Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm

Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm most recently presented his play Black Dick at the 2019 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference and premiered P.Y.G. at Studio Theater as both playwright and director; the play has previously been developed at the Magic Theater’s Virgin Play Festival and at Juilliard. He won a Helen Hayes award (the Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding Original New Play or Musical) for his play Hooded: Or Being Black for Dummies, which premiered and was revived at Mosaic Theater. In 2018, Tearrance’s play Br’er Cotton had a critically-acclaimed production by London’s Theatre 503 (nominee, Evening Standard Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright), as well as an NNPN Rolling World Premiere, with productions at Kitchen Dog Theater in Dallas, Lower Depth Ensemble in Los Angeles and Cleveland Public.

Tearrance received the 13th Smith Prize for Political Theater, a commission through NNPN that encourages emerging playwrights to tackle the pressing issues of our times.

Tearrance has developed new works with Signature Theatre, Theatre J, Theatre Alliance, and The Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. He has held residencies at The Bay Area Playwrights Festival, The Virginia Center for Creative Arts and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. He was a finalist for the Inaugural Relentless Award and the Theatre 503 Playwriting Award. Tearrance received two of the 2016 National KCACTF awards, the Rosa Parks Playwriting Award and the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award. Tearrance was a part of the Pacific Playwrights Festival at South Coast Rep with his play Anacostia Street Lions. He developed the play Black Lady Authority under the auspices of the Sundance Theater Lab.

Tearrance holds an MFA in Playwriting from the Catholic University of America. He is a recent graduate from the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program at Julliard, and is a former Sundance Institute and Time Warner Foundation Fellow, and 2050 Fellow at New York Theater Workshop.

In Hollywood, Tearrance has written for a number of TV series and is currently developing his own show, the sci-fi dramedy Demascus, with AMC and Gran Via Productions.