"Christina Anderson's plays grab me by the throat, wound my memory, and change the way I walk through the world. She is, without a doubt, one of our most significant and prescient writers."
- Paula Vogel, Pulitzer Prize-winner How I Learned to Drive
plays.
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the ripple, the wave that carried me home
When Janice is pressed to return to her hometown and speak at a ceremony honoring her father, she has to reconcile with the childhood she’s tried to distance herself from and forget — one defined by her parents’ political activism and fight for the integration of their local swimming pools.
How to Catch Creation
A young writer’s life turns upside down when her girlfriend drops some unexpected news. Fifty years later, four artists feel the reverberations of that moment—and its unexpected consequences—as their lives intersect in pursuit of creative passion and legacy.
pen/man/ship
1896. The Separate But Equal Doctrine has just been upheld in the Supreme Court of the United States as a Black American surveyor boards a ship to lead a mysterious expedition bound for Liberia. In tow are his troubled son, a rebellious young woman, and a skeptical crew. On the open sea an unexpected detour forces secrets out of hiding fundamentally changing the course of the journey and their lives.
Good Goods
In a small Black town that doesn’t appear on any map, a young man is summoned back to run his family-owned general store. Past and present collide when four lost souls reunite, forcing Stacey Good to confront long buried feelings for Wire, his childhood best friend. Partnerships dissolve, alliances shift, and romances ignite as a tragic accident unleashes the town’s mysterious history.
The Ashes Under
Gait City
Simone The Believer launches a campaign to convince Black Americans to return to Gait City, Oregon. She assembles a small group of converts, but real world conflict quickly confronts her real world quest.
Hollow Roots
A solo play that questions the notion of a “post-racial” society by looking at one woman’s quest to understand her identity. The protagonist challenges herself to find a person of color who has a “neutral” identity.
Blacktop Sky
Klass, a homeless, young Black man, sets up residence in the courtyard of a housing project where Ida Peters lives. Triggered by a fatal confrontation between a local street vendor and the police, Klass and Ida quickly develop a precarious bond against the backdrop of a restless neighborhood.
Man in Love
1936. A metropolis divided by segregation and struck by economic turmoil. In this concrete jungle, several Black female bodies turn up and a pattern emerges. Man in Love examines a world of quiet desperation in hard times, where a criminal and his victims can get lost in the crowd.
about.
Christina Anderson is a 2022 Tony Award Nominee for Outstanding Book of the Broadway musical Paradise Square. She is a playwright, tv writer, screenwriter, educator, and creative. Her work has been produced by theaters such as the Goodman Theatre, Berkeley Rep, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Kansas City Rep, Geva Theatre, and Yale Rep. Awards and honors include: 2022 Horton Foote Prize, 2022 Arthur Miller Legacy Award, 2021 Prince Prize, 2020 United States Artists Fellow, MacDowell Fellowship, Lily Awards Harper Lee Prize, Herb Alpert Award nomination, Barrymore Nomination, and New Dramatists Residency. She was a staff writer on Edie Falco's CBS tv drama Tommy. She taught playwriting at the David Geffen School of Drama, Wesleyan University, Rutgers University, SUNY Purchase College, and served as the interim Head of Playwriting at Brown University. An avid photographer for nearly ten years, the Magnum award review described Christina's work as "compelling" and "poignant." (Some of her photos can be seen throughout this site.) Since 2019, she has produced hip hop instrumentals under the moniker Purely Magenta. Check out her latest ep, 6.12, here.
