That was his impetus for Act a Lady, which is now in previews and has its Philadelphia premiere Wednesday at Azuka Theatre, at the First Baptist Church at 17th and Sansom.
Azuka director Kevin Glaccum, who brought Harrison's Kid-Simple to town in 2008, is elated.
"His plays are very theatrical, they're not meant to be turned into movies," Glaccum says. "And this one is screamingly funny."
Harrison says his play-within-a-play "is about the power of a dress or a pair of trousers to unlock something in a person."
He grew up near Seattle, on Bainbridge Island, and graduated with a master's of fine arts degree from Brown University when Paula Vogel directed the program. Vogel's How I Learned to Drive won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998, and at Brown she nurtured two other writers whose names are now familiar in Philadelphia: Sarah Ruhl, whose In the Next Room (or the vibrator play) won eight 2011 Barrymore Awards for the Wilma Theater; and Philadelphia native Quiara Alegria Hudes, the Tony- and Pulitzer-nominated book writer of In the Heights.
But this is Harrison's moment in Philadelphia's spotlight. His musical The Flea and the Professor, commissioned by the Arden Theatre for its children's theater, recently won two Barrymores, for best production of a musical and best leading actor in a musical.
"We had never commissioned a piece for kids," said Terrence J. Nolen, Arden artistic director. "But I was attracted to Jordan's wit."
"For a work for kids to be recognized alongside the work for adult audiences was a real triumph for Jordan," Nolen said. "He's strong-willed, but incredibly collaborative. I'm always encouraging writers to write for the kid that they were. And I'm sure he was a precocious kid."
In Harrison's playful use of words, there is evidence that his intellect (he was a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow) is filtered through his childlike curiosity to bring flashes of insight and moments of poignant realization.
