Jeremy O. Harris

Jeremy O. Harris is an American playwright and actor. He began his career with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago before relocating to Los Angeles. He collaborated with musician Isabella Summers to produce the play Xander Xyst, Dragon 1, which was produced at ANT Fest 2017 in New York. Harris then took a residency at the MacDowell artist colony in New Hampshire, where he wrote the play Daddy.

In 2016, Harris embarked upon an MFA at Yale School of Drama, where he began to write Slave Play. It won the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award and the Rosa Parks Playwriting Award at the 2018 American College Theater Festival, before being picked up by the director, Robert O’Hara , and produced Off-Broadway and on Broadway in 2019. Slave Play broke all records to achieve 12 Tony nominations at the 2020 awards.

In 2018, Harris was awarded the Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, which includes a residency at the off-Broadway Vineyard Theatre. The following year, the LGBT rights movement, Queerty named him one of the Pride50 “trailblazing individuals who actively ensure society remains moving towards equality, acceptance and dignity for all queer people.” In an interview in 2019, the American magazine Out described him as "the queer black savior the theater world needs."