Anya Pearson is an award-winning actress, playwright, poet, screenwriter, producer, and activist. She was the inaugural winner of the $10,000 Voice is a Muscle Grant from the Corporeal Voices Foundation run by best-selling author Lidia Yuknavitch. The award was given to a writer of color from Oregon who demonstrated exemplary merit (Made to Dance in Burning Buildings) and a passion for social justice. 

Made to Dance in Burning Buildings, is a fusion of poetry, theatre, and violent and visceral contemporary dance, which poses the question: how do we heal from trauma? Made to Dance in Burning Buildings played to a sold out house at Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater in April 2018 and received its World Premiere at Shaking The Tree Theatre February – March 2019, (Drammy Award for Best Choreography) where Anya was the Playwright-in-Residence for the 2018-2019 season.

Anya is working on a series of projects (in addition to Made to Dance) aimed at empowering other survivors of sexual violence (especially survivors of color), raising awareness around the lasting effects of PTSD and trauma, and fighting back against rape culture. They include: a collection of poetry, a TV show, a documentary, a memoir, and a guide to healing for survivors co-authored with a leading therapist. It is a huge part of her life’s mission as an artist, an activist, and a survivor to create a more just world for survivors of sexual violence, one in which they are allowed to thrive, not just fight for survival.

Anya received the $10,000 Problem Play Commission from Bag&Baggage Theatre to adapt Measure for Measure focused on unjust incarceration and its effect on black families. Her adaptation, The Measure of Innocence, premiered in March 2020, before being cancelled due to COVID-19. The Measure of Innocence made the 2020 Kilroys List, was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award for Drama, and won the Drammy Award for Best Original Script. She also received a $6,000 commission from Orphic to adapt Agamemnon with an African-American lens. Her adaptation: The Killing Fields, which explores the war on drugs and its effect on inner city communities was further developed at the Last Frontier Theatre Conference, Seven Devils New Play Foundry, Artists Repertory Theatre, the Great Plains Theatre Conference (2021). The Prequel to The Killing Fields, Without a Formal Declaration of War, was developed at Seven Devils New Play Foundry and JAW and is a Portland Center Stage commission.

Anya was a 2021-2022 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts! She spent the fellowship year finishing her debut collection of poetry, writing three new plays and a TV pilot, beginning a novel, and moving to New Jersey! She continues to work on a new play about primary school education that explores the intersections of race, gender, gentrification, the wealth gap, the achievement gap, and Oregon’s problematic history.

Anya runs a production company called Urban Haiku whose mission is to produce groundbreaking work that transcends the traditional boundaries of theatre while also serving as the catalyst for art and community action to combine for real social change. Anya is currently launching an additional business venture aimed at seamlessly integrating activism into the artistic model of producing theatre. 

Anya is on staff at Corporeal Writing where she is the Co-Curator of Programming, teaches creative labs on writing around chronic illness, decolonization, and anti-racist approaches to storytelling, and runs a BIPOC collective.

She is currently finishing her debut collection of poetry, “This is the After,” beginning a novel, writing three pilots, launching a BIPOC-owned clothing label, and constantly plotting, planning, devising, creating, imagining, and revising visions of a better world. She is under commission at Portland Center Stage and Many Hats.

As an actor, she is a member of Actors’ Equity Association and has appeared in numerous regional theatre productions and independent films. She is also a member of Linestorm Playwrights, Couch Film Collective, and the Dramatists Guild. Anya is a graduate of the acting program at William Esper Studio in New York City and continues to train at AMAW in Los Angeles. You can find her plays on NPX.

Her best production is her 11-year-old daughter, Aidee, who can often be seen trying to circumvent bedtime by asking deep philosophical questions such as “When are we going to see the world? When will my life truly begin?” or “Can you explain to me why there is only one unique version of every person, including me, in the history of the world?”