Cheryl L. Davis received the Ed Kleban Award for her work as a musical theater librettist, and her musical Barnstormer, written with composer Douglas J. Cohen, received a Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation Award under the auspices of the Lark Play Development Center. Her play Maid’s Door (Billie Holiday Theatre) received seven Audelco Awards, and was presented at the 2015 and 2017 National Black Theatre Festivals; it was also a finalist for the Francesca Primus Prize. Her musical Bridges (Berkeley Playhouse) was a finalist for the 2018 Richard Rodgers Award. Don’t Stay Safe (Prospect Theater Company), the short film musical based on Bridges, was nominated for a Drama Desk Award and screened and won awards in several film festivals. She was a Resident Playwright at the 2023 New Harmony Project.
She is the co-librettist on the Canadian-based Volcano Theatre Company’s adaptation of Scott Joplin’s opera Treemonisha, which received its world premiere (and great reviews) in Toronto in June 2023; plans are in process to bring the show to the USA. She is currently writing the book for the musicals Jed, with music and lyrics by David B. Wohl, Samantha Single-Handed, with music and lyrics by Aaron Gandy and Noah Racey, and is writing book and lyrics for a yet unnamed musical about a famous African American woman pianist and activist with Broadway composer Barbara J. Anselmi.
Cheryl received Writers’ Guild Awards for her work on the daytime dramatic serials As the World Turns and Days of Our Lives, and was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for her work on both shows. She has written for Law & Order: SVU on a freelance basis, and her episode “Garland’s Baptism by Fire” aired on April 2, 2020. Her short play Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep streamed as part of #WhileWeBreathe, and received a write-up in The New York Times. Her play Swimming Uptown has received developmental readings at the Lark Play Development Center and the Classical Theater of Harlem, and she worked on the TV pilot based on that play as the Maven Screen Media Fellow at Stowe Story Lab in 2021.
Cheryl’s play about the desegregation of the nation’s school system, The Color of Justice (Theatreworks/USA), received excellent reviews in The New York Times and Daily News, and toured for a number of years. Her play Winnie the Pooh KIDS (Disney Theatrical Group) is currently being licensed . She has written commissions for the Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science and Technology Project, the Red Mountain Theatre Company and the Birmingham Children’s Theatre.
Cheryl is an alumna of the Advanced Workshop of the BMI/Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild and a Board member of the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund. She is a practicing attorney in Manhattan and is the General Counsel for the Authors Guild.
CONTACT: cldnyc@cs.com