LA-based playwright & screenwriter Donald Jolly is a recent graduate of the inaugural class of the Writers Guild Foundation – Writers Access Support Staff Training Program, but a not-so-recent graduate of Dartmouth (1st-generation college grad) and USC School of Dramatic Arts (MFA, Dramatic Writing). Jolly’s character-driven dramas & dramedies about LGBTQ+ people of color draw inspiration from his youth as a queer child of divorce in inner-city DC during the Chocolate City days — a child raised in the world of the Black Church and respectability politics but saved by the soul-stirring styles and talents of Tina Turner, the yellowing pages of outdated World Book Encyclopedias, and Dorothy and her friends easin’ on down the road in the merry old land of Oz.

Before sashaying over to TV writing, Jolly first shantay-ed onto the LA theatre scene with the 2011 world premiere of his play bonded at Playwrights’ Arena/The Los Angeles Theatre Center (LATC). This historical drama — about same-sex romance in the antebellum South — won the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation Playwriting Competition for LGBT Historical Plays, and was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Los Angeles Theatre and a LA Stage Alliance Ovation Award for Best Playwriting. After that, the Watts Village Theatre Company commissioned Jolly to write Riot/Rebellion. The 2015 immersive ensemble-driven docudrama about the 1965 civil unrest in LA’s Watts neighborhood earned a “GO!” in LA Weekly. In 2018, D’s play Baby Eyes premiered at Playwrights’ Arena at Atwater Village Theatre (Top 10 Recommendation by Stage Raw). Jolly’s plays have also been developed at The Warehouse Theatre, Celebration Theatre, The Vagrancy, EST/LA, and Company of Angels. Jolly is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild of America, an Associate Artist with Playwrights’ Arena, an alum of Center Theatre Group’s L.A. Writers Workshop, and an alum of the Geffen Playhouse Writers’ Room. D’s pronouns are he/him/his or they/them/theirs or D/D’em/D’s.

Donald is excited to begin a career in the world of episodic drama and hopes to get repped and staffed in the not-too-distant future. For Donald’s latest happenings, visit d-jolly.net or follow @JollyDramatist on Twitter.