IAMA Announces Recipient of Shonda Rhimes-Sponsored 'Unsung Voices Playwriting Commission'

IAMA Theatre Company has named Brooklyn-based playwright and activist Geraldine Inoa as the first recipient of The Rhimes Unsung Voices Playwriting Commission. The commission, created to support an underrepresented writer of color who has not had a play professionally produced, is sponsored by TV producer/writer Shonda Rhimes (Scandal, How To Get Away With Murder, Grey's Anatomy).

IAMA has been dedicated to developing new plays and musicals by new, emerging and established playwrights since 2007. Rhimes, a frequent IAMA audience member, came on board in March, 2017 as the company's first-ever 'Patron of the Arts', committing funds for the commission through her Rhimes Family Foundation.

Inoa is a member of The Public Theater's 2016-17 Emerging Writers Group. Her play Scraps was developed through the LAByrinth Theater Company's Up Next Series and was a semifinalist for the O'Neil National Playwrights Conference. She was a finalist for the 2017 Van Lier New Voices Fellowship at the Lark and winner of Pride Films and Plays' 2016 LezPlay Contest. Her work has been developed at the Future is Female Festival, the All Out Arts Reading Series and the Gallatin Arts Festival. She received a B.A. from New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study.

"We searched the country for the past six months and were blown away by the level of talent we came across," stated IAMA co-artistic directors Stefanie Black, Christian Durso and Katie Lowes. "We are honored to name Geraldine as our Unsung Voice. She's a fresh, dynamic, strong storyteller, and we are thrilled to share a platform with her and bring her voice to our L.A. audiences."

According to the three, "Our playwriting commissions help to create a long-lasting relationship between IAMA and the diverse voices we help to develop, with an emphasis on working toward a future full production. By incorporating the talent and inspiration of our ensemble into the development of writers and their work, IAMA continues to create a growing and dynamic family of artists."

Designated by Playbill as "one of 20 regional houses every theater lover must know," 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. Plays generated at IAMA have traveled to off-Broadway, Second Stage and the Roundabout Underground, and have been performed regionally and internationally. IAMA is breaking the mold by getting the "cord-cutter generation" to come back out to the theater again - you can't DVR theater!