Sharon Bridgforth
She/Her
Core Writer
Inglewood, CA
Sharon Bridgforth collaborates with artists and audiences to queerly activate moving soundscapes of her ritual/jazz texts.
Biography

A 2023 United States Artists Fellow and a 2022 Winner of Yale's Windham Campbell Prize in Drama, Sharon Bridgforth is a writer that creates ritual/jazz theatre. Her work is featured in Dr. Omi Osun Joni L. Jones's book, Theatrical Jazz: Performance, Àṣẹ, and the Power of the Present MomentTeaching Black: The Craft of Teaching on Black Life and Literature edited by Ana-Maurine Lara and drea brown, Mouths of Rain an Anthology of Black Lesbian Thought edited by Briona Jones and the creative contribution section of Feminist Studies Volume 48 Number 1 honoring 40 years of This Bridge Call my Back and But Some of Us Are Brave! curated by Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Sharon's bull-jean & dem/dey back and All These Things: A Conversation by Sharon Bridgforth & Daniel Alexander Jones are published by 53rd State Press.  AdeRisa Productions produced the 2023 bull-jean & dem/dey back L.A. Book Party Documentary directed by Adelina Anthony. Sharon’s work was featured by Pillsbury House + Theatre in 2022 & 2023. 

A 2020-2023 Playwrights’ Center Core Member, a 2022-2023 McKnight National Fellow, Sharon is a Doris Duke Performing Artist and has received support from Creative Capital, MAP Fund, the National Performance Network and is a New Dramatists alumnae. A MAP Fund Scaffolding for Practicing Artists Coach, Sharon is an Associate Company Member at Pillsbury House + Theatre and is a long time member of Pangea World Theater and Art2Action's National Institute for Directing and Ensemble Creation. She has served as Artist In-Residence for: Thousand Currents; Brown University’s MFA Playwriting Program; University of Iowa’s MFA Playwrights Program; The Theatre School at DePaul University; The Department of Performance Studies at Northwestern University; and has taught for The University of Texas at Austin African & African Diaspora Studies Department.

Sharon served as a dramaturg for: Marjani Forté-Saunders + Everett Saunders 7NMS; the Urban Bush Women Choreographic Center Initiative’s Choreographic Fellowship program; was writer, dramaturg, and voice over performer for Ananya Chatterjea Dance Theatre's Dastak: I Wish You Me; and worked as writer and performer in Amara Tabor-Smith’s REVIVAL: Millennial Remembering in the Afro NOW sponsored by Stanford Arts, Institute for Diversity in the Arts. Sharon's dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/The Show premiered at Pillsbury House Theatre in Minneapolis, MN in June 2018, and is streaming on Twin Cities PBS (Episode #131).

Thanks to funding from Solidaire Networks’ Black Liberation Pooled Fund Sharon and her wife, Dr. Omi Osun Joni L. Jones have created Called By Water, which includes a cohort of people of African descent gathered to use ancestral exploration, somatic insights, creative process, truth telling, and Joy making towards the development of a world that leads with Love, generosity, gratitude, and authentic connections of every kind. More at https://www.sharonbridgforth.com.

 

Successes

Sharon Bridgforth is the 2022 Winner of Yale's Windham Campbell Prize in Drama http://windhamcampbell.org