Kemp Powers

Kemp Powers is an acclaimed screenwriter and playwright who has become the first Black director of a U.S.-producer animated feature. Although his background and training were in journalism, first at the flagship HBCU, Howard University, Powers established his reputation as a consummate playwright with such award-winning plays as One Night in Miami… (2013), which won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle’s Ted Schmitt Award for best new play, as well as an Olivier Award nomination during its London premiere at the Donmar Warehouse; The Two Reds; A Negro by Choice; Little Black Shadows (2018), which premiered at South Coast Repertory; Christa McAuliffe’s Eyes Were Blue; and The XIXth (The Nineteenth), about the 1968 U.S. Olympian athletes protesting U.S. policies at the Games.

Powers toured nationally as a storyteller for the series, The Moth, and was a contributing storyteller in the New York Times-produced book, The Moth: 50 True Stories. Powers was a resident artist in Center Theatre Group’s 2019-2020 Los Angeles Writers’ Workshop.  

After serving in 2017 as a writer on the staff of Star Trek: Discovery, Kemp Powers was co-screenwriter of the Disney/Pixar animated feature, Soul (2020), with Pete Docter and Mike, as well as co-director with Docter, and while the movie failed at the box office, it won two Oscars (best animated feature, best score), seven Annie Awards, two British Academy Awards, two Golden Globe awards, and named to the year’s top ten best films by the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute.

In the same year, Kemp Powers saw his screen adaptation of his play, One Night in Miami… (2020), brought to the screen (as well as Amazon Prime Video) under the direction of Regina King leading the cast of Kingsley Ben-Adir, Eli Goree, Aldis Hodge, and Leslie Odom Jr. Powers was co-director, with Joaquim dos Santos and Justin K. Thompson, of the mega-hit animated film, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), the second film in the series, and Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse (2024), with the voices of Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, and Oscar Isaac.