Dahlak Brathwaite is an award-winning dramatic auteur: playwright, composer, performer, director, and filmmaker. His work has been presented at The Wallis, BAM, The Kennedy Center, REDCAT, MCA Chicago, The Public Theater, The Apollo, and on HBO’s Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry. Brathwaite's trilogy of works - Spiritrials (solo play), Try/Step/Trip (musical), Adapting History (documentary film) - have been developed through the support of CalArts, A.C.T., Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and Montalvo Arts Center. Brathwaite is a Princess Grace Awardee. He has received awards from NEFA, the Doris Duke Foundation, MAP Fund, California Arts Council, and Creative Capital. His musical adaptation of Jason Reynolds’ Long Way Down was hailed by the Washington Post as “bracing and moving and funny and even fun..." and won the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding New Play or Musical. Brathwaite is a graduate of NYU’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program, where he was awarded the Dean’s Full-Tuition Fellowship, and served as the Assistant Director for the national tour of the Tony-winning revival of Oklahoma. He has been a visiting professor at UC Davis, taught workshops internationally as a two-time fellow of the U.S. State Department, and is currently part-time faculty at Berklee College of Music.
At MacDowell, Brathwaite wrote a new draft of his upcoming play, COMMERCIAL. The play won the 2025 Creative Capital Award, the 2025 Princess Grace Special Projects Award, and the 2025 NEFA Artist Development Award. Recently, Brathwaite was nominated for three Drama Desk Awards for his musical Try/Step/Trip.
