Sharai Bohannon is a playwright that has been produced in London, England and all over America. Her play IN THE END was highlighted on The Kilroy’s 2020 List and was Equity Library Theatre’s 2019 All Access Reading Series Finalist. Her play WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS? (THE AUDIENCE SERVICES PLAY) was a 2021 Bay Area Playwrights Festival Semi-Finalist. She is also the founder/co-producer of Punching LaBute, a festival that strikes back at sexism to raise money for charities that support femmes. Additionally, she is a film and pop culture critic for various online magazines including The Everygirl, Dread Central, and her own Medium page. She created and co-hosts the podcasts, A Nightmare on Fierce Street and Blerdy Massacre. On the podcasts she tackles horror films through a Black feminist lens. She also serves as the Director of Production for Rachel Lynett Theatre Company. She is managed by Empirical Evidence and currently resides in St Paul, Minnesota.
Artistic Statement
As a child I would write things because I simply wanted girls to go on adventures too. I hated that we were always Janine Melnitz (the receptionist) when we played Ghostbusters, or April (the reporter who gets kidnapped) when we played Ninja Turtles, and I was also bitter about the Power Rangers Pink and Yellow rangers because I hated both of those colors at the time. So I started making my own narratives based off of those franchises. This lead to me scribbling stories in a notebook (which was not the best filing system) and ultimately trying to write a “better” version of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie before scrapping it when I found out there would be a television series.
Now that I’m (arguably) an adult, I understand that the lack of representation that frustrated me is a much bigger issue than a lack of “girls” in stuff I enjoy. As I learned about intersectionality I realized not seeing black women in the media I consumed while growing up was part of the self-worth issues I’ll probably always struggle with. As I continued to evolve, so did my feminism and I began to realize that I don’t see most of my friends being represented in the media we love. My work strives to change that. I write women of color into comedies, science fiction, and roles that Scarlett Johanson feels ownership over. I write for non-binary folx so that they can come into a role written with them in mind. I write because representation matters and I’d rather do something about the severe lack of representation than stand around using buzzwords and making excuses as to why it’s supposedly “hard” to find folx from all of these ignored communities when I know we’ve all been here the whole time.