Playwright & Librettist
The Work
Joi Danielle Price is a playwright and librettist whose work is well-suited for theatres shepherding the future of plays and musicals, imaginative producers, and institutions seeking innovative and inclusive storytelling.
Musical Projects
Past, Present, Future
The Raven Project
Raven Wilkinson was the first female African-American ballet dancer credited with dancing for a major ballet company in the United States. RAVEN is a play with classical and contemporary dance, that places events of a Black dancer’s life alongside the rise of the civil rights movement. and depicts the racial unrest that disrupted her career.
The play uses dance that at times communicates Raven’s emotional life, her professional life, and reveals the world she inhabits. Raven’s intense desire to dance in the predominantly white ballet world forces her to reckon with her identity as a Black woman, her need to embrace life as an artist, and the racial turmoil of the country she loves.
Will she be beaten down by her circumstances? Or will she finally seize the career highs worthy of her talent?
After reaching out to Raven Wilkinson by mail, Joi shared a series of phone interviews with Ms. Wilkinson and is writing to fulfill a promise she made to this remarkable dancer to share her story on a wider stage.
The piece received a reading at Room 16 Theatre Arts in 2020 and was a finalist for the Jerome Robbins Foundation Springboard Residency in that same year.
Joi is currently collaborating on The Raven Project with two incredible artists, choreographer Tiffany Rea-Fisher and composer Jordyn Davis.
Concept and Librettist
All-American Girl
Three incredible Black women played professional baseball in the Negro Leagues of the 1940's and 1950's. One of them, though a uniquely talented and versatile pitcher, was turned away from tryouts for the All-American Girls' league you know from the movie A League Of Their Own.
That pitcher was Mamie "Peanut" Johnson, who went on to make her way on a team of men with her fierce arm. How did she fight past all of the no's to make her career possible? How did she choose baseball, or rather, how did baseball choose her?
A ten-minute play based on Mamie's inspiring and heartbreaking attempt to try out for the famous all-female league was performed at Mile Square Theatre in 2022 as part of their 7th Inning Stretch - a production of short plays the involve baseball, the sport the theatre's hometown of Hoboken holds dear.
Joi is currently developing a full-length play based on Ms. Johnson's experiences.
Playwright
Librettist and LyricistValedictorian (In Development)
Based on N. K. Jemisin’s acclaimed speculative short story that appears in Jemisin’s anthology How Long ‘til Black Future Month?, Valedictorian is set in a tightly controlled future society where achievement comes with a disturbing price.
As the brightest students rise to the top, they begin to discover that success may lead not to freedom, but to a fate they never imagined.
Adapted as a new musical by Joi Danielle Price (libretto and lyrics) and Dillon Feldman, Valedictorian explores ambition, conformity, identity, and the courage it takes to question a system designed to reward obedience.