Steve Harper

Steve Harper's plays include Black/Out Stories (Citizen Playwright – Freedom Train Productions - 2010), Urban Rabbit Chronicles (nominated for the Weissberger award 2009), The Escape Artist's Children (Winner New Professional Theatre’s Writer Festival Grant (2009), almost not quite just about, The Laundry Channel (Juilliard workshop 2004), and Wheelchair Pornography (Spectral Sisters Productions 2003).

Short pieces: Like the End of the World (Chicago’s American Theatre Company – The Silver Project 2010), Things are (Mostly) Crazy, This is Now (American Airlines Theatre - 24 Hour Plays 2005), First Encounter (Falcon Theatre / L.A. - NBC diversity showcase 2005), Actual Cost (Juilliard /100th Anniversary (’05) – published by The Kenyon Review Online), Iggie Imagines Marriage (John Houseman Studio/Dreamcatcher Rep.), and Abstract Purple (Baltimore Playwrights Festival).

Readings and workshops: New York Stage & Film, Summer Play Festival/Naked Angels, New York Theatre Workshop, Tribeca Theatre Festival, New Professional Theatre, Red Harlem Readers, Jean Cocteau Rep, The Schomberg Center, Montevallo Literary Festival, Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater, The Round House Theatre, and The Playwrights Forum.

Steve is a graduate of Yale, The A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard and the playwriting program at Juilliard.

Work in other media includes the short film Betty on the Bed (also director, producer and actor), the martial arts feature Undefeatable for Polygram Video (co-written with Robert Vassar), and two radio pilots (co-written with Becky Ndosi): The Real Deal (Time Show & Space Show) for Sesame Workshop/WHYY. Articles include pieces for his own newsletter: Create Yourself, as well as for The Juilliard Journal, Creativity Calling, and Pulse Magazine.

Also an actor, Steve has appeared at major regional theatres (The Guthrie, Williamstown, The American Repertory Theatre) on national television (90210, Law & Order: SVU, Rescue Me), in film (Chico & Rita, Dark September Rain), commercials and voice-overs.

Awards include the Artistic Achievement Award from the Afro-American Cultural Center at Yale, the Millennium Telly Award, the Le Compte du Nouy prize at Juilliard (two-time recipient), a MacDowell Colony National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (2007) and two Yaddo fellowships: the Skidmore Residency for Artists of Color (2006), and another in 2008.

When he's not writing or acting, Steve teaches and coaches privately. Steve is currently a participant in the CBS Writers Mentoring Program. www.harpercreates.com