Cheryl West
Cheryl L. West (born October 23, 1965, Chicago) is an American playwright. Life West holds a degree from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. She worked as a social worker and taught before turning to playwriting. In 1990, she came to Seattle for The Group Theatre's Multicultural Playwrights Festival, where she won the opportunity to workshop her play, Before It Hits Home. That play went on to be produced at Arena Stage. On June 12, 1991, her play Jar the Floor had its world premiere at Seattle's The Empty Space Theater. In 1999, she relocated to Seattle. She won a National Endowment for the Arts Playwrighting Award for 1995–96. Also making a successful foray into film, her play Before It Hits Home has been optioned by Spike Lee; and she has been asked to pen a film adaptation for Home Box Office and write an original screenplay for Paramount Studios. She had been commissioned to write a dramatic adaptation of Richard Wright's 1940 novel Native Son. A film version of her play Holiday Heart premiered on Showtime in 2000, starring Ving Rhames and Alfre Woodard. In 2012, the Seattle Repertory Theatre premiered her play Pullman Porter Blues. In 2017, the Pasadena Playhouse premiered her play Shout Sister Shout! Awards Before It Hits Home Susan Smith Blackburn Prize Co-winner, 1990, AUDELCO Award for Outstanding Play, 1991, Helen Hayes Charles McArthur Award Winner, Outstanding New Play, 1992 Jar the Floor, Beverly Hills/Hollywood NAACP Best Play, 1995 Works Plays Before It Hits Home - 1991 Puddin 'n Pete – 1993 Holiday Heart – 1994 Play On! – 1997 Birdie Blue – 2005 Rejoice Addy: An American Girl Story Blues to the Bone Elocutia Does Pygmalion Pullman Porter Blues - 2012 Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy Squeeze, Hold Release Basketcases Mwindo Akeelah and the Bee Shout Sister Shout! – 2017 Lady Jazz Last Stop on Market Street The Watsons Go to Birmingham Fannie - 2019 Something Happened in Our Town - 2022 Teleplays Diary of a Single Mom (1 episode, 2009) Life Raft (2009) TV episode (writer) Glitter (2001) (story) Holiday Heart (2000) (TV) (teleplay) Play On! (2000) (TV) (writer) References External links University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni 20th-century American dramatists and playwrights Writers from Chicago Living people 1965 births African-American dramatists and playwrights American women dramatists and playwrights 20th-century American women writers 20th-century African-American women writers 20th-century African-American writers 21st-century African-American people 21st-century African-American women