Gabrielle Fulton Ponder is a playwright, filmmaker, and television writer. Her play Uprising received a Rolling World Premiere at Atlanta’s Horizon Theatre Company and in the D.C. Women’s Voices Theatre Festival at MetroStage. In 2014 Gabrielle was a winner of the Alliance Theatre’s inaugural Reiser Atlanta Artists Lab where her work was presented on the Tony Award-winning theatre’s Hertz Stage. She was the 2011-2012 National New Play Network’s Playwright-in-Residence at Horizon Theatre Company. Her plays include In The Pocket, Uprising, Adinkra Play, Sweet Dill, Redemption’s Road, MILF, The Seed Planter, Jill Fell Down, Death of Lightning Bugs, Carrying the Mother Load, and Shape of Faith.
Gabrielle’s dramatic short Ir/Reconcilable was an official selection of the American Black Film Festival in New York City. Ir/Reconcilable was one of five finalists showcased in the festival’s HBO Short Film Competition. Starring Jasmine Guy, Crystal Fox, Danielle Deadwyler, and Dick Gregory, the film received a broadcast deal and aired on HBO. Gabrielle has also directed a documentary short, If We So Choose, about the 1964 public accommodations protests to integrate The Varsity restaurant in Athens, GA. Other “non-scripted” work includes a television pilot for an international singing competition show, The Center, and her Hip Hop Diaspora project which was optioned by MTV Networks.
Gabrielle earned a BA in History-Sociology from Columbia University in the City of New York and an MFA in Writing for the Screen & Stage from Northwestern University. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild and the Writers Guild of America.