As a playwright, director, and ensemble artist, Dr. Cristal Chanelle Truscott creates Neo-Spirituals through “Soulwork," the comprehensive theatre-making practice she developed from African American performance traditions and aesthetics. Truscott is founder of Progress Theatre, where she has created several Neo-Spirituals including: “PEACHES,” a rich, complicated picture of Black female experiences in contemporary America (published in the TCG anthology Plays from the Boom Box Galaxy); and “‘MEMBUH,” a family saga that explores the power of remembrance and inherited legacies, both imagined and real. She has received a NEFA National Theatre Project grant, multiple NPN Creation Fund grants, and is a 2015 Doris Duke Impact Awardee.

Truscott presented her Neo-Spiritual “The Burnin'” at Shangri La on February 20, 2016.