Chalk Writer’s Group 2022/2023
Amanda L. Andrei
Amanda L. Andrei is a Filipina Romanian American playwright and literary translator residing in Los Angeles by way of Virginia/Washington DC. She writes epic, irreverent plays that center the concealed, wounded places of history and societies from the perspectives of diasporic Filipina women, and she translates from Romanian to English. Her plays have been produced by Relative Theatrics and developed with NY Classical Theater, La MaMa, Parity Productions, Echo Theatre, The Vagrancy, Pasadena Playhouse, Artists at Play, and more. Her play MAMA, I WISH I WERE SILVER won the 2022 Jane Chambers Award for Feminist Playwriting, and her other work has received finalist status with the Princess Grace Award, Eugene O’Neill Conference, Playwrights Realm Scratchpad Series, and Ashland Festival. She is a teaching artist with 7 Daughters of Eve, co-facilitator for the South Eastern European Film Festival screenwriters group, producer/writer for Filipinx Actors Barkada, member of the Dramatists Guild of America, and an alum of the Echo Theater Playwriting Lab and The Vagrancy Writing Group. MFA: USC, MA: Georgetown. www.amandalandrei.com
Jennifer Chang
Jennifer Chang is a multi-hyphenate storyteller and educator who won the LADCC Award in Direction for the LA premiere of VIETGONE by Qui Nguyen. Select Directing: ON GOLD MOUNTAIN with LA Opera at The Huntington, THE GREAT LEAP by Lauren Yee at The Round House Theatre. Play Development: O’Neill Playwrights Conference, Geffen Playhouse, Pasadena Playhouse, New Harmony Project, Center Theatre Group, Sông Collective, Artists at Play, Black and Latino Playwrights’ Conference, Theatre Mu, Chance Theater, Boston Court, PlayOn!, East West Players, Artists at Play and others. Co-Artistic Producing Director of award-winning Chalk Repertory Theatre. Upcoming Directing: THE HEART SELLERS by Lloyd Suh, Milwaukee Rep, AMERICAN FAST by Kareem Fahmy, City Theatre. Upcoming Playwriting: THE DEVIL IS A LIE at Quantum Theatre. SDCF Fichandler Award Finalist. BFA NYU, MFA UCSD. Director’s Lab West, Drama League NY Fellow, 2022 Beatrice Terry Residency. Associate Professor at UCLA School of Theater, Film & Television. More info: www.changinator.com
Cory Hinkle
Cory Hinkle is a Los Angeles-based playwright and recipient of the McKnight Advancement Grant, two Jerome fellowships, a MAP Fund Grant, a Jerome Travel and Study Grant, and the Humanitas Play LA Award. He was awarded the Heideman Award for his play This Quintessence of Dust. His other recent plays include: The End of Beauty (premiere at Playwrights’ Arena, LA Times Critics’ Choice); Apocalypse Play (premiere at Moving Arts, Stage Raw Top Ten); Uncovered Cities (developed with Circle X Theatre and Humanitas); Golden (commissioned by Actors Theatre of Louisville, workshopped with Chalk Rep) and The Killing of Michael X (premiere at Chicago’s Jackalope Theatre). He has written two musicals: The Hurricane (developed at Chalk Rep, Theatre @ Boston Court, and Nautilus Music-Theatre) and Clandestino (developed at Sundance Theatre Lab, Mixed Blood, and New York Theatre Workshop). He was a co-writer of That High Lonesome Sound and Fissures (lost and found), both of which premiered at the Humana Festival, and his other work has been produced or developed at the Bay Area Playwrights Festival and Cape Cod Theatre Project, among others. For eight years, he co-ran Minneapolis’s Workhaus Collective, a company of playwrights producing each other’s work. At Workhaus, he produced plays by other writers in the collective, and his plays SadGrrl13 and Little Eyes were produced. During his time in Minneapolis, Cory wrote and devised shows with many artists including the world premieres of All’s Fair/The War Within with Dominique Serrand’s Moving Company and Rehearsing Failure with Lisa Channer and Theatre Novi Most. A former MacDowell Colony fellow and an affiliated writer at the Playwright’s; Center, he earned his MFA in Playwriting from Brown University where he studied with Paula Vogel. More info at www.coryhinkle.com.
Tova Katz
Tova Katz (she/they) - is an award-winning queer writer, lyricist-composer and performer. Their work has been featured at La Mama, 54 Below, ARS NOVA and Joe’s Pub. Tova has been thrilled to develop the new drag king musical Beneath the Bowtie as part of the ‘21-’22 Geffen Writers’ Room with collaborators Alexandra Kalinowski and Katie Lindsay. In 2020 she composed music for a reading of Miranda Rose Hall’s Menstruation: A Period Piece directed by Katie Lindsay (CTG, We the Women Collective) with a world premiere set for 2023 (Big Little Theater Co, in partnership with the Los Angeles LGBT Center). They’re currently collaborating with Lane Michael Stanley on Jack & Aiden, a new trans musical commision about grief, addiction, sex and love, premiering in 2023 at Ground Floor Theatre in Austin, TX. Tova recently performed her solo musical See You at the Funeral! at Los Angeles Performance Practice’s LAX Festival, directed/choreographed by Diana Wyenn. Imagination saves her life every day.
tovakatzartist.com | ig: @_tovakatz_
Grace McLeod
Grace McLeod (she/her/hers) is a queer playwright and screenwriter born in New York, bred in Chicago, and based in Los Angeles. She is currently under commission from The Playwrights Realm, where she was a 2021 Virtual Realm Writer. Grace's play HERLAND received a 2019 National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere at MOXIE Theatre in San Diego, Redtwist Theatre in Chicago, and Greenway Court Theatre in Los Angeles. She has held residencies at Chicago's Greenhouse Theater Center and the Tribeca Film Institute, and her work has been commissioned, presented and/or developed with Goodman Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Ashland New Plays Festival, Times Square Arts, The 24 Hour Plays, and many more. Grace is a graduate of the University of Chicago, where she was the recipient of the 2018 Olga and Paul Menn Foundation Prize for Playwriting. She currently has feature film and scripted audio projects in development with HartBeat Productions, Picturestart and Temple Hill Entertainment. www.gracemcleod.com
Lisa Sanaye Dring
Lisa Sanaye Dring is a writer from Hilo, Hawaii and Reno, Nevada. She is currently a member of The Geffen Writers' Room. Her play SUMO was a finalist for the O’Neill Playwrights’ Conference and is being developed with La Jolla Playhouse, Ma-Yi Theater Company and East West Players.. She was honored as a recipient of the 2020/21 PLAY LA Stage Raw/Humanitas Prize. Her play The Wicked One was a finalist for the Relentless Award, a finalist for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, a finalist for the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference and a semi-finalist for the O'Neill Playwrights Conference. Kaidan Project: Walls Grow Thin, a piece she co-wrote with Chelsea Sutton, was nominated for 7 Ovation Awards including Best Production (winner of 5). Lisa's work has been developed/produced by The New Group, Actors Theatre of Louisville, East West Players, Antaeus, Circle X, SCF @ Son of Semele, Playwrights’ Arena, Rogue Artists Ensemble, UCSB Launch Pad Series, The Motor Company and Theatre of NOTE. She was a member of East West Players’ Playwrights Group and has been awarded fellowships at MacDowell, Blue Mountain Center and Yaddo. She was awarded the 2021 Dorothy and Granville Hicks Residency at Yaddo, which honors one promising young writer a year.
Hannah Wolf
Hannah Wolf (she/her/hers) is not only the Writer’s Group leader but a theatre director and educator originally from Juneau Alaska. She directs new plays and musicals and subverts old ones. Hannah has directed and developed work at the Geffen Playhouse, B Street Theater, La Jolla's WOW Festival, The Playwright’s Center, Perseverance Theatre, Fusebox Festival, IAMA Theater Company, Echo Theater Company, The Fountain Theatre, Dixon Place, The Vineyard Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and many others. She’s taught and led workshops at Louisiana State University, the University of California Riverside, Pomona College, the University of Texas at Austin, and The Kennedy Center, among others. Hannah’s a National Directors Fellow (O'Neill, NNPN, SDC, and the Kennedy Center), a Fulbright Research Fellow (Bucharest Romania) and a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab and Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab. She received her M.F.A. in Directing from the University of Texas at Austin, her B.A. from Western Washington University, and is a member of SDC.