Azure D Osborne-Lee

Azure D. Osborne-Lee (born September 1984) is an American playwright, educator, and theatre maker. His plays include Crooked Parts, which was published in The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays in 2021, and Mirrors, which premiered as part of Next Door at New York Theatre Workshop in 2020. Osborne-Lee is a faculty member at The New School's School of Drama. He is the founding producer of Roots and River Productions, a collective of queer and trans artists of color.

Early Life and Education Osborne-Lee grew up in Tennessee and Texas to scientist parents . His father is a chemical engineer . He began to perform at age 12, first acting as Squire Trelawney from Treasure Island. Osborne-Lee recalls being insistent on playing both male and female roles and knowing that theatre was their desired career early in life. They continued to act into adulthood, including in the performance piece "delta dandi" by Sharon Bridgforth at age 24. They moved from Texas to New York City in the summer of 2009 , and began to revise the play at Rising Circle Theater Collective's INKtank, a play development program for artists of color .

Osborne-Lee gained further recognition with his full length play Mirrors, a drama about Black queer women in 1960s Mississippi. Mirrors follows Alma Jean, a grieving teen who moves in with her deceased mother's ex-lover, the town pariah Bird Wilson. It contains themes of grief, trauma, and sustaining hope as a marginalized person . Mirrors won Parity Productions' 2018 Parity Development Award, allowing it to become Osborne-Lee's first full length work to receive a professional production .

Osborne-Lee's other full length plays include "Glass", "The Beasts of Warren", and "Red Rainbow" . In 2025, "Red Rainbow" was published in The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays Volume 2 . Further writing has been published in the Dramatists Guild of America and Beyond the Binary: Eight Works by Nonbinary Playwrights .

Educator Osborne-Lee previously taught as an adjunct professor at Quinnipiac University from 2021-2022. They have been an adjunct professor at New York University Tisch School of the Arts (See: Rolling pronouns).

Honors and Awards Osborne-Lee is a still standing Artist-in-Residence sponsored by Stonehenge NYC