Sarah Jones

A recipient of the 2007 Brendan Gill Prize, Jones has also received grants and commissions from the Ford Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, and others. She has also obtained a Helen Hayes Award, two Drama Desk Award nominations, and HBO's US Comedy Arts Festival's Best One Person Show Award, as well as a New York Civil Liberties Union Calloway Award in recognition of Jones as the first artist in history to sue the Federal Communications Commission for censorship. The lawsuit resulted in reversal of a censorship ruling, which had targeted her hip-hop poem recording "Your Revolution" in which she makes a powerful statement against sexual exploitation of women in hip hop music.

In 2005, a commission from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation to raise awareness of ethnic and racial health disparities in the U.S. resulted in A Right to Care, Jones' fourth solo piece, which premiered in 2005 at the Kellogg Foundation's 75th Anniversary conference alongside keynote speaker President Jimmy Carter.

Called "a master of the genre" by The New York Times, Jones has written and performed four multi-character solo shows, including Bridge & Tunnel, which was produced Off-Broadway in 2004 by Oscar-winner Meryl Streep, and then on to Broadway in 2006 where it received a Special Tony Award.

A second commission, for the National Immigration Forum to raise awareness about immigrant rights issues, yielded Waking the American Dream, the solo show that became the basis for Bridge & Tunnel, which set an Off-Broadway box office record during its six-month, sold-out run in New York in 2004.

In 2001, Jones recorded and released "Your Revolution" which makes a play against the lyrics and behavior of MC's in Hip hop. When the song made its way to a radio station in Portland, the station was fined $7000 by the FCC, citing the song as "indecent". Jones decided to fight the fine and the "freeze out" of the poem/song by appealing it. After a two-year wait in 2003, the NYCLU and ACLU joined the appeal and won the case. The FCC rescinded their initial notice citing the song as "indecent" and made it available for radio play.

Her first solo show, Surface Transit, debuted at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in 1998. It featured monologues based on her poetry which she performed in character. After gaining the attention of feminist icon Gloria Steinem and human rights organization Equality Now, Jones was commissioned by the organization to write and perform her next project, Women Can't Wait!, to address discriminatory laws against women.