Joseph Lewis Edwards

Actor and Playwright

Joseph Lewis Edwards is an artist and educator of diverse talents.  His work as an actor and playwright has been showcased on film, television, and stage. His stage

adaptation of the classic autobiography of Claude Brown’s Manchild In The Promised Land, originally produced Off-Broadway at the American Place Theatre,

was nominated for an AUDELCO Award for excellence in Black theater and was performed for thousands of students in New York City.   Joseph won three

AUDELCO awards for his critically acclaimed Off-Broadway production of FLY, also presented at the National Black Theater Festival in North Carolina and at the HBO

Performance Space in Los Angeles. 

Joseph appeared in Bad Company, starring Chris Rock and Anthony Hopkins.  He has had guest appearances on Law and Order, Law and Order SVU, and Rescue

Me. He appeared on Broadway in Regina Taylor’s Drowning Crow, starring Alfre Woodard and Anthony Mackey. Off-Broadway he played Officer Burt in Urban

Transitions with the late Chadwick Bozeman, directed by Woodie King Jr.,  and as Boy Willie in the Baltimore Center Stage production of August Wilson’s Fences. 

Joseph also portrayed the role of Martin Luther King Jr. in the St. Louis Black Repertory Company’s production of The Meeting at the Kennedy Center, directed by

Stephen McKinley Henderson.  In the Williamstown Theater Festival production of A Raisin In The Sun, starring Viola Davis and Rubin Santiago Hudson, he portrayed

Bobo. Joseph performed all male roles in Zora Neale Hurston: A Theatrical Biography, Off-Broadway at the Castillo Theater, starring Elizabeth Van Dyke.  He

made a guest appearance in season 3 of the Netflix series Dare Devil.

He performed multiple roles and was the understudy for Scrooge in the St. Louis Repertory Theatre’s 2022 production of A Christmas Carol.  He is a 2022 Research

and Development Grant Recipient from the Arizona Commission on the Arts for his multimedia presentation The Reparations Project.  His latest work

Reparations: A Play with Music was a semi-finalist in the 2023 Eugene O’Neil Musical Theatre Conference.  Joseph is grateful for the opportunity to return to

The Black Rep to work with his friend, the living legend, Ron Himes.