Phyllis Yvonne Stickney is a world-class artist, producer, director, author, motivational speaker, clothing designer, community activist, businesswoman and surrogate mother to many.

Born in Little Rock, Stickney was raised in the various US cities to which her father, a YMCA executive, was transferred. However, she settled in Harlem, where her theater work began at the Frank Silvers Workshop, and the New Heritage Theater, under the late playwright/director Robert Furman.

Her theatrical performances were before sell-out crowds in the 1998 National Black Arts Festival, where she also served as performing arts curator and starred in Nathan Ross Freeman’s The Contract. She  made her national television debut as single mother Cora Lee in the ABC miniseries The Women of Brewster Place, which also starred Oprah Winfrey and Cicely Tyson. Her subsequent television credits include sitcoms New Attitude, The Cosby Show and A Different World, PBS ‘ Great Performances production of The Colored Museum. Ms Stickney has also appeared on the silver screen in such notable movies as New Jack City Jungle Fever, Talkin’ Dirty, Malcolm X, The Inkwell; What’s Love Got To Do With It, Die Hard With A Vengeance and How Stella got Her Grove Back.

Ms Stickney’s Conscious Comedy Concerts have been featured in a number of venues across the country, including Harlem’s Apollo Theater, Concert show titles include, Live and in Chocolate, All That and Brains Too, and An Evening, With An Endangered Species. Her written work appears in an anthology of nine black comedy plays, edited by Pamela Faith Jackson. She also created The Crystal Pyramid, a chorepoem for children.

In addition, she served as the first solo female host for Essence’s 1997 Music Festival and was a speaker for the 1998 African American Women on the Tour.In 1983 she won the Audelco Award for her performance in Furman’s adaptation of Moliere’s Tartuffe, and later won a second Audelco for her original on-woman show, Big Mama an Nem. 

Though she has had success worldwide, she often returns to Little Rock to share her talents. She also played Lena in Lorraine Hansberry’s award-winning play A Raisin in the Sun at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre. The play was produced in January 2011 and received great reviews and exceeded box office expectations. Earlier this month, she headlined an event at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center highlighting the works of Nikki Giovanni, Maya Angelou, Ruby Dee and Beah Richards.

In 1998, she was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame.  For more on Phyllis Yvonne Stickney and other inductees into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame, visit the permanent exhibit at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center. That museum is an agency of the Department of Arkansas Heritage.