ABOUT ME:
SUKARI JONES is an award-winning and attractive musical theater lyricist, playwright and screenwriter!
Born and raised outside of D.C. in Oxon Hill, Maryland, Sukari attended the rich kid school on the other side of town (Georgetown Day School). Through sleepovers watching Disney movies, Sukari fell in love with the idea of an art form with singing and talking and dance and magic. Sukari didn’t actually know what a musical was till she got to Vassar and met her best friend who mentioned that all the old white guys who made up the old musicals would be dying and they’d need new people to replace them. After that, Sukari applied on whim to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program and has been writing music theater dramas ever since:)
Today, themes Sukari enjoys tapping into are race and the other in the United States, with a particular focus on the Black experience in America. Sukari’s work often explores identity through a magical, sci-fi and/or satirical lens, and she is passionate about creating challenging principal roles within her pieces that feature actors of color, especially POC women.
MEMBERSHIPS: BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop (Advanced), WP Theater Lab, Sappho W*rk Lab and The Public Theater’s Emerging Writers group
EDUCATION: B.A. from Vassar College, M.F.A. from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program
AWARDS: Yip Harburg Outstanding Lyricist Award, W.K. Rose Fellow for the Creative Arts at Vassar College
FELLOWSHIPS: National Alliance of Musical Theatre Conference, Goodspeed Opera House Eugene O’Neill Incubator Residency, The Village Theater At The Table Residency, MacDowell Colony Fellow
Sukari feels like she was born to be somebody’s Howard Ashman to their Alan Menken, and has been bumbling around writing plays and TV stuff to pass the time. But Sukari knows she’ll find that person or persons, because she believes in magic, and, above all else, hope 🙂
Sukari Jones 