IAMA Theatre Company Names 2025–26 Emerging Playwrights Lab Members

IAMA Theatre Company, recognized for developing innovative and boundary-pushing new work, has announced the members of its 2025–26 IAMA Emerging Playwrights Lab, led by Lab alumnus Nicholas Pilapil.

The program provides an artistic home for early- to mid-career Los Angeles-based playwrights who will meet monthly over the course of a one-year residency to share and develop new full-length plays in a peer-guided setting. Each playwright will receive dramaturgical support from IAMA’s artistic and literary staff, culminating in public readings of their full-length plays in July 2026.

“Since we started the Lab the caliber of LA-based playwrights has exceeded our expectations—and this year's cohort is no exception,” said Artistic Director Stefanie Black. “We are so lucky to have such a strong group of writers calling IAMA home this season.”

“Being part of the inaugural cohort and now leading the Lab has been one of the most rewarding journeys. I've seen incredible writers find their voices, and their plays go on to thrive in the world,” added Program Director Nicholas Pilapil, whose play The Bottoming Process—developed in the inaugural Lab—was produced by IAMA Theatre Company in collaboration with the Los Angeles LGBT Center. “I'm thrilled for another year of emerging talent and can't wait to see how these new stories will grow.”

The 2025–26 IAMA Emerging Playwrights Lab members are Andrew X.I. Grace, Aja Houston, Tyree Marshall, Samah Meghjee, Erica Wachs, and Josh Levine.

ABOUT THE EMERGING PLAYWRIGHTS

Andrew X.I. Grace is a writer, actor, and director whose work often explores multiracial experiences and queer identity. His plays have been produced at the Hollywood Fringe Festival and Playhouse West, and his short films have screened nationwide. He has completed UCLA's Professional Program in Producing, Ensemble Studio Theatre LA's New West and Ignite Playwrights programs, and is part of NBCUniversal Launch's 2025–26 TV Writers’ Program.

Aja Houston is a writer, actor, and teaching artist whose work blends socio-political themes and magical realism to tell monolith-breaking Black stories. A graduate of USC’s MFA program in Dramatic Writing, Houston’s plays have been developed at Ensemble Studio Theatre LA, The Road Theatre, and Antaeus Theatre Company. Her short film Missing Rhythms was an official selection at the Oscar-qualifying 2025 HollyShorts Film Festival and received a nomination for Best SAG Indie Short.

Tyree Marshall is a playwright, actor, producer, and director whose Afro-futurist work If The Creek Don’t Rise was developed with The Vagrancy and Skylight Theatre Company. Her play Banish Him! premiered in September 2025 with The Roots and Wings Project. Marshall previously co-created LOVE GASOLINE! by Stacy Dawson Stearns, which premiered at REDCAT’s NOW Festival before moving to the Edinburgh Fringe. She is currently developing a solo piece titled Sweet Pea.

Samah Meghjee is a Muslim playwright and screenwriter whose work celebrates rebellion and individuality. A member of the 2024–25 Geffen Writers’ Room, she is developing the musical The Deep End. Her play Maybe You Could Love Me premiered at Theater Mu in 2025 and was selected for The Road Theatre’s Summer Playwrights Festival. Meghjee’s screenplay Quran Camp appeared on The Black List’s GLAAD and Muslim Lists, and her television credits include Apple TV’s Sunny and Hulu’s Good American Family.

Erica Wachs is a playwright and television writer currently part of the 2024–25 Stage Raw cohort. She has worked as a script coordinator on Netflix’s The Night Agent and a writers’ assistant on American Horror Story, Maid, and Pieces of Her. Wachs received Yale’s Jonathan Edwards Creative Writing Award, and her play Anatevka was a National Playwrights Conference Semifinalist. Her work has been featured at the Austin Film Festival and the Rainy Day Artistic Collective’s Queer Voices Festival.

Josh Levine is a queer Jewish playwright and recipient of the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for Comic Playwriting for his play Homemade. His recent play Baruch Hashem was featured in IAMA Theatre Company’s 2024 New Works Festival. Levine’s short play Perfect was a Heideman Award finalist, and his work has been developed by Primary Stages, The Playwrights Union, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. His play I Love You I Love You is published in The Best Ten-Minute Plays 2014 by Smith & Krause.

ABOUT IAMA THEATRE COMPANY

Founded in 2007, IAMA Theatre Company is a Los Angeles-based ensemble of artists dedicated to cultivating new voices and producing work that reflects the complexity of modern life. Named by Playbill as “one of 20 regional houses every theater lover must know,” and called “an LA intimate theater gem” by KCRW, the company has developed and premiered more than 40 new plays and musicals. Notable IAMA-originated works that have reached Broadway include Max Wolf Friedlich’s JOB and Leslye Headland’s Cult of Love.

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