about the playwright

Lisa B. Thompson is an award winning theatre artist and scholar whose critically acclaimed plays exploring issues of race, class, sexuality and gender have been produced across the United States and internationally. Recently in Austin, her play Underground received its world premiere at The VORTEX and won the 2017 Austin Critics Table David Mark Cohen New Play Award. Thompson’s other plays include The Mamalogues, Dinner, Single Black Female (nominee for the 2005 LA Weekly Theatre Award for best comedy), and Dreadtime Stories: One Sista’s Hair (Inner City Cultural Center Talent Festival Finalist). She is Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies and affiliate faculty in the departments of English, Women and Gender Studies and Theatre and Dance at the University of Texas at Austin. This year, Thompson was honored with a Texas 10 Award, given annually to UT’s most inspiring professors by the Alcalde magazine.