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| Jeremy O. Harris | |
|---|---|
| Name | Jeremy O. Harris |
| Birth date | 1989 |
| Birth place | New York City, New York, United States |
| Occupation | Playwright, producer, screenwriter, actor |
| Notable works | Slave Play, Daddy, Black Exhibition |
| Awards | Obie Award, Tony Award nominations |
Jeremy O. Harris is an American playwright, producer, screenwriter, and performer known for provocative contemporary drama and interdisciplinary projects that interrogate race, sexuality, power, and history. His work has been produced on Broadway, in regional theaters, and at festivals, and he has collaborated with institutions across theater, film, music, and visual art. Harris's productions have involved notable figures from theater, film, and music and have sparked wide critical discussion and debate.
Harris was born in New York City and raised in the Bronx and the Hudson Valley, regions connected to New York City, Bronx, Hudson Valley, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. He attended Pace University, where he studied drama and developed early connections to Off-Broadway companies and regional institutions such as The Public Theater, Huntington Theatre Company, and New York Theatre Workshop. He later studied in graduate and mentorship programs that intersected with artists from Yale School of Drama, Juilliard School, Carnegie Mellon School of Drama, Columbia University School of the Arts, Brown University, and Northwestern University.
Harris emerged in the 2010s and rose to prominence through productions staged at venues including The Public Theater, American Repertory Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, Signature Theatre Company, A.R.T., and The Shed. He collaborated with directors and producers associated with Anaïs Mitchell, Lynn Nottage, Katori Hall, John Patrick Shanley, Martha Clarke, Thomas Kail, Rachel Chavkin, Julie Taymor, and Sonia Friedman. His professional network spans companies and festivals such as Lincoln Center, Broadway, Off-Broadway, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Humana Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, Theatre of Nations, and Festival d'Avignon. Harris's career includes work in television and film development with studios and platforms like Netflix, HBO, Amazon Studios, Paramount, and Hulu, and he has collaborated with producers from Lionsgate, A24, Plan B Entertainment, Annapurna Pictures, and Participants Productions.
Harris is best known for a landmark play that premiered in regional theater and transferred to Broadway where it became a focal point of cultural discussion alongside other contemporary works staged at Circle in the Square Theatre, American Airlines Theatre, Belasco Theatre, Walter Kerr Theatre, Ethel Barrymore Theatre, and Lyric Theatre. His major plays and projects include productions and texts associated with titles presented at The Public Theater, Second Stage Theater, Studio Theatre, Geffen Playhouse, Arena Stage, and Ford's Theatre. He has also created performance pieces intersecting with visual art institutions such as Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, Guggenheim Museum, and New Museum. Themes in his work engage histories and discourses connected to slavery in the United States, Jim Crow, Civil Rights Movement, Harlem Renaissance, Black Power movement, Stonewall riots, AIDS epidemic, Queer theory, and debates around privilege and trauma as explored in contemporary plays by peers like Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Lynn Nottage, Suzan-Lori Parks, Katori Hall, and Dominique Morisseau. He often interrogates race and intimacy through forms that evoke traditions from Greek tragedy, Shakespearean adaptations, minstrel show legacies, vaudeville, modern dance, and performance art.
Harris has received critical honors and nominations from institutions and awards such as the Obie Awards, the Tony Awards, the Pulitzer Prize for Drama shortlist discussions, the Drama Desk Awards, the Outer Critics Circle Awards, the Lucille Lortel Awards, and critics' prizes from outlets connected to The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and Vulture. He has been included in lists and fellowships administered by organizations including MacDowell, Yaddo, New Dramatists, American Academy of Arts and Letters, National Endowment for the Arts, Guggenheim Fellowship, MacArthur Foundation conversations, and development labs at National Playwrights Conference, Playwrights Horizons, Sundance Institute, and Institute for Advanced Study programs. His plays have been produced internationally at venues connected to Royal Court Theatre, National Theatre, Donmar Warehouse, Old Vic, Sydney Theatre Company, and Schaubühne.
Harris identifies publicly as gay and engages with LGBTQ+ communities and cultural institutions including GLAAD, Human Rights Campaign, Lambda Legal, Stonewall National Museum, Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center, and The Trevor Project. He has participated in panels and benefit events alongside activists and cultural figures associated with Ava DuVernay, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Roxane Gay, Samuel R. Delany, Ellen Stewart, August Wilson, Wole Soyinka, and James Baldwin legacies. His public statements and artistic interventions intersect with conversations in media outlets and advocacy coalitions around representation involving Black Lives Matter, #MeToo movement, Campaign Zero, and arts funding discussions with bodies like National Endowment for the Arts and municipal arts agencies in New York City and Los Angeles County.
Category:American dramatists and playwrights Category:Writers from New York City