Kirsten J. Childs is an American playwright, librettist, and former
actress.Childs was born in Los Angeles, California. Her parents were
schoolteachers. Her younger brother is the jazz musician Billy Childs.
She began her theatrical career in the late 1970s as a Broadway
performer, when Bob Fosse cast her in a production of Chicago. She
went on to appear in productions of Dancin', Jerry's Girls, and Sweet
Charity in the 1980s. Primarily a stage actress, her one major film
role was the 1989 comedy See No Evil, Hear No Evil, in which she
played the long-suffering sister of Richard Pryor's character.Childs
subsequently turned to writing her own theatrical productions,
beginning with the semi-autobiographical work The Bubbly Black Girl
Sheds Her Chameleon Skin (2000), an off-Broadway musical which
received an Obie Award. Her other musicals include Miracle Brothers
(2005), Funked Up Fairy Tales (2007), and Bella: An American Tall Tale
(2016), a winner of the Weston Playhouse New Musical Award.Childs has
also served as an assistant professor in New York University Tisch
School of the Arts' Graduate Musical Theatre Writing program.
actress.Childs was born in Los Angeles, California. Her parents were
schoolteachers. Her younger brother is the jazz musician Billy Childs.
She began her theatrical career in the late 1970s as a Broadway
performer, when Bob Fosse cast her in a production of Chicago. She
went on to appear in productions of Dancin', Jerry's Girls, and Sweet
Charity in the 1980s. Primarily a stage actress, her one major film
role was the 1989 comedy See No Evil, Hear No Evil, in which she
played the long-suffering sister of Richard Pryor's character.Childs
subsequently turned to writing her own theatrical productions,
beginning with the semi-autobiographical work The Bubbly Black Girl
Sheds Her Chameleon Skin (2000), an off-Broadway musical which
received an Obie Award. Her other musicals include Miracle Brothers
(2005), Funked Up Fairy Tales (2007), and Bella: An American Tall Tale
(2016), a winner of the Weston Playhouse New Musical Award.Childs has
also served as an assistant professor in New York University Tisch
School of the Arts' Graduate Musical Theatre Writing program.
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