Khari Wyatt

Khari Wyatt

Khari Wyatt has written for theatre, television, and various journalistic publications such as the National Urban Leagues “Opportunity Journal”. His work has placed in various competitions including, Disney/ABC Writers Fellowship, Sony Pictures Entertainment Diversity Writers Program, AMC One-Hour Drama competition, Austin Film Festival Screenplay Competition, and Writer’s-for-Writer’s Diversity Fellowship...
Khari Wyatt has written for theatre, television, and various journalistic publications such as the National Urban Leagues “Opportunity Journal”. His work has placed in various competitions including, Disney/ABC Writers Fellowship, Sony Pictures Entertainment Diversity Writers Program, AMC One-Hour Drama competition, Austin Film Festival Screenplay Competition, and Writer’s-for-Writer’s Diversity Fellowship among others. Some of the fellowships and grants he has received came from the MacDowell Colony, the Guy Hanks/Marvin Miller Screenwriting Program, and the Panavision New Filmmaker Equipment Grant.

He was recently selected to develop his new play, Starchild, in the Circle X Theatre Company's Evolving Playwrights Group. He was one of eleven writers of #While We Breathe: A Night of Creative Protest, a streaming theatrical event produced by Brian Moreland and Arvind Ethan David. His audio play, “Zip Code 90011 South Central Los Angeles: Speakeasy,” was commissioned and will be produced by Antaeus Theatre Company in fall 2020. Moving Arts, Chalk Repertory Theatre as well as the DC Black Theatre Festival have hosted his plays for readings and workshops. His play “Some Type of Ecstasy” was a semifinalist for the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference. His ten-minute play, “Ingredients,” was presented as part of the Moving Arts- Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s special, membership only night. He currently is a writer for Moving Arts’ web series, “Isolation Inn” being aired on YouTube in fall 2020.

Wyatt is an alumnus of Howard University, earned an MFA in Film from Columbia University in the City of New York, and also completed the Summer Legal Institute at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. He is member of Antaeus Theatre Company Playwrights Lab, Moving Arts, and the Playwrights Union.

Plays

  • Some Type of Ecstasy by Khari Wyatt
    Cast: 
    8
    ·
    Genre: drama
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    Keyword: Race, poverty + 3 more
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: Race, poverty, Plasma, Marginlization, blood
    The meaning of family is on trial after a business deal gone wrong threatens the solvency of a multi-cultural, multi-generational band of donors at a California plasma center as they wrestle with haunting pasts, the hard-scrabble present and uncertain futures.
  • Neon Boogie by Khari Wyatt
    Recommendations: 2
    ·
    Cast: 
    6–7
    ·
    Genre: drama, period + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: 1970s, music + 7 more
    Genre: drama, period, political
    Keyword: 1970s, music, Black liberation, prison, gender, Policing, civil rights, grief, Relationships
    1970. The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. has birthed the rise of Black revolutionaries. The National Organization for Women is poking the conscience of the patriarchy. The Beatles break-up, and Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin die tragically weeks apart. 28-year-old Neon June, the bold, calculating songstress, is on the hunt to get her career back on track after being derailed by a stint in prison....
    1970. The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. has birthed the rise of Black revolutionaries. The National Organization for Women is poking the conscience of the patriarchy. The Beatles break-up, and Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin die tragically weeks apart. 28-year-old Neon June, the bold, calculating songstress, is on the hunt to get her career back on track after being derailed by a stint in prison.

    Neon, the daughter of a slain civil rights activist, runs up against the racial and sexual climate of the times. A woman who wants to write and produce her own L.P.? That’s crazy talk. Ava, Neon’s manager, cautions her to get past her difficult reputation before turning the industry off with demands. Even Neon’s fiancé, Lawrence, a musician and Vietnam veteran, is doubtful. But Neon has a plan: she’ll start her own record company, write and produce her record, and declare to the world she’s bigger than it wants to allow her to be.

    However, like all plans, Neon’s is tinted with risk. Traumatized by her prison life, haunted by her family legacy, tortured by the boxes society designed for her, is Neon ready to pay the cost of independence?
  • Love Against the Sun by Khari Wyatt
    Cast: 
    4
    ·
    Genre: drama
    ·
    Keyword: drama, ensemble + 2 more
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: drama, ensemble, Black relationships, marriage
    Friends wrestle with demons and uncover secrets at the wake of a friend.
  • Ingredients by Khari Wyatt
    Cast: 
    2
    ·
    Genre: drama
    ·
    Keyword: art, self-realization + 3 more
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: art, self-realization, blackmen, mechanics, Chinese Robes
    Two, Black auto-mechanics, delve into their identities and what makes a man on a visit to an art gallery exhibit.
  • Zip Code 90011: South Central Los Angeles - Speakeasy by Khari Wyatt
    Recommendations: 1
    ·
    Cast: 
    3–4
    ·
    Genre: drama, period + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: 1950s, civil rights + 3 more
    Genre: drama, period, radio drama
    Keyword: 1950s, civil rights, marriage, Awakening, Night-Life
    In 1956 Leon Ivy returns home from a sojourn in Paris with a finished novel, a publisher, and big plans for his future — but times have changed along Central Avenue and his wife Bird and her new business partner, Daddy August, have enacted secret plans of their own. What are the costs of leaving home and what is the price of fighting for what you believe in?