Six L.A. Writers Selected for IAMA's New Under 30 Playwrights Lab

IAMA Theatre Company has invited six up-and-coming Los Angeles playwrights to participate in its newly minted "Under 30 Playwrights Lab." The inaugural group includesLaura Donney, Max Friedlich, Ken Greller, Madeline Hendricks, Nicholas Pilapil and Adriana Santos, each of whom will be in residence at IAMA for the entire 2019-20 season.

"In this, the program's inaugural year, IAMA continues its mission of fostering young, hip, and modern storytelling by supporting a group of six emerging playwrights under the age of 30," says Stefanie Black, the company's co-artistic director along with Katie Lowes. "IAMA has been dedicated to developing new plays and musicals since 2007. With the Under 30 Playwrights Lab, we offer an artistic home for the next generation of L.A.-based playwrights."

Over the course of the year-long residency, the writers will meet on a monthly basis to share and develop their work in a peer-guided format led by Under 30's Max Friedlich. Members of the Lab will be also given dramaturgical support from the artistic and literary staff at IAMA, as well as a ticket to each of IAMA's mainstage productions. The Lab will culminate in either a reading or workshop of each member's work.

IAMA Theatre Company is a Los Angeles-based ensemble of artists committed to invigorating live performance for a streaming generation. Through cutting-edge, cool and hyper-modern stories, IAMA is invested in the immediacy of production and strives to bring audiences out of their personal space and into a shared experience. Since its founding in 2007, the Ovation Award winning company has seen many plays generated at IAMA travel to off-Broadway, Second Stage and the Roundabout Underground, then go on to be performed regionally and internationally. IAMA members have been featured in numerous critically acclaimed TV shows and films as well as in a vast array of theater and live performances all over the country; last fall, IAMA co-artistic director Katie Lowes and her husband, founding IAMA company member Adam Shapiro, made their Broadway debuts in Waitress. In 2017, TV producer and creator Shonda Rhimes announced that she would become IAMA's first-ever "Patron of the Arts" with a generous endowment from the Rhimes Family Foundation. This month, IAMA was honored to co-host the fifth annual Stage Raw Awards ceremony.