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Tonea Stewart, originally from Greenwood, Mississippi, has resided in Montgomery, Alabama since 1990. She is a professional actress, play director, national museum exhibit director, tenured professor, and currently serves as the Dean of the College of Visual & Performing Arts at Alabama State University.
In her role as Dean, Tonea oversees the Departments of Art, Music, and Theatre, while also acting as a professor, role model, motivator, and mentor to students. Since her tenure began, enrollment and graduation rates in the Department of Theatre Arts have significantly increased. More than 75% of ASU theatre graduates have been awarded full scholarships to prestigious graduate programs, including Brown, Yale, UCLA, University of Louisville, Washington State, NYU, and LSU, among others. Tonea’s impact extends to youth and adults locally and nationally through summer performance and enrichment programs such as T.A.P.S. (Theater Artists Performance School), Camp 3T (Teaching Through Theatre), TTI (Technical Theatre Initiative), ARPAC (Adult Repertory Performing Arts Camp), and Camp Gifted, which serves individuals with disabilities.
Tonea earned a B.S. in Speech and Theater from Jackson State University, an M.A. in Theater Arts from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and completed her Ph.D. in Theatre Arts at Florida State University in 1989. She was the first African American woman to receive a doctorate from FSU’s School of Theatre and was the inaugural McKnight Doctoral Fellow in Theatre Arts. During her doctoral studies, she also received a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship.
As an actress, Tonea is widely recognized for her recurring role as Miss Etta Kibbee on In The Heat of the Night. She received an NAACP Image Award nomination for her performance in the film adaptation of John Grisham’s A Time to Kill and won a New York World Festival Gold Medal for narrating Public Radio International’s series "Remembering Slavery." Beginning her acting career in 1969, she became the first African American to both direct and star in a leading role at New Stage Theatre, Mississippi’s premier equity theater.
Her directing work includes major museum exhibitions such as the Rosa Parks Museum, the African American Museum of Philadelphia, and The International Civil Rights Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina. Stewart has performed internationally in Canada, Mexico, South Korea, Scotland, Turkey, and across the United States, with appearances at venues like Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center.
Her extensive screen and television credits include A Time To Kill, The Rosa Parks Story, Mississippi Burning, Invasion of the Body Snatchers III, Living Large, My Stepson/My Lover, Walker, Texas Ranger, Memphis Beat, Matlock, Leave of Absence, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, ER, Touched by an Angel, Mississippi Damned, and numerous Lifetime movies, most recently The Wronged Man.
Tonea has served as spokesperson for Alabama’s "One Church, One Child" initiative and for NOSAP, a Texas-based youth development organization. She has been inducted into the National Black College Alumni Hall of Fame and holds honorary doctorates from Buena Vista University (Storm Lake, Iowa), Jarvis Christian College (Hawkins, Texas), and Tuskegee University (Tuskegee, Alabama).
She is a member of the Order of The Golden Circle, a life member of the NAACP, SCLC, Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., and an active member of Hutchinson Missionary Baptist Church. Tonea is married to Dr. Allen Stewart, and together they have three children and five grandchildren.
