Leelee Jackson

Leelee Jackson

Leelee Jackson (she/her/Leelee) is a playwright whose work centers post modern narratives of Black queer womxnhood. Her one act play Comb Your Hair (Or You'll Look Like a Slave) was honored as a John Cauable national finalist and performed in 2016 at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. Since then, COMB has received several productions and readings across the country. Her full length play...
Leelee Jackson (she/her/Leelee) is a playwright whose work centers post modern narratives of Black queer womxnhood. Her one act play Comb Your Hair (Or You'll Look Like a Slave) was honored as a John Cauable national finalist and performed in 2016 at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. Since then, COMB has received several productions and readings across the country. Her full length play The Shit Show: An American Allegory was honored at the 2019 Austin Film Festival where it was a national finalist and received a public reading. Currently, she is committed to building community amongst Black artists with Black Light Arts Collective (BLAC) a nonprofit she founded and currently serves as artistic director. Jackson is a Bay Area native and a 2019 MFA graduate of the University of California, Riverside.

Plays

  • Comb Your Hair (Or You'll Look Like a Slave) - Written for Zoom Platform by Leelee Jackson
    Cast: 
    2–13
    ·
    Genre: dark comedy, docudrama/historic + 1 more
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    Keyword: Black Womxn, Black diaspora + 4 more
    Genre: dark comedy, docudrama/historic, drama
    Keyword: Black Womxn, Black diaspora, Slave, Queen, Black Culture, hair
    COMB YOUR HAIR (OR YOU’LL LOOK LIKE A SLAVE) is a beautiful yet painful collection of 13 vignettes from young Black women navigating American society. Through scenes and monologues, COMB YOUR HAIR (OR YOU’LL LOOK LIKE A SLAVE) explores how Black women, regardless of their upbringing, skin tone, curl pattern, hair length and texture, contend with the tension between ownership of the self and others’ sense of...
    COMB YOUR HAIR (OR YOU’LL LOOK LIKE A SLAVE) is a beautiful yet painful collection of 13 vignettes from young Black women navigating American society. Through scenes and monologues, COMB YOUR HAIR (OR YOU’LL LOOK LIKE A SLAVE) explores how Black women, regardless of their upbringing, skin tone, curl pattern, hair length and texture, contend with the tension between ownership of the self and others’ sense of entitlement to their bodies. This version is written to fit an online format without the use of stage directions.
  • The Shit Show: An American Allegory by Leelee Jackson
    Cast: 
    8
    ·
    Genre: comedy
    ·
    Keyword: Black people, black actors + 7 more
    Genre: comedy
    Keyword: Black people, black actors, Stage Minstrelsy, American Racism, History, Negrophilia, dark comedy, aliens, outer space
    The Shit Show: An American Allegory is a reverse minstrel comedy, written about postmodern ideologies on slavery, blackness and negrophilia. When aliens Jane, John and Dill Doe are sent to America to be examples of perfect humans, their worlds are turned upside down once they discover a lust for something they've seen nor heard of of before: Black people.
  • Black God at the YMCA by Leelee Jackson
    Cast: 
    4
    ·
    Genre: comedy, musical
    ·
    Keyword: Transgender, transphobia + 3 more
    Genre: comedy, musical
    Keyword: Transgender, transphobia, blackmen, staged reading, human rights
    An original 10 minute musical, The Black God at the YMCA explores what happens when a young Black male's attraction to someone is imbedded in biasses and an unwillingness to see God for who they are. Playwright-composer-musician Leelee Jackson, an MFA student in UCR's creative writing program, uses music and comedy to comment on transphobia in which rest in the subconscious in some Black ideologies.
  • Comb Your Hair (Or You'll Look Like a Slave) by Leelee Jackson
    Recommendations: 2
    ·
    Cast: 
    4–14
    ·
    Genre: comedy, drama + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: Black Womxn, Queer Womxn + 6 more
    Genre: comedy, drama, immersive
    Keyword: Black Womxn, Queer Womxn, women, girls, justice, hair, slavery, blackness
    COMB YOUR HAIR (OR YOU’LL LOOK LIKE A SLAVE) is a beautiful yet painful collection of 13 vignettes from young Black women navigating American society. Through scenes and monologues, COMB YOUR HAIR (OR YOU’LL LOOK LIKE A SLAVE) explores how Black women, regardless of their upbringing, skin tone, curl pattern, hair length and texture, contend with the tension between ownership of the self and others’ sense of...
    COMB YOUR HAIR (OR YOU’LL LOOK LIKE A SLAVE) is a beautiful yet painful collection of 13 vignettes from young Black women navigating American society. Through scenes and monologues, COMB YOUR HAIR (OR YOU’LL LOOK LIKE A SLAVE) explores how Black women, regardless of their upbringing, skin tone, curl pattern, hair length and texture, contend with the tension between ownership of the self and others’ sense of entitlement to their bodies.