Necrology

Sonia Suzette Williams '89

Jan. 17, 1967-Jan. 6, 2024

Former Dean of Students and Professor of Economics Sidney J. Wertimer once observed that a liberal education “trains you for nothing and prepares you for everything.” The achievements of Sonia Suzette Williams ’89, who died on Jan. 6, 2024, in Barbados, demonstrate the validity of that statement. A theatre director, arts educator, author, actor on both stage and film, as well as scholar, Sonia was a major force in the cultural environment of not only Barbados, but also of Jamaica and Trinidad. 

Born in Pleasant Hall, Barbados, on Jan. 17, 1967, in 1979, she moved with her family to Brooklyn, N.Y., and it was from there that she came to Hamilton in 1985. She majored in theatre and graduated with honors. She was also one of two students in her class to be awarded a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to support one year of self-designed independent study and travel abroad. 

Interested in African influences upon Caribbean culture, she traveled to Nigeria intending to study the traditional performing arts of the Yoruba and Ashanti people, two of the largest ethnic groups in West Africa. That knowledge would enable her to identify manifestations of those traditions not only in her home country but also in Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad. In tandem with that research, she inquired into the impact of British colonization on the performing arts in those countries. Barbados went independent in 1966 and still retained vestiges of colonial culture at that time.

In 1990, she returned to Barbados and began an acting career, which evolved into one that included writing and directing full-length plays by Barbadian and Trinidadian authors, which in turn led to her teaching acting. Her productions took place not only in Barbados but as well in Trinidad and Tobago. She also wrote a novella, And This Too Shall Pass (2014), about what it meant to her to have an African-Caribbean spirit in a girl's body in the 1970s in Barbados.

As an academician, she served on the faculties of the Edna Manley College for the Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston, Jamaica; the Youth Training Entrepreneurship Scheme in Trinidad; the Barbados Youth Service; and the Culture, Creative, and Performing Arts at the Cave Hill of the University of the West Indies. She also taught creative writing workshops at the nation’s prison.

Sonia was an active member of her country’s National Cultural Foundation for more than three decades, lending her skills and expertise to various projects both in the literary arts and in theatre. Later in life she focused her attention primarily on the theatre and directing plays.

In 2005, she reached out to Hamilton following the announcement that Professor Carole Bellini-Sharp, for many years director of Kirkland’s and then Hamilton’s theatre program, had received the Alumni Council’s Distinguished Service Award. Sonia noted that she learned much from Professor Bellini-Sharp, whose mentoring taught her lessons that shaped her work in theatre as well as in the classroom.

Sonia S. Williams is survived by her three children.

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