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Theatre Bay Area and the RHE Charitable Foundation announce Jamella Cross as the 2025 RHE Charitable Foundation Artistic Fellow. Cross will be introduced as the awardee on Monday, November 17, 2025, at Theatre Bay Area’s 2025 conference, TBAConnect: Undeniable Creativity.

Cross, a self-described born-and-raised Oakland, California Audience Alchemist, has been seen on stage across the Bay Area, including at Berkeley Rep, San Francisco Playhouse, Oakland Theater Project, and SF Opera. Recent notable appearances include Froggy at Center Rep and Crumbs from the Table of Joy at Aurora Theatre Company.

“I feel blessed to be the recipient this year,” says this year’s RHE Charitable Foundation Artistic Fellow Jamella Cross, “This grant will help me go further than I ever imagined in my career. It’s the push I needed to get my dreams in full motion.”

The RHE Charitable Foundation Artistic Fellowship makes a significant investment in an individual artist that will allow them to take the next step in their career. Candidates for the RHE Charitable Foundation Artistic Fellowship are female or nonbinary actors of color with exceptional promise nominated by a diverse panel of established theatre professionals. 

The $10,000 Fellowship “provides a jet pack to the careers of our awardees,” says Jennifer Heyneman Sousae, Executive Director of RHE Charitable Foundation. “I follow our awardees’ careers for years afterwards. It’s deeply gratifying to see how much they’ve accomplished. Past awardees have appeared on Broadway and on LORT stages across the nation.” 

“The RHE Charitable Foundation Artistic Fellowship is where excellence meets opportunity,” adds Theatre Bay Area’s Executive Director, Sean Fenton. “This award celebrates extraordinary Bay Area talent and invests directly in promising artists whose work enriches our stages. We are so grateful to the RHE Charitable Foundation for their continued partnership in this program.

Notable past Artistic Fellows include Reggie D. White (2014), Senior Director of Artistic Strategy and Impact at Arena Stage; Angel Adedokun (2022), recently appearing in the lead role of Estata in Co-Founders at American Conservatory Theatre; and Chibueze Crouch (2019) who was a 2023-2024 Zellerbach Family Foundation Fellow.

You can find out more about this year’s RHE Charitable Foundation Artistic Fellow on her website: https://www.jamellacross.com/

The RHE Charitable Foundation is dedicated to edgy arts, human resilience, and the environment. It honors the legacy of generosity of its tireless volunteer founder, Richard H. Epstein. 

Theatre Bay Area (TBA) is one of the largest regional performing arts service organizations in North America. TBA serves hundreds of theatre artists and companies across the greater San Francisco Bay Area, providing professional development resources and direct funding.

Theatre Bay Area is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization whose mission is to unite, strengthen, promote, and advance the theatre community in the San Francisco Bay Area, working on behalf of the conviction that the performing arts are an essential public good, critical to a healthy and truly democratic society, and invaluable as a source of personal enrichment and growth. Visit TheatreBayArea.org for more information.