Jeanette Harrison

Actor, Director

Jeanette Harrison (she/her) is a director, actor, writer, and producer who in 2004 co-founded the award-winning AlterTheater in the San Francisco Bay Area. At AlterTheater, she architected the ground-breaking AlterLab playwright residency program. She has shepherded more than 25 new plays to world premiere productions. She directed AlterTheater’s world premiere of AlterLab commission Landless by Larissa FastHorse (USA Pen Literary Award in Drama), and the multi-Theatre Bay Area award-winning production The Amen Corner by James Baldwin. She also co-directed (with Ann Brebner) AlterLab-developed The River Bride by Marisela Treviño Orta, which went on to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s 2016 mainstage season. With AlterTheater she appeared onstage in Fool for Love (directed by the original Old Man, Will Marchetti), After the Fall, Owners, Intimate Apparel, References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot, and in the Bay Area premieres of Sex Parasite, Two Sisters and a Piano, and in the world premieres of Thirst, and A Man, his Wife, and his Hat (one of two finalists for the USA Pen Literary Award in Drama, now published by Samuel French as The Hatmaker’s Wife). She has worked in casting, theater education, and worked onstage, on-camera and off-camera in both the non-profit and commercial entertainment industry. She has worked with Native Voices at the Autry, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Cutting Ball Theatre (…and Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi by Marcus Gardley, winner of Best Production and Best Ensemble from the Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle), Berkeley Rep, Aurora Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, Magic Theatre, Theatre Rhino, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, Actors Theatre of Sonoma County, Sonoma County Rep, Golden Thread Productions, Woman’s Will, Playhouse West, and Combined Art Form Entertainment (C.A.F.E.), among others. She has taught at the University of Southern California’s School of Dramatic Arts, Santa Clara University, and College of Marin. She has written two television pilots about family and cultural identity, Little Drummer Girl, developed in Native American Media Alliance’s inaugural Animation Lab, and Feathers And Dots, Dots And Feathers (with Sharmila Devar), which received developmental support from the LA SkinsFest’s Native Writers Group in partnership with CBS. She also directed the upcoming feature film Snag by Tara Moses.