James Scruggs is a writer, performer, producer, teacher, speaker, and arts administrator who creates large-scale, topical, theatrical, multimedia work usually focused on inequity or gender politics. He was recently commissioned by The Perelman Arts Center to write a Truth and Reconciliation piece, The Commission, which is being considered for production. He was awarded a MAP Grant in support of above project. He was recently awarded a National Performance Network Creation Fund Grant to create OFF THE RECORD: Acts of Restorative Justice which will be performed at Arts Emerson in Boston, The Center at West Park in NYC and Art2Action in Tampa, Florida in 2024/25.  AND another component of this work is the production of actual criminal record sealing clinics in NYC, and criminal record expungement clinics in Boston and Tampa.  He was also recently awarded the “Adding Justice Through the Arts” Award from the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. His solo theatre piece, A Voluptuary Life (2019), which received a MAP Grant, explored the hetero-washing of LGBTQ+ history. In 2018, he created MELT!, a site-specific immersive, interactive, satirical work for the High Line. His piece 3/Fifths SupremacyLand (2017) was a fully immersive, interactive ethno-theme park, exploring race and racism called SupremacyLand, for which he was awarded a 2015 MAP Grant and a 2016 Creative Capital Grant. Trapped in a Traveling Minstrel Show (2017), a piece about how unarmed Black men are often feared and legally killed in police shootings, was awarded the Boston Theater Critics Association Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production Fringe Theater. James Scruggs has a BFA in film from School of Visual Arts.