African American & Black

Velina Hasu Houston

Representative Plays:

Kokoro (True Heart) (2011)
Tea (1988)

Biography:

Velina Hasu Houston is an internationally celebrated writer with over twenty-eight commissions in theatre and opera. In New York, U.S. nationwide, and globally in Asia and Europe, her work has been produced to critical acclaim at prestigious theatres. She was the first-ever Playwright-in-Residence at The Pasadena Playhouse, State Theatre of California; and a Fulbright Scholar (Fulbright project, Aoyama Gakuin Daigaku, Tokyo, Japan). Honored by The...

Talvin Wilks

Representative Plays:

Bread of Heaven (1994)
Tod, the Boy, Tod (1993)
The Trial of Uncle S&M (1990)

Bio:

Talvin Wilks is a playwright, director and dramaturg. His plays include Tod, the boy, Tod, The Trial of Uncle S&M, Bread of Heaven, and An American Triptych. Directorial projects include the world premiere productions of UDU by Sekou Sundiata (651Arts/BAM), The Love Space Demands by Ntozake Shange (Crossroads), No Black Male Show/Pagan Operetta by Carl Hancock Rux (Joe's Pub/The...

Suzan-Lori Parks

Representative Plays:

White Noise (2019)
Top Dog Underdog (2001)
In the Blood (2000)

Bio:

Named among Time magazine’s “100 Innovators for the Next Wave,” Suzan-Lori Parks is one of the most acclaimed playwrights in American drama today. She is the first African-American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Drama, is a MacArthur “Genius” Award recipient, and in 2015 was awarded the prestigious Gish Prize for Excellence in the Arts. Other grants and awards include those from the National Endowment for the...

Shay Youngblood

Representative Plays:

Flying Blind (2013)
Amazing Grace (1998)
Shakin’ the Mess Outta Misery (1994)

Bio:

Shay Youngblood fell into writing by accident as a child when she was watching TV and became angry at the fact that Howard Hughes was buying an entire floor in a Las Vegas hotel when children in her neighborhood couldn’t afford shoes. She wrote about what she felt and she felt better and this helped her see the power of words. Her first collection of stories, The Big Mama Stories, were a love letter to the...

Sandra Seaton

Representative Plays:

The Will (2020)
Music History (2011)
The Bridge Party (1989)

Bio:

Sandra Seaton is a playwright and librettist. Her plays have been performed in cities throughout the country, including New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Her libretto for the song cycle From the Diary of Sally Hemings, set to music by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer William Bolcom, has been performed at such venues as Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center. Seaton’s spoken word piece King: A Reflection on the Life of...

Robert O’Hara

Representative Plays:

Booty Candy (2014)
Brave Blood (2001)
Insurrection: Holding History (1999)

Bio:

Robert O'Hara has received the NAACP Best Director Award, the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding New Play, 2 OBIE Awards and the Oppenheimer Award. He directed the World Premieres of Nikkole Salter and Dania Guiria’s In the Continuum, Tarell McCraney’s The Brother/Sister Plays (Part 2), Colman Domingo’s Wild with Happy as well as his own plays, BootyCandy and ...

Postmodern African-American Homosexuals (Pomo Afro Homos)

Representative Plays:

Fierce Love: Stories from Black Gay Life (1991)

Bio:

PostModern African American Homosexuals (Pomo Afro Homos) was an African-American gay identified three man performance troupe founded in San Francisco, CA in 1990 by Eric Gupton, Brian Freeman, and Djola Branner. Eric Gupton was a singer and a dancer who was born in Boston in 1960. He attended Antioch College in Ohio where he earned a Master’s degree in theater. He moved to San Francisco in 1984 where he would meet Brian Freeman. Brian Freeman...

Pearl Cleage

Representative Plays:

A Song for Coretta (2008)
Flyin' West (1994)

Bio:

Pearl Cleage is an Atlanta based writer whose work has won commercial acceptance and critical praise in several genres. An award winning playwright whose Flyin’ West was the most produced new play in the country in 1994, Pearl is also a best selling author whose first novel, What Looks Like Crazy On An Ordinary Day, was an Oprah Book Club pick and spent nine weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Her subsequent...

Ntozake Shange

Representative Play:

From Okra to Greens (1984)
Spell #7 (1979)
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf (1975)

Bio:

Ntozake Shange is one of America’s greatest writers—an acknowledged master in the genres of drama, fiction, memoir, and poetry. In a hugely prolific career, Shange has written 15 plays, 19 poetry collections, 6 novels, 5 children’s books, 3 collections of essays, and a memoir called Lost in Language & Sound. Her theatre piece For Colored Girls Who...

Nissy Aya

Representative Plays:

righteous kill: a requiem (2020)

Bio:

Nissy Aya is a Black girl from the Bronx. She joined The Lark as the 2016-2017 Artistic Programming apprentice and now serves as the Artistic Coordinator. She is a writer, educator, and cultural worker who believes in the transformative nature of storytelling and sees theatre as a tool to create social change by empowering disenfranchised communities to unapologetically portray their whole selves on stage. She is a trained facilitator on topics surrounding the...