Benita Wrenn

Benita (Be) Wrenn started studying Theatre and Dance at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), after graduating with performance honors for theater, singing, and dancing at every level from elementary, middle and high school. Be also trained as a writer and critic with the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Theatre Journalism & Advocacy and a founding Chairperson for the UAB Film Club. Be is the founding director and vice president of Women in Film and TV, Birmingham and Founder and President of Be Casting Cares casting company. Be is a motherless mother of two daughters, a widowed coal-miner's daughter, and preacher's kid, AirForce wife and the thirteenth child of the late Reverend AJ (Alfred) Wrenn and Annie Mae Jackson Wrenn. Be's parents met picking cotton in Sumter County Alabama, and with only a ninth-grade education, raised thirteen educated children. At two years old, Be started a lifelong battle with trauma, after witnessing her mother's sudden death, at 49 years old. Taking care of her father's ailing health, as a teen, Be's older sister Glorissa and her, became caregivers to their father. Be promised her father that she'd return to college. It took over a decade. Yet, Be returned to college and earned a Bachelor's degree in broadcasting/journalism, graduating with honors from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Be's honors thesis documentary film explored the correlation between discipline versus damage in the family. Be surveyed hundreds of imprisoned violent offenders in the Alabama Department of Corrections. Be has creatively contributed to various media genres: Film, Television, Local News, Newspaper, Poetry, Narrative, Fiction, Screenplays and Theatre. Be is an award-winning filmmaker and published poet. Memberships: Women in Film and TV US, Women in Film and TV International, Women in Film and TV Alabama, Women in Film and TV Birmingham, Alabama Media Professionals, National Association of Black Journalists, Society of Professional Journalists, Birmingham Association of Black Journalists. By: Reely Publications