Former Instructor and Visiting Assistant Professor Charles Harris “Sonny” Bell III passed away on October 30, 2025. Dr. Bell was a UNC Greensboro faculty member for three years, first as an instructor from 1975 to 1977 and then as a Visiting Assistant Professor from 1980 to 1981. He was a guest artist at the Parkway Playhouse in Burnsville from 1977 to 1979 and served as Artistic Director during the summer of 1980. After UNCG, Bell taught for twenty years at Western Illinois University. He and his wife, Baird, of nearly fifty years retired to Lake Lure, NC.
Bell taught in the areas of drama appreciation, acting, directing, world theatre and fundamentals of speech communication. His areas of special interest included acting and directing, playscript analysis, and theatre historiography. At UNCG he directed The Philadelphia Story and The Hot L Baltimore and choreographed the fight sequences for Peter Pan and When You Coming Back, Red Ryder? Regionally, he directed Arsenic and Old Lace and Bus Stop for the Parkway Playhouse in Burnsville and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum for the Barn Dinner Theatre. As an actor, he appeared as Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the Parkway Playhouse, Billis in South Pacific at the Barn Dinner Theatre, Sidney Hopcroft in Absurd Person Singular at Gaslight Dinner Theatre, Toby Belch in Twelfth Night at UNCG, and as Mitch in A Streetcar Named Desire for the Carolina Theatre.
A native of Dayton, Ohio, Bell received his BS in Business Management/Communication Arts from the University of Dayton, his MA in Directing and Staging from Bowling Green State University (thesis: “An Original Adaptation and Production Study of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies”), and his PhD in History/Directing and Staging, also from Bowling Green State University, with a dissertation titled “A History of an Ohio Tent Show Family: The Kinsey Komedy Kompany (1881–1951).”
Memorial donations can be made to Elizabeth House Hospice, 571 Allen, Flat Rock, NC 28731.
