James Anthony Tyler is the recipient of the 3rd Annual Horton Foote Playwriting Award, an inaugural playwright to receive a commission from Audible, and a 2016 Theatre Masters Visionary Playwrights Award recipient. His plays include Some Old Black Man (Berkshire Playwrights Lab at St. James Place and 59E59 Theaters, and a University Musical Society filmed production), All We Need Is Us (Keen Company, currently streaming on all podcast platforms) hop thA A (Currently streaming on Audible), Artney Jackson (World Premiere at Williamstown Theatre Festival, 2018 Edgerton Foundation New Play Award), and Dolphins and Sharks (LAByrinth Theater Company and Finborough Theatre in London). He’s a 2018 and 2021 MacDowell Fellow, a 2021 Hermitage Artist Resident, a 2018 Djerassi Fellow, 2018-2019 Amoralists Wright Club Playwright, 2017-2018 Nashville Rep Ingram New Works Playwright, 2016-2017 Ars Nova Play Group Resident, 2016 Working Farm Playwrights Group Resident at SPACE on Ryder Farm, 2015-2016 Playwrights’ Center’s Many Voices Fellow, 2014-2015 Dramatists Guild Fellow, and he was a member of Harlem’s Emerging Black Playwrights Group.
At MacDowell, he worked on a play titled The U-N-O Competitor, a commission for the L.A.-based theater Circle X. The play is about a group of people with financial hardships who are so desperate for money that they put their lives on the line for a medical experiment.
Tyler has an M.F.A. in film from Howard University and an M.F.A. in dramatic writing from New York University. He is also a graduate of The Juilliard School's Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program, and he was the staff writer for the OWN Network show “Cherish the Day” created by Ava DuVernay. Currently he is in the writers room for a new Apple Drama Series starring a two-time Academy Award nominated actress.
