Katori Hall

Katori Hall (born May 10, 1981) is an American playwright and screenwriter from Memphis, Tennessee. Hall's best known works include the hit television series P-Valley, the Tony-nominated Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, and plays such as Hurt Village, Our Lady of Kibeho, Children of Killers, The Mountaintop, and The Hot Wing King, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Early life and education Hall's parents moved the family from Raleigh, North Carolina, to a predominantly white neighborhood in Memphis, Tennessee, when she was five years old. As a student, she was a resident of John Jay Hall. Eventually she switched majors because she felt the faculty and students were inhospitable to her perspective and writing. In the program she workshopped the script for The Mountaintop. Hall took the play to London after she was unable to secure a venue in the United States. Theater critic Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph gave the production five stars and hailed it a "triumph". The Mountaintop won the 2010 Olivier Award for Best New Play, making Hall the first Black woman to achieve this accolade. In January 2011 during the extension of the show, lead producers Jean Doumanian and Sonia Friedman announced that The Mountaintop had recouped its entire capitalization of $3.1 million.

In October 2011, Hall, along with Annie Baker, Will Eno, Kenneth Lonergan and Regina Taylor, was among the playwrights chosen for the Pershing Square Signature Theatre's Residency Five initiative in New York, which guarantees each writer three full world-premiere productions over a five-year residency.

2012–2015: Hurt Village, Hoodoo Love, and Our Lady of Kibeho Hall's play Hurt Village, a drama about life and change in a Memphis housing project, premiered in 2012 off-Broadway at Signature Theatre Company as part of the theatre's inaugural season. The play, which won the 2011 Susan Smith Blackburn Award, was presented with support from the 2011 Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award from TCG. The play starred Tony Award winner Tonya Pinkins, as well as Marsha Stephanie Blake, Ron Cephas Jones, Saycon Sengbloh, Lloyd Watts, Charlie Hudson III, Nicholas Christopher, Corey Hawkins and Joaquina Kalukango. In 2014 it was announced that Hall will make her feature film directorial debut with an adaptation of Hurt Village. Hoodoo Love premiered at Cherry Lane Theatre in 2013.

In November 2014, Our Lady of Kibeho, the second play of Hall's residency at the Pershing Square Signature Theatre, had its world premiere in The Irene Diamond Stage at The Pershing Square Signature Center, directed by Michael Greif. In Our Lady of Kibeho, Hall tells the story of a real-life incident of 1981, when a group of Rwandan schoolgirls claimed to see a vision of the Virgin Mary.

Hall's play Pussy Valley was staged at Mixed Blood Theatre in 2015. The play's first reading, about the goings-on of a strip club in Mississippi, took place in 2009.

Other plays by Hall include Remembrance, Children of Killers, Whaddabloodclot!!!, Pussy Valley, and The Hot Wing King, many of which are set in Memphis. Her work has been noted for "an earthiness, a humour, a female vision and a luxuriant language that feels distinctly her own."

Hall's play The Blood Quilt opened at Lincoln Center on November 21, 2024 after three weeks of previews.

Personal life Hall is married to Alan Tumusiime, a video editor and photographer.

Awards and nominations Theatre

Her awards include a Laurence Olivier Award Susan Smith Blackburn Award, Lark Play Development Center Playwrights of New York (PONY) Fellowship, Kate Neal Kinley Fellowship, two Lecompte du Nouy Prizes from Lincoln Center, Fellowship of Southern Writers Bryan Family Award in Drama, Fellowship, and the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award. Hall was shortlisted for the London Evening Standard Most Promising Playwright Award and received the Otis Guernsey New Voices Playwriting Award from the William Inge Theatre Festival. She is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

Hall was awarded the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play The Hot Wing King. In 2023, she received the University Medal for Excellence from Columbia University.

Hall has been a book reviewer, journalist, and essayist for publications such as The Boston Globe, Essence, Newsweek and The New York Times. She has been a Kennedy Center Playwriting Fellow at the O’Neill.

Film and television +AwardYearCategoryNominee(s)WorkResult Gotham Independent Film Awards 2020 Breakthrough Series – Long Form Katori Hall, Dante Di Loreto, Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping and Liz W. Garcia P-Valley Hollywood Music in Media Awards 2021 Best Main Title Theme – TV Show/Limited Series Jucee Froot and Katori Hall NAACP Image Awards 2021 Outstanding Breakthrough Creative (Television) Katori Hall Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series Katori Hall (for "Perpetratin")