Jacqueline Thompson stands last spring in front of a mural of her face that still can be seen along St. Louis’ Manchester Avenue in the Grove neighborhood, where she starred in a 2013 Shakespeare in the Streets production. The assistant professor in the Department of Theatre and Cinema Arts has been nominated for the 2018 St. Louis Theater Circle Award for outstanding actress in a drama and was the subject of a St. Louis Post-Dispatch story over the weekend for her work on stage. (Photo by August Jennewein)

Jacqueline Thompson has been teaching and directing theater students at the University of Missouri–St. Louis since 2012, but she has continued to garner attention and praise for her own work on stage.

Last weekend, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch featured Thompson, an assistant professor in the Department of Theatre and Cinema Arts, in a package on Women in the Arts with a headline declaring her “one of St. Louis’ most versatile performers.”

As the paper’s theater critic, Judith Newmark noted, “In just the last year, she’s played a worn-out, care-giving daughter in ‘Dot’ at The Black Rep, a South African psychologist in ‘A Human Being Died That Night’ at Upstream Theater and a lonely seamstress in ‘Intimate Apparel’ at the New Jewish Theatre.”

She also directed “Games Dad Didn’t Play” for Metro Theater Company and “Of Mice and Men” for SATE Ensemble Theatre.

Her performance in “Intimate Apparel” won her a nomination for the 2018 St. Louis Theater Circle Award for outstanding actress in a drama. The awards will be presented Monday at Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts.

Thompson spoke to Newmark about her journey back home to St. Louis after earning a bachelor’s degree at Clark Atlanta University and an MFA in acting at the University of Louisville.

It initially was to take a role in The Black Rep show, “Insidious,” but a UMSL faculty position open at the time has kept her around much longer than planned. She’s happy it has.

“The kind of career you can have here is beyond belief,” Thompson told the Post-Dispatch. “This is a thriving theater community. Artists here can really hone their craft.”

Find the full story from the Post-Dispatch here.