Aleshea Harris

Aleshea Harris is an American playwright, spoken word artist, author, educator, actor, performer, and screenwriter. Her play Is God Is won the American Playwriting Foundation's Relentless Award in 2016.

Aleshea Harris
Aleshea Harris, panelist for Theater Talks: Playwrights, at the Schomburg Library in Harlem, NYC, on January 22, 2018
OccupationPlaywright, writer, spoken word artist
LanguageEnglish
NationalityAmerican
EducationUniversity of Southern Mississippi (BA)
California Institute of the Arts (MFA)
GenreTheatre, drama
Website
www.bagofbeans.net

Her work has been commissioned for the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.[1][2][3][4][5][6] Her plays have toured in France and in Belgium and have been presented at Playfest at the Orlando Shakespeare Theater, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice, California Institute of the Arts, VOXfest at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, and the Comédie de Saint-Étienne-National Drama Center in France.

Early life

Harris says that she was an army child and she lived in many places, mostly in the South.[7]

Harris is a CalArts alumna.[8] She was a part of CalArts' student organization - a collective that collaborated with the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and with the African-American Shakespeare Company, with three plays and two staged readings.[9]

Career

Harris's work appeared in the anthology The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, published in 2015.

In 2016 she shared her performance art piece What to Send Up When it Goes Down at Occidental College in Los Angeles. What to Send Up When it Goes Down incorporates song, language (spoken word), and audience participation to honor black bodies and lives.[10][11] It is described as a play/pageant/ritual about the death of black people due to racial violence.[12]

In 2017 she collaborated with The Movement Theatre Company with a reading of her play What to Send Up When It Goes Down.

In 2018, What to Send Up When It Goes Down was produced off-Broadway by The Movement Theatre Company in a Drama Desk-nominated, extended production. That production later traveled to the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington D.C., The Public Theater in New York for the Under the Radar Festival, and will be produced at Playwrights Horizons in New York.

In 2018, a production of Is God Is, written by Harris and directed by Taibi Magar, opened at Soho Rep in New York City and ran from February 6 to March 11.[13] Is God Is received 3 Obie Awards for Playwriting, Directing, and Performance.[14][15] The play won the American Playwriting Foundation's Relentless Award in 2016.[8][16][17] The award gave Harris the opportunity to have stage readings in regional theaters across the country and abroad.

Awards

In addition the Relentless Award in 2016, Harris has been a two-time finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.[18]

In 2019, Harris received the Helen Merrill Award for playwriting.[19]

In 2020, Harris was awarded one of the eight Windham-Campbell Literature Prizes.[20][18]

Quotes

"I noted that people seemed to have a very narrow view of what kind of space my body could occupy on stage — and I found that really frustrating. I decided to write plays."[21]

Regarding What to Send Up When It Goes Down: "It's a piece that is, ideally, a tool that communities can access when they're in crisis after someone has been killed. I feel very strongly that we need tools. Every oppressed population, every marginalized population needs tools for coping, and I hope that this can be one for black people."[22]

References
  1. "Aleshea Harris". Aleshea Harris.
  2. Chow, Andrew R. (23 October 2016). "Aleshea Harris Wins a Playwriting Prize for 'Is God Is'" – via NYTimes.com.
  3. "Theater Talks: Playwrights Aleshea Harris & Jackie Sibblies Drury". The New York Public Library.
  4. "Meet the Playwrights : Aleshea Harris". www.seattlerep.org.
  5. "Aleshea Harris Receives American Playwriting Foundation's Relentless Award".
  6. "Aleshea Harris News". www.broadwayworld.com.
  7. "Aleshea Harris/Playwright/Polite Sheep Dog".
  8. "Playwright Aleshea Harris Wins Relentless Award".
  9. "On the Road: The Collective Staged Three Plays in San Francisco Last Month".
  10. "In conversation with Aleshea Harris - The Occidental Weekly". 28 September 2016.
  11. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (2019-04-05). "'What to Send Up When It Goes Down': A Black Gaze". AMERICAN THEATRE. Retrieved 2020-10-12.
  12. "Interpret - "What To Send Up When It Goes Down" by Aleshea Harris (Reading) + Open Discussion [w/ The Movement Theatre Co]". Interfest.
  13. Desk, BWW News. "Soho Rep. Announces Complete Casting And Creative Team For Aleshea Harris's IS GOD IS".
  14. "Describe the Night, Will Swenson, Dominique Morisseau, More Win 2018 Obie Awards". Playbill.
  15. ""Mary Jane" and "Is God Is" Achieve a Glorious Trifecta at the 63rd Obie Awards". Village Voice.
  16. "American Award, Prestige Abroad for Aleshea Harris - Creative Pinellas". creativepinellas.org. Archived from the original on 2018-01-25. Retrieved 2018-01-24.
  17. Coakley, Jacob (24 October 2016). "Aleshea Harris Wins 2016 Relentless Award - Stage Directions".
  18. "Aleshea Harris". Windham Campbell Prizes. Retrieved 2020-10-12.
  19. "Five Talented Playwrights Win $30,000 Helen Merrill Awards". The New York Community Trust. 2019-06-19. Retrieved 2020-10-12.
  20. Flood, Alison (2020-03-19). "Eight authors share $1m prize as writers face coronavirus uncertainty". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-03-20.
  21. "Playwright Aleshea Harris Wins The Relentless Award for "Is God Is"". 24 October 2016.
  22. Sylvia Sukop, "'Responding to a world which no longer makes sense': An interview with playwright Aleshea Harris", Huffington Post, June 20th, 2016.
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