THE WRITERS' ROOM at Geffen Playhouse to Welcome Six Playwrights
Camilo Almonacid, June Carryl, Preston Choi, Lily Abha Cratsley, Hannah Kenah and Nico Pang join the program.
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Geffen Playhouse has announced its selection of LA-based writers to participate in the 2026/2027 cycle of The Writers’ Room, a forum for engagement and collaboration between Los Angeles playwrights. The participants are Camilo Almonacid, June Carryl, Preston Choi, Lily Abha Cratsley, Hannah Kenah and Nico Pang.
A group for Los Angeles-based playwrights, The Writers’ Room is a product of the Geffen’s deep commitment to supporting new plays and specifically to fostering bold, relevant work by the vibrant artistic community of this city.
The cohort of six selected playwrights will attend in-person meetings at the Geffen as they generate the first draft of a new play or musical. Playwrights receive feedback from their cohort in a forum facilitated by the Geffen’s Literary Manager & Dramaturg. The 2026/2027 cycle of The Writers’ Room will begin in September 2026.
At the conclusion of their writing residency, each playwright will have the opportunity to further develop their completed draft in a culminating reading produced by the Geffen.
Playwrights who have developed work as part of The Writers' Room include: Juan José Alfonso, Ashley August, Boni B. Alvarez, Vivian J.O. Barnes, Meghan Brown, Diana Burbano, Jennifer Chang, Angelica Chéri, Paris Crayton III, Inda Craig-Galván, Diana Yifei Dai, Sunny Drake, Lisa Sanaye Dring, Weston Gaylord, Inara George, Keiko Green, Dipika Guha, Christina Ham, Chloé Hung, Donald Jolly, Alexandra Kalinowski, Tova Katz, Andrew Zepeda Klein, Katie Lindsay, maatin, Chelsea Marcantel, Louis Reyes McWilliams, Samah Meghjee, Ramiz Monsef, Paloma Nozicka, Zharia O’Neal, Matthew Paul Olmos, Brian Otaño, Frank Paiva, Nicholas Pilapil, Liza Powel O'Brien, Alexis Roblan, Matt Schatz, Michael Shayan, Ruby Rae Spiegel, Ryn Stafford, T. Tara Turk-Haynes, James Anthony Tyler, Ali Viterbi, and Habib Yazdi.
Camilo Almonacid (he/him)
Camilo Almonacid is a Colombian American playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker, and teaching artist based in Los Angeles. His plays include The Assignment, which premiered Off-Broadway in 2017 following a documentary-based development process with individuals impacted by gun violence, and Hotel Happy, an exploration of displacement and the complicated relationship between Colombia and the United States, which premiered Off-Broadway in 2024 and received a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Puppetry. His work has been supported by the NYSCA-A.R.T./New York Creative Opportunity Fund. Expanding his storytelling into film, Camilo wrote and directed the short film The Teaching Artist, winner of Creating Creators’ 2025 Create Challenge. As a bilingual writer, he has also collaborated with Netflix, Vice, Refinery29, and Remezcla, creating branded, promotional, and documentary-style work in English and Spanish. Born in Colombia and raised in the United States, Camilo’s work explores displacement, identity, chosen families, and the collision between humor and hardship.
June Carryl (she/her)
June Carryl grew up in Denver and studied Political Science and English Literature at Brown University. June’s plays include How to Play with Monsters (Rogue Machine’s 2026 Playwright’s Roundtable); The Wronged Party (Finalist, 2025 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, 2022 IAMA Theatre’s The Rhimes Unsung Voices Playwrighting Commission); Blue (2023 Scotsman Fringe First Award, Edinburgh Festival Fringe); N*gga B*tch (developed at Nancy Manocherian’s the cell theatre and The Vagrancy); Colossus (2023 Ojai Playwrights Conference, semi-finalist 2021 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference); Florence & Normandie (Playwrights’ Arena and UCLA’s Diversifying the Classics, published in Golden Tongues: Adapting Hispanic Classical Theater in Los Angeles by Methuen Drama); and Girl Blue (developed at Center Theatre Group’s L.A. Writers’ Workshop). Favorite acting roles include: “Aphrodite” in Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses (Berkshire Theatre Festival); “Gerty Fail” in Failure: A Love Story (Coeurage Ensemble); “The Nurse” in Romeo and Juliet (A Noise Within); and “Fraulein Schneider” in Cabaret (Celebration Theatre). June can also be seen in Kemba, Joker: Folie à Deux, and Mindhunter.
Preston Choi (he/they)
Preston Choi is a Korean and Irish American playwright and illustrator based in Los Angeles whose work explores Asian and mixed-race identities, queerness, and social science fiction. His plays have been developed with the National New Play Network, Round House Theatre, InterActTheatre Company, Philadelphia Asian Performing Artists, The Kennedy Center, The Playwrights Realm, Artists at Play, Crowded Fire Theater, and Sideshow Theatre Company. Plays include Happy Birthday Mars Rover (The Passage Theatre), The Migratory Patterns of the North American Monarch Butterfly and the Development of Fatherless Sons (B Street Theatre), This Is Not a True Story (Artists at Play), and limp wrist on the lever (Crowded Fire Theater). Honors/Awards include the Agnes Nixon Playwrighting Award, Paul Stephen Lim Playwriting Award, Planet Earth Arts Award, National Showcase of New Plays 2019 and 2021, and the love of his family. He has a Bachelor of Science in Theatre from Northwestern University and a Master of Fine Arts in Playwriting from University of California San Diego.
Lily Abha Cratsley (she/her)
Lily Abha Cratsley is a Los-Angeles based playwright, performer, and producer who believes in the radical magic of storytelling. She envisions her written work as love letters to the Desi female diaspora. Her most Popular Productions include the sold-out and extended runs of her play ABCD at Greenway Court Theatre and her solo show The Fairy Who Cried Gems at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. She is also one half of the comedy duo behind How I Met Your Masi, which premiered at Dynasty Typewriter to a sold-out crowd and global livestreaming audience. The special is now available on demand and touring the country. Lily is a lifelong performer, acting and singing in countless other stage and screen productions. She previously performed as a company member of the acrobatic Occidental Children’s Theater. Her producing credits also span many mediums, from a live sitcom to digital content for creators like YouTwoTV. Lily was born and raised in Massachusetts, before attending Georgetown University and Occidental College, where she completed an Independent Pattern of Study in Performing Arts & Social Justice.
Hannah Kenah (she/her)
Hannah Kenah is a playwright, performer, and devised theatre artist. She participated in Rogue Machine’s 2025 Playwright’s Roundtable and recently joined Public Assembly as an Associated Artist. Hannah developed her play Grief World through The Echo Theater Company’s Playwrights Lab, with further development in IAMA Theatre Company’s 2024 New Works Festival. Hannah wrote and performed with the Rude Mechs for over a decade, including touring with The Method Gun, writing and performing in Field Guide which premiered at Yale Repertory Theatre, writing and performing in a national tour of Now Now Oh Now, and collaborating on their recreation of Dionysus in 69. For Salvage Vanguard Theater, she wrote Guest by Courtesy and toured with the piece to Brooklyn and Bulgaria. Her play With Great Difficulty Alice Sits was a Semifinalist for the 2018 Relentless Award, and Grief World was a 2024 Honorable Mention. Hannah has developed work with Sibyl Kempson & New Dramatists, Jennifer Kidwell, Mason Rosenthal, Fusebox Festival, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of British Columbia, Paper Chairs, and Harbor Stage Company, among others. She holds an M.F.A. from the Michener Center for Writers at University of Texas at Austin, a B.A. from Dartmouth College, and a certificate of physical theatre from Dell’Arte International.
Nico Pang (they/he)
Nico Pang is a Cantonese writer and director exploring diasporic belonging, ancestral memory, and queerness as possibility. Nico’s plays include I Think I Was Born Missing You (developed with IAMA Theatre Company; 2026 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference semifinalist), Moonbow (Hantext New Works Festival at East West Players), and My Body Is a Season (SpeakEasy Stage). Nico is the 2025 recipient of the Artists at Play Emerging Playwright Commission and a finalist for East West Players’ Open Call Commission and Baltimore Center Stage’s Trans History Project. They are an alum of IAMA Theatre Company’s Emerging Playwrights Lab and Company One Theatre’s PlayLab. Nico directs Trans Lineage, Celebration Theatre’s trans-centered new play development program. Additional directing credits include Center Theatre Group, The Theater Offensive, and CHUANG Stage. Nico co-founded and writes/directs for Passion of the Cut Sleeve, a queer multidisciplinary collective reimagining Chinese folklore. Based in Los Angeles by way of New Jersey, Boston, and the Chinese diaspora, Nico’s work is shaped by his background as a spoken word poet, youth worker, and community organizer. www.nicopang.com
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