, For Colored Girls but is no less recognized for her performances in plays by the Caribbean’s master playwrights, Errol John’s Moon on a Rainbow Shawl and Derek Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain, as well as several productions by Dennis Scott and Trevor Rhone himself. Soon after she migrated to the United States, she tried to settle in New York but dreamt of the bright lights of Hollywood and headed for the film capital in 1987. Not content, her love of theatre took her to Cal State Los Angeles where she immersed herself in drama study and later served as artist in resident at the famous Lee Strasburg Theatre Institute. She has worked with Art Evans, Joseph Marcel, James Avery, and Hattie Winston among others. During the day, she supplemented her actor’s income by working with Kristine Wallis, a premier Hollywood agent, and Marvel Comic’s Stan Lee. In 1996, she reprised her role in Moon on a Rainbow Shawl in Los Angeles, garnering an NAACP Theatre nomination. By the time Andrene Bonner left the West Coast to return to New York in 2002, she had amassed several manuscripts some of which are soon to be published. She has published in Kapu-Sens: California State University Northridge Literary Journal, Carib Press News Magazine, Café Africana Journal, and The Caribbean Writer. Her coming-of-age book, Olympic Gardens, is the first in a trilogy, set in Jamaica. It received the prestigious 2009 Lorna Goodison Caribbean Award for Transformative Literature on June 14, 2009at the Tamarind Festival of Caribbean Literature in Washington, D.C. The second in the trilogy Cherry Gardens is currently in the works. She has also written a trilogy of seminal female contributors to the development of Jamaica, which includes, Beyond The War and The Warrior, a story of Nanny of the Maroons. Her collection of poems, Cloud Burst in Major and Minor Chords, is slated for publication later this year. Her insatiable appetite for the stage has taken her on tour with the internationally acclaimed Dr. Albert McNeil Jubilee Singers, and she has appeared at Carnegie Hall in New York City and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. Her film and TV acting credits include The Lunatic, AKA Girl, Under New Management and America’s Most Wanted. Currently, she is touring a one woman performance based on her novel Olympic Gardens. Today her students are beneficiaries of her considerable expertise in acting and directing. She has dedicated her time to school performances. Each year, she is lead executive and director, guiding students through the acting principles she learnt from the masters. She insists that her students experience the best theatre education and become exposed to stage work with the highest production values to help prepare them for life not just as artists but as creative thinkers. Her professional affiliations include but are not limited to, Phi Delta Kappa Professional Association in Education (PDK), National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), NAACP New York Chapter, Poetry Society of America (PSA), and the Los Angeles Women in Music. Andrene is Founder and Artistic Director of Caribbean World Arts and Culture, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to research, advocacy, preservation, and exhibition of works that reflect the Caribbean experience. She holds a Master of Science in Education with Distinction, Master of Arts in Language and Literacy, and a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Arts and Dance with an focus in Acting and Directing. | 
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