Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jarrett King. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Jarrett, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

I’ve always had a creative spirit. But like many creative professionals, I had to move through that notion that the world puts out there, that a creative career can never be anything more than a daydream. After undergrad, I worked at a tech company, making tech company money (which was a lot for a new grad!) and very much trying to make sense of the chaos that comes with the “real world”. After a couple of years, I was let go from that well-paying tech job and had to figure out a new direction. It was around that time that I signed with an acting agency and booked my first paid acting job. As much as I would encourage a young creative soul to seek internal validation, making that first acting buck was evidence that my efforts were paying off. Since shifting my focus to playwriting over the last six years or so, I’ve found myself in a similar position as I was when I was an emerging actor. And now, the validation has looked very different. Now my focus is on staying true to my personal mission and creating work that excites me.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m a playwright and educator based in Chicago. I see these two parts of my identity as deeply intertwined. Both are rooted in storytelling as a way to sow human connection and empathy, and both have shaped my values significantly. As a playwright, I’ve written five commissions for theatres, including Goodman Theatre, Definition Theatre, and Penfold Theatre. My work has been nationally produced and workshopped, with three professional productions of my plays A War of the Worlds (an afro-futurist reimagining of the War of the Worlds radio broadcast from 1938) and Box (a play with magic about Henry Box Brown, who escaped slavery by mailing himself to freedom in a wooden crate). I was recognized with the Katherine Owens/Undermain Fund for New Work by Undermain Theatre in 2023, an annual award of $10,000 given to a single playwright. As an educator, I’ve worked as a Teaching Artist at several Chicago institutions, including Steppenwolf Theatre, Silk Road Rising, and Chicago Shakespeare Theater, and as an Adjunct Professor at Loyola University. I’m the Director of Education at Court Theatre, which received the 2022 Regional Theatre Tony Award, where I oversee all educational operations of the organization. My department runs residencies in five schools on the incredible South Side of Chicago, hosts a student matinee series for our onstage productions, and produces a Learning Guide for every show in our season. Last year, I created a new program called Dramatic Literacy: Unlocking Text-Based Play, which is a week-long workshop in which classroom teachers explore art integration, social emotional learning, and gaming as classroom tools. Recently, I joined the Board of Directors at the Beverly Arts Center, a multidisciplinary arts hub that has been building community through art and education on Chicago’s South Side since 1967. As a resident of the Beverly neighborhood, I’ve enjoyed this hyperlocal opportunity to employ my skills as an artist, educator, and administrator.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Something that has served my creative journey immeasurably is my personal mission statement. Back in 2016, I was living in Austin, Texas, my hometown, and feeling creatively stuck. Even though I was experiencing a career high at the time—I’d joined the actors’ union, was in a successful improv troupe, and had co-written a musical—I felt that I’d reached a plateau. I often described the feeling as like a balloon bouncing against the ceiling, trying to find the sky. I worked at a university at the time, and during spring break, I rented a cabin in the Texas hill country and spent three days working on a personal mission statement. Through journaling, meditation, and some much needed peace and quiet I emerged with a deeper understanding of my values and a recalibrated creative compass. My thought behind developing a personal mission statement was to achieve what any company, organization, or non-profit achieves through their mission statement: a principle that guides every aspect of my business. And, of course, creative pursuits are businesses. And, honestly, one of the unexpected benefits of my mission statement was a reason to say “No.” “No, that project won’t work for me; it doesn’t align with my mission.” “No, I won’t be participating. It’s not you, I just need time to focus in on my mission.” As a recovering people-pleaser, this tool was, and has been, incredibly useful.

So, what’s my mission? It’s undergone several revisions, and will always continue to be revised, but as it stands now: My mission is to awaken the hungry human spirits of those in need of artistic contact, particularly young people, with courage and empathy. It’s that simple, and that complex. One sentence that contains within it my values, my duty, and who I’m called to serve. As a playwright, as an educator, this mission covers both bases. After writing that mission statement, within nine months I’d moved to Chicago, and found the sky.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

There are certainly parts of being an artist that are tedious, that you have to push through. But keeping the long-term vision in my sights helps give me the fuel to send that annoying email, or scan yet another W-9 form. When writing a play, certainly it’s rewarding to make it through the arduous journey of creating a whole world from start to “finish” (when is a play ever truly finished?). But an unexpected aspect of the creative process that I find so rewarding is the fact that when my play is performed it creates community. A community of designers, actors, crew, and, for a night, an audience full of strangers. As an actor, I’ve certainly experienced the closeness and camaraderie that working on a play brings, and have met lifelong friends and collaborators through plays I’ve worked on. It brings me so much joy to know and to see that actors, directors, producers, and designers working on my plays have formed bonds that last beyond the production. And I love that my work—and, yes, all the tedium that comes along with it—provides a space for audience members to be in a room together, experiencing each other in an exercise of empathy, which theatre in many ways is. Perhaps a couple strangers become friends and exchange numbers in the auditorium of one of my plays. Maybe someone meets their true love waiting in the concessions line. A story I created, often through great frustration and toil, creates a series of other stories that I’ll never know. That possibility excites and motivates me.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://iamjarrettking.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/mrjarrettking

Image Credits

Ollie Photography
Davon Clark
Paul Semrad
Kimberley Mead
League of Chicago Theatres