Korinn Annette Jefferies (b. 1996) has been writing plays since she was in second grade. The self proclaimed ‘drama queen’ currently works as a critic, educator, and independent researcher in North Carolina. Korinn archives the Black experience by way of dramatic criticism and dramaturgy, interrogating leisure, ritual, access, context, and caricature in depictions of Black life. Her research builds upon her extensive background in Musical Theatre performance and culminates in the form of plays, essays, syllabi, and poems that often evade traditional conventions in exchange for a more accessible, inclusive approach to artistry and engagement.
Korinn has facilitated both academic and artistic workshops at the Black Theatre Network Conference, the National Women’s Theatre Festival, and the International Black Theatre Festival. She was a 2021 Semi Finalist for the National Black Theatre’s I Am Soul Playwriting Residency and has been awarded two Artist Support Grants from the North Carolina Arts Council and the Arts Council of Greater Greensboro. Her plays have been featured internationally and locally as a part of the Piece of Mine Arts Black Women in Theatre Festival and the Dramatists Guild’s Footlights Series. In addition, she has hosted and appeared on panels with The New Group, PEN America, the Greensboro Center for Visual Artists, and Black Girls Love the Bard.
Korinn’s research led her to found The Black Drama School, where she has begun constructing a living database that exists as a curricular supplement to Black dramatic works. She is deeply interested in the dynamics and archetypes presented in depictions of the Black family, and Black theatrical legacies as a blueprint for access. A homecoming of sorts, she is also chronicling the curricular and financial history of the theatre department at her alma mater, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.
