Playwright christopher oscar peña Featured In Profile Theatre's 2022-2024 Double Season 'The American Generation'

PROFILE THEATRE, which explores the bodies of work of 2-3 writers over two years, is excited to announce that Kristoffer Diaz, christopher oscar peña and Lauren Yee will be the company's featured playwrights for the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 seasons.

"This season is Profile's 25th Anniversary Season, making us one of the longest-running theaters in the state. To mark this milestone, we're creating our most ambitious season to date," says Artistic Director Josh Hecht, "We've asked three of the most important and honored playwrights of our generation to help us imagine what it means to be an American in the 21st century through the intersectional lens of the multiple identities all of us hold."

Hecht continues, "One aspect of the recent 2020 census has struck me: the number of people who identify as more than one race has nearly quadrupled - from 9 million to 33 milion - in just one census cycle. I find this so hopeful in what it suggests about our increasing ability to claim and hold multiple identities simultaneously, and for what it says about who we love and how we create families. As this country continues to evolve, we wanted to spend the next two years exploring who we are today. Over the last decade, these three writers have gained national prominence for the vibrancy, the muscularity, the freshness of their voices and the innovative ways they imagine the stage. Their plays are current, urgent and distinctly American in style and milieu. I can't think of anyone better to help us explore who we are today."

The two year season will feature ten full productions by these three writers including a mix of older plays, three world premieres, and a commission. Most notably, all three writers will spend two weeks in Portland, Oregon in April of 2023 to develop new work in a new play festival Profile is calling the Playwright Convening. During this triple-residency, the writers will engage in three simultaneous new play workshops culminating in a series of public readings. They'll also lead community workshops and a talk from the mainstage on the state of the art. The second half (2023-2024) of this two-year season will include the world premiere of plays developed during this residency, including the commission of a new play by peña.

Season memberships for Part 1 of the double season, spanning September 2022-June 2023, are available to the public starting this week. Single tickets to individual plays go on sale September 1, 2022.

Kristoffer Diaz was born and raised in New York City and his plays pulse with the energy and vitality of the city he grew up in. Best known for his Pulitzer-finalist play The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, his play-worlds range from hipster bars of the Lower East Side to the basketball courts of Brooklyn to the glitz and glamor of the professional wrestling ring. His plays have a muscularity uniquely his own and have earned him Lucille Lortel, Obie and Jefferson Awards.

Christopher oscar peña grew up in San Jose, California before moving to New York City to earn his BFA and MFA at NYU, and now splits his time between New York and LA. An in-demand TV-writer for such hit series as CW's "Jane The Virgin," HBO's "Insecure" and ABC/Hulu's "Promised Land," for which he is Supervising Producer, peña works in media ranging from theatre to tv to opera. A resident of New Dramatists and a former Fellow with The Lark, NYTW, the Playwrights Realm and the Old Vic/New Voices, peña was recently named Artistic Associate at Arizona Theatre Company and was listed on Backstage's "Future Broadway Power List."

Lauren Yee At only 37 years old, Lauren Yee is already one of the most produced and honored playwrights working today. A winner of the Doris Duke Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, the Steinberg, Horton Foote and Francesca Primus Prizes, and a finalist for the Edward Kennedy and Susan Smith Blackburn Awards, her plays have been commissioned and produced by the Goodman, Victory Gardens, La Jolla, Portland Center Stage, Berkeley Rep, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, ACT, Atlantic Theater Company, Denver Center and many others. Her voice is fresh, whimsical, highly theatrical and deeply poignant.