This dissertation is a critical study of artisan and pedagogue Glenda Dickerson (1945-2012). Glenda Dickerson, whose career spans a little over forty years, held many roles within the field of American/Black/Feminist theatre: playwright, director, folklorist, performer, choreographer, adapter/conceiver, and educator. Dickerson was the second African American woman to direct on Broadway with the 1980 production, Reggae, a Musical Revelation. After a successful run in commercial theatre, Glenda Dickerson chose to place her efforts in developing works more intended for academic and community-oriented theatre. Dickerson’s career in theatre was quite distinctive. Despite the ways in which Glenda Dickerson challenged racial and gendered boundaries within both professional and academic theatre, and with her pioneering of contemporary Black theatre as well as a Black feminist theatre, Dickerson’s legacy is still largely unknown, and, most strikingly, severely under-documented within the scholarly histories of theatre and performance. Accordingly, this dissertation provides a genealogy of Dickerson’s career, highlighting some of the historical and socio-cultural influences that shaped her life and work in the theatre. Additionally, this dissertation critically examines several of her unpublished, contemporary dramatic works: Kitchen Prayers: Performance Dialogue on 9/11 and Global Loss (2001), Identities on Trial: A Kitchen Protest Prayer (2003), Sapphire’s New Show: The Kitchen Table Summit (2004), and Barbara Jordan, Texas Treasure (2005). By highlighting major themes found within these works and providing both a historical and theoretical study of her writing, devising, and staged performances, this dissertation aims to situate Dickerson as a forerunner of contemporary Black theatre as well as contemporary Black feminist theatre