Edward Franklin Albee III was an American playwright known for works such as The Zoo Story (1958), The Sandbox (1959), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), A Delicate Balance (1966), and Three Tall Women (1994). Some critics have argued that some of his work constitutes an American variant of what Martin Esslin identified as and named the Theater of the Absurd. Three of his plays won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and two of his other works won the Tony Award for Best Play.
John Guare is an American playwright and screenwriter. He is best known as the author of The House of Blue Leaves and Six Degrees of Separation.
Harriet Sansom Harris is an American actress known for her theater performances and for her portrayals of Bebe Glazer on Frasier and Felicia Tilman on Desperate Housewives.
Tonya Pinkins is an American actress and filmmaker. Her award-winning debut feature film Red Pill was an official selection at the 2021 Pan African Film Festival, won the Best Black Lives Matter Feature and Best First Feature at The Mykonos International Film Festival, Best First Feature at the Luléa Film Festival, and is nominated for awards in numerous festivals around the globe. Her web-series The Red Pilling of America can be heard on her podcast "You Can't Say That!" at BPN.fm/ycst
Craigmont High School is a public high school located in Memphis, Tennessee, in the Raleigh community. It was part of the Memphis City Schools district before consolidation with the Shelby County Schools district, beginning with the 2013-14 school year. It is home to the city's only International Studies Program. The school first opened in 1974 for only 7th through 10th grade students, but each subsequent year, added a grade higher. The first graduating class was the class of 1976. In 2001, the 7th and 8th grade students, along with the 6th grade students from Brownsville Road Optional Elementary School, formed the new Craigmont Middle School at the opposite end of the same block. This was done both to help overcrowding and to reduce the extreme age and maturity gaps present in a single building. Before the physical split between junior and senior high schools, junior high students remain relegated to the north end of the building for classes while those senior high students attended the majority of their classes in the south end of the school building. Beginning with the 1991-1992 school year, students from grade 9 would become a part of the senior high section of the building. Former principal, Dr. Ada Jane Walters, would go on to become the Tennessee State Commissioner of Education.
Benjamin D. Brantley is an American theater critic, journalist, editor, publisher, and writer. He served as the chief theater critic for The New York Times from 1996 to 2017, and as co-chief theater critic from 2017 to 2020.
Christopher Shinn is an American playwright. His play Dying City (2006) was a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and Where Do We Live (2004) won the 2005 Obie Award, Playwriting.
Quiara Alegría Hudes is an American playwright, producer, lyricist and essayist. She is best known for writing the book for the musical In the Heights (2007), and screenplay for its film adaptation. Hudes' first play in her Elliot Trilogy, Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue was a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. She received the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Water by the Spoonful, her second play in that trilogy.
Katori Hall is an American playwright, screenwriter, producer, actress, and director from Memphis, Tennessee. Hall's best known works include the hit television series P-Valley, the Tony-nominated Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, and plays such as Hurt Village, Our Lady of Kibeho, Children of Killers, The Mountaintop, and The Hot Wing King, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
The Mountaintop is a play by American playwright Katori Hall. It is a fictional depiction of Martin Luther King Jr.'s last night on earth set entirely in Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel on the eve of his assassination in 1968.
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is an American playwright. His plays Gloria and Everybody were finalists for the 2016 and 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His play Appropriate made his Broadway debut as a playwright in 2023 and earned him his first Tony Award. His additional plays include An Octoroon and The Comeuppance. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2016.
Between Riverside and Crazy is a 2014 play by playwright, screenwriter, director, and actor Stephen Adly Guirgis. The play won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the 2015 New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play, the 2015 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, the 2015 Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play and the 2015 Off Broadway Alliance Award for Best New Play.
Shalita Grant is an American actress best known for portraying NCIS Special Agent Sonja Percy on NCIS: New Orleans. She is also known from her roles on Mercy Street, You, Santa Clarita Diet, and Search Party.
William Fitzgerald Harper, known professionally as William Jackson Harper, is an American actor and playwright. He gained acclaim for his role as Chidi Anagonye in the NBC comedy series The Good Place (2016–2020), for which he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.
James Ijames is an American playwright, actor, and professor originally from Bessemer City, North Carolina. He received his B.A. in Drama from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, and earned his MFA in Acting from Temple University in Philadelphia, where he is now based. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Theatre at Villanova University and co-artistic director of the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia. Ijames is a founding member of Orbiter 3, Philadelphia's first playwright producing collective. His adaptation of Hamlet, titled Fat Ham, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2022. The production ran at The Public Theater during the summer of 2022, before opening on Broadway in April 2023. He is the recipient of the 2018 Whiting Award for drama and the F. Otto Haas Award for an Emerging Philadelphia Theatre Artist.
Everybody is a play written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. It is a modern adaptation of the 15th-century morality play Everyman, one of the first recorded plays in the English language. The play premiered Off-Broadway at the Irene Diamond Stage at Signature Theatre Company on February 21, 2017, with previews beginning January 31, 2017, and a closing date of March 19, 2017. The play features the unique casting quirk of using a lottery system to define the roles of the play. Each actor must memorize the entire script and be prepared to play any role. This is meant to symbolize the randomness of death. The original production was directed by Lila Neugebauer and featured an ensemble of nine performers.
Zora Howard is an American actress and writer. Her debut play, STEW, premiered off-Broadway in February 2020 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. She also co-wrote and starred in the 2019 drama Premature.
Nicco Annan is an American actor, dancer, and choreographer. He is best known for his portrayal of Uncle Clifford on the Starz drama series P-Valley, an adaptation of the Katori Hall play Pussy Valley, in which Annan originated the role.
Circle Jerk is a 2020 American multimedia play by Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley. The play was originally produced by Fake Friends Theater and Media Company, Caroline Gart, and Jeremy O. Harris. It was directed by Rory Pelsue. It featured dramaturgy by Ariel Sibert and performances from the authors and Catherine María Rodríguez.
Saheem Ali is a Kenyan theatre director. He is Associate Artistic Director at The Public Theater in New York City.
