Heather Christian

Heather Christian is an American singer, playwright, composer and MacArthur Fellow best known for 2017’s Animal Wisdom at the Bushwick Starr and Oratorio for Living Things, which ran Off Broadway at Ars Nova in the spring of 2022, along with a 2025 revival at Signature Theatre Company. Early life Christian was born in New Orleans and raised in Natchez, Mississippi. Growing up, she was involved in children’s choir and high school theater. She is a graduate of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, where she studied experimental theater. Later that year, she debuted Animal Wisdom, an autobiographical work based on supernatural encounters from her childhood in Natchez. The work’s original run at the Bushwick Starr received several extensions and a new film version of the piece was released on Broadway on Demand in 2021. The work was later revived at The Signature Theatre in May 2026. I am Sending You the Sacred Face, a drag opera about Mother Teresa composed by Christian and performed by Joshua William Gelb, was released online as part of the Theater in Quarantine series in December 2020. In spring 2022, the Ars Nova theater presented Christian’s choral work Oratorio for