Lisa Langford

Lisa Langford

Lisa Langford earned a B.A. from Harvard University. She studied acting at The Juilliard School and completed her theatre training at The American Repertory Theater Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard.
After working with Dr. Maya Angelou to develop Dr. Angelou’s line of social expressions, “Life Mosaics,” she received her M.F.A. in play-writing from Cleveland State University. Her play,...
Lisa Langford earned a B.A. from Harvard University. She studied acting at The Juilliard School and completed her theatre training at The American Repertory Theater Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard.
After working with Dr. Maya Angelou to develop Dr. Angelou’s line of social expressions, “Life Mosaics,” she received her M.F.A. in play-writing from Cleveland State University. Her play, Rastus and Hattie, received a Joyce Award (w/ Cleveland Public Theatre) and was a 2019 finalist for the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center National Playwrights Conference and the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Her play, The Art of Longing, was a finalist for the Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Performance Writers. Her ten-minute play, The Bomb, about the Black Lives Matter movement, is published in the anthology, Black Lives, Black Words. She is an Artistic Associate of Black Lives Black Words and a member of Dobama Theatre’s Playwrights’ Gym in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

Plays

  • Rastus and Hattie
    Needra and Marlene enjoy a perfect post-racial friendship until two problematic Black robots (and a glitch in the time-space continuum) make them confront their ideas about race and the value of the past.
  • The Bomb A 10-minute Play
    Two ex-lovers run into each other while at a Black Lives Matter protest.
  • The Art of Longing
    The Art of Longing fashions a world where dreams and reality interpenetrate each other. The play follows the lives of six “third-shift” people—those who guard and take care while the rest of us sleep. The characters’ secrets mask deeply held yearnings that manifest in fantastical abilities and anatomical switch-ups. Race, gender and the nature of art are at the focal point of this piece.
  • How Blood Go
    Racism is literally killing Black people. Studies have shown that racial disparities in health care lead to higher mortality rates for African Americans than their white counterparts. How Blood Go asks what would you be willing to give up to be treated fairly: your consent, your compassion, or even your color?

    How Blood Go weaves the present and past together to explore the strained...
    Racism is literally killing Black people. Studies have shown that racial disparities in health care lead to higher mortality rates for African Americans than their white counterparts. How Blood Go asks what would you be willing to give up to be treated fairly: your consent, your compassion, or even your color?

    How Blood Go weaves the present and past together to explore the strained relationship between the medicine and African Americans in this country. Just when Quinntasia is ready to take her wellness program, Quinntessentials, to market, she learns that her healthy body is not the product of her hard work, but of a futuristic experimental device, activated without her consent, that makes her appear White to doctors and nurses. She must decide if she’s willing to give up her Blackness to make her dream come true. Meanwhile, Bean and his brother, Ace, experience unethical medical treatment in the American South (the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment 1930-1970).