Aleshea Harris facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Aleshea Harris
Aleshea Harris, a panelist at Theater Talks: Playwrights, in Harlem, NYC, on January 22, 2018
Occupation	Playwright, writer, spoken word artist
Language	English
Nationality	American
Education	University of Southern Mississippi (BA) California Institute of the Arts (MFA)
Genre	Theatre, drama

Aleshea Harris is a talented American writer. She writes plays, poems, and screenplays. She is also an actor and educator. Her play Is God Is won a special award called the Relentless Award in 2016. This award is given by the American Playwriting Foundation. In 2023, her play On Sugarland was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. This is a very important award for plays.

Aleshea Harris's plays have been performed in many places. They have been shown at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Her plays have also traveled to France and Belgium. They have been presented at the Orlando Shakespeare Theater and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Her work has also been seen at the California Institute of the Arts and Dartmouth College.

Aleshea Harris's Early Life

Aleshea Harris grew up in many different places. She says she was an "army child." This means her family moved often because of her parent's military service. Most of the places she lived were in the Southern U.S..

Harris studied at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). While there, she was part of a student group. This group worked with other theater companies. They collaborated with the American Conservatory Theater and the African-American Shakespeare Company. They put on three plays and two staged readings together.

Aleshea Harris's Writing Career

Aleshea Harris's writing has been featured in books. Her work appeared in a collection of poems. This book was called The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop. It was published in 2015.

In 2016, she performed her art piece What to Send Up When it Goes Down. This performance took place at Occidental College in Los Angeles. The piece uses songs, spoken words, and audience participation. It honors Black lives and bodies. It is described as a play, pageant, and ritual. It talks about the sad topic of racial violence.

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

In 2018, this play was produced off-Broadway. The Movement Theatre Company put it on. It was nominated for a Drama Desk award. The show was so popular it ran for a longer time. Later, this production traveled to other famous theaters. It was shown at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge. It also went to the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington D.C. Other stops included The Public Theater, Playwrights Horizons, and Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York.

Also in 2018, another of her plays opened. This was Is God Is. Aleshea Harris wrote it, and Taibi Magar directed it. It was performed at Soho Rep in New York City. The play ran from February 6 to March 11. Is God Is won three Obie Awards. These awards were for Playwriting, Directing, and Performance. The play had already won the Relentless Award in 2016. This award helped Harris get her play read in theaters across the country and even abroad.

Her play On Sugarland was produced in 2022. The New York Theatre Workshop put on this play. Whitney White directed it. Raja Feather Kelly created the dances for it. This play was a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Awards and Honors

Aleshea Harris has received many important awards. She won the Relentless Award in 2016. She has also been a finalist two times for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. This award is for women playwrights. She has also been a MacDowell Fellow two times. This means she was chosen to spend time at a special artist retreat.

In 2019, Harris received the Helen Merrill Award. This award recognizes talented playwrights.

In 2020, Aleshea Harris was given a Windham-Campbell Literature Prize. This is a very important award for writers.