Crystal Rhodes

Crystal Rhodes, an active participant in the Black theater scene and founder of the theater company Performance Plus, received an Indiana Historical Society Clio Grant to compile various items about the history of Black theater in Indianapolis.

Rhodes is a graduate of Arsenal Technical High School and Indiana University. She has a Masters’ degree in sociology from Atlanta University. As child, she was part of Rev. Mose Laderson’s Laderson Players group, which performed at Hillside Christian Church in the 1960s. Rhodes moved to the Bay Area in the early 1980s to pursue writing and while there she worked as a Public Relations Specialist, freelance writer, and playwright.

She returned to the Indianapolis area and brought the plays she had written in the Bay Area with her. She founded a theater company called Performance Plus but also was involved with Soul People Repertory Company and Asante Children’s Theatre. Her plays Stoops, Mama’s Man, Crystal Palaces, The Trip, Blue Jazz Cabaret, Civil Wrongs, Who Killed Black Pride? and The Middle Passage were staged in Indianapolis.

Rhodes is also a published author of two romance series, Sin and The Stillwaters. She also co-authors a cozy mystery series, Grandmothers, Incorporated with Lillie Barnett Evans under the name Evan Rhodes.