Katori Hall is a playwright and performer from Memphis, TN. Her Broadway play The Mountaintop received its world premiere in London at Theatre 503 before transferring to Trafalgar Studios in the West End (2010 Olivier Award for Best New Play). Other plays include Hurt Village (2011 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize), Children of Killers (National Theatre, London), Hoodoo Love (Cherry Lane Theatre), Remembrance (Women’s Project), Saturday Night/Sunday Morning, WHADDABLOODCLOT!!!, The Hope Well, Our Lady of Kibeho and Pussy Valley. Hall is currently adapting Hurt Village for the screen with Jean Doumanian Productions. The script was developed at the 2011 Sundance Screenwriters Lab. Her numerous awards and fellowships include the 2009-10 Lark Play Development Center Playwrights of New York (PONY) Fellowship, the ARENA Stage American Voices New Play Residency, the Kate Neal Kinley Fellowship, two Lecomte du Nouy Prizes from Lincoln Center, the Fellowship of Southern Writers Bryan Family Award in Drama, a NYFA Fellowship, the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award and the Otis Guernsey New Voices Playwriting Award (William Inge Theatre Festival). Hall’s journalism has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Guardian, Essence, Newsweek, and The Commercial Appeal.
The Mountaintop and Katori Hall: Plays One are published by Methuen Drama. Hall is an alumna of the Lark Playwrights’ Workshop, where she developed The Mountaintop. She is a graduate of Columbia University, the American Repertory Theatre Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University, and the Juilliard School’s Lila Acheson Wallace playwriting program. She is a proud member of the Ron Brown Scholar Program, the Coca-Cola Scholar Program, the Dramatists Guild, and the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
signature center inaugural season production:
Hurt Village
IMAGE: Katori Hall. Photo by Gregory Costanzo.