A proud native New Yorker, Sharon Washington is celebrating over 35 years as a working actress and her new journey as a writer.
Her first play play, Feeding the Dragon, centers on her childhood growing up living inside a branch of the New York Public Library where her father was the custodian. Following productions at City Theatre and Hartford Stage, at Primary Stages it was nominated for Outer Critics Circle, Lucille Lortel and Audelco Awards. As an audio play, Feeding the Dragon was selected as an Audible Theater Top 100 pick and has been optioned for development into a live-action/animated YA series. She is currently working on the children's picture book version for Scholastic.
Washington was Primary Stages 2017-18 Tow Foundation Playwright-in-Residence. She was nominated for a 2023 Tony Award for co-writing the book of the musical New York, New York.
While at MacDowell, Washington dove deeper into her primary source research for her new two-act play, A Colored Mirror, based on actual events that happened April-July 1917 in New York City. She completed several scenes and is working towards a complete first draft. The project was awarded a 2024-2025 Princeton University Library Research Grant. One of her protagonists is poet and playwright Ridgely Torrence, an 11-time artist-in-residence at MacDowell – a detail she discovered during her residency.
Portrait by Tess Steinkolk
