Alice Childress (1916-1994) was an actor, playwright and novelist. As Hilton Als writes in his 2011 prologue on Childress in The New Yorker, “Childress moved to Harlem to live with her grandmother, in 1925. Dreaming of becoming an actress, she joined the American Negro Theatre in 1941, and in 1944 she was nominated for a Tony as Best Supporting Actress, for her role in the Broadway production of Anna Lucasta... But, after that, Childress found little dramatic material that represented the lives of black women she knew, so she began writing it herself.”... [http://arthistorynewsreport.blogspot.nl/2017/07/alice-neel-uptown.html] Alice Childress was in her mid-30s when Neel painted this picture. She had not written her celebrated plays yet, but was a long-standing member of the American Negro Theatre, known for her acting. "I love this painting," Hilton Als says... [https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2017/apr/29/the-people-of-harlem-as-painted-by-alice-neel-in-pictures]