2016–2019: Early work and Slave Play Harris landed a role in the play
Jon at the
Steppenwolf Theatre Company. He worked as an actor in Chicago, then moved to Los Angeles to further his career. There he began a collaboration with musician
Isabella Summers that resulted in the play
Xander Xyst, Dragon 1; the play was produced at ANT Fest 2017 in New York. He had a residency at the
MacDowell Colony, where he wrote the play
"Daddy", in which a young black artist (Franklin) becomes involved with an older European art collector (Andre).
"Daddy" served as Harris's writing sample when he applied to the
Yale School of Drama, where he began studies in the fall of 2016. and won the
Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award and the
Rosa Parks Playwriting Award at the 2018
American College Theatre Festival.
Slave Play was then produced
off-Broadway at the
New York Theatre Workshop under the direction of
Robert O'Hara in 2018, Harris's first professional production as playwright. The play addresses sexuality and
racial trauma in America. It begins with interracial
sexual violence on a
slave plantation in the American South and continues in present-day America at a
sex therapy retreat for interracial couples. The couples include black participants who are no longer able to receive pleasure from their white partners. The white partners have a blind-spot about the role that race plays in their relationships. Critic
Jesse Green summarized the play's message by saying "that one race lives with history each day while another pretends not to". Though critically acclaimed, the play drew ire from those who found the play's content disrespectful of
African-American history. For the
74th Tony Awards,
Slave Play was nominated for a historic total of 12 awards. This broke the record previously set by the 2018 revival of
Angels in America for most nominations for a non-musical play. Harris was the winner of the 2018
Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, given by the
Vineyard Theatre in New York City. A profile in
The New York Times said that Harris's "ability to render subconscious trauma into provocative theatrical expression, as potentially unsettling as entertaining, has earned him a lot of attention in a very short time." In 2018, Harris was awarded the
Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, which includes a residency at the
off-Broadway Vineyard Theatre. In 2019,
The New Group and the
Vineyard Theatre co-produced a revised version of Harris's earlier play
"Daddy". starring
Alan Cumming.
New York Times reviewer
Ben Brantley noted some excellent performances, but found the dialogue "endless and circular and repetitive" and the play too "cerebral". Using
Ntozake Shange's term
choreopoem to describe its structure, Harris combines language and movement in a work that centers on five characters: San Francisco writer Gary Fisher,
Kathy Acker,
Yukio Mishima,
Samuel R. Delany, and Missouri college athlete Michael L. Johnson. It was directed by
Machel Ross.
2021–present: Career expansion In early 2020, Harris signed a deal with
HBO, and is developing a pilot as well as becoming a co-producer for season 2 of
Euphoria, after consulting on the first season. Later in 2020, he set $50,000 commissions for new stage work. Harris published a condensed version of his play
Yell: A Documentary of My Time Here in
n+1 magazine's Fall 2020 issue. Harris describes the full play as "a site-specific document of [his] time in the space of
Yale School of Drama". Harris is a co-author on the screenplay for the
A24 film
Zola (2021), directed by
Janicza Bravo. The film follows a road trip that results in
sex-trafficking, and is based on a real-life
Twitter thread. The film starred
Taylour Paige,
Riley Keough,
Nicholas Braun, and
Colman Domingo. The film earned positive reviews with Harris earning a nomination for the
Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay. Harris also acted in the
HBO Max series
Gossip Girl (2021), the
Netflix series
Emily in Paris (2022). Harris was cast in the
Sean Price Williams directed film
The Sweet East (2023) alongside
Ayo Edebiri. The film premiered at the
2023 Cannes Film Festival where it screened in the
Directors' Fortnight selection. == 'Black out' performances ==