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IAMA Theatre Company names Chloé Hung as 2023 recipient of
Shonda Rhimes–sponsored ‘Unsung Voices Playwriting Commission’
LOS ANGELES (March 23, 2023) — IAMA Theatre Company has selected Chloé Hung as the 2023 recipient of the company’s annual Rhimes Unsung Voices Playwriting Commission, sponsored by award-winning writer and producer Shonda Rhimes (Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, Inventing Anna). Now in its sixth year, the commission was created to help grow and nourish budding playwrights and artists with an emphasis on cultural inclusion, and to showcase fresh, creative, thought-provoking work.
“We’ve been fans of Chloé’s work for a few years now, and were lucky enough to program her into our 2019 New Works Festival,” says IAMA artistic director Stefanie Black. “Getting to develop a piece with her from the ground up is the perfect next step. We couldn’t be more excited to continue this relationship.”
“I am grateful to Stefanie Black and IAMA Theatre Company for this incredible opportunity,” says Hung. “They were so supportive during the reading of my play Model Minority in their 2019 New Works Festival. I look forward to starting a new project with them and collaborating with their amazing group of artists.”
Born and raised in Toronto, Hung is a Chinese-Canadian playwright, TV writer and screenwriter. Hung’s plays include All Our Yesterdays (Toronto Fringe Festival, Next Stage Theatre Festival), Issei, He Say (New Jersey Repertory Company world premiere, Kennedy Center/NNPN MFA workshop), Three Women of Swatow (Tarragon Theatre world premiere, RBC Emerging Playwrights award, CBC’s PlayMe podcast), Model Minority (AyeDefy reading series, Banff Playwrights Lab, Moving Arts MADlab) and Alien of Extraordinary Ability (Geffen Theatre’s Writers Room). Her plays have been workshopped in Toronto, New York, Washington DC, Banff, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. For TV, she has written for OWN Network (Queen and Cherish the Day) and Freeform (The Watchful Eye) and has developed for Netflix. In film, Chloé has been a Black List screenwriters lab fellow and a Women In Film production program fellow as writer and director of the short film Signal. Her latest short film, Gem & Shaz, was produced in association with the Harold Greenberg Fund and Bell Media, and will premiere on the Canadian streaming service Crave. Hung holds an M.F.A. from the Dramatic Writing Program at NYU Tisch.
IAMA has been dedicated to developing 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 Foundation.
Founded in 2007, IAMA is a Los Angeles-based ensemble of artists committed to the creation and cultivation of new voices and artists that challenge boundaries and take risks, while fostering an inclusive community that inspires theater-makers of future generations. Los Angeles is one of the most diverse metropolitan areas in the world and IAMA’s work reflects the new voices and changing attitudes that continue to shape this city, state, country and world. Designated by Playbill as “one of 20 regional houses every theater lover must know,” the award-winning company has seen many plays generated at IAMA travel to off-Broadway, including to Second Stage and Playwrights Horizons, 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 on and off-Broadway and across the country. IAMA has been dedicated to developing new plays and musicals by emerging and established playwrights, culminating in over 25 world, West Coast and Los Angeles premieres.
The Rhimes Foundation was established in 2016 by writer/producer Shonda Rhimes and her family. The foundation was created to support arts, education and activism with a focus on promoting cultural inclusion and fighting inequality.
For more information about IAMA Theatre Company and the Rhimes Unsung Voices Playwriting Commission, contact Lucy Pollak at [email protected] or go to www.iamatheatre.com.
For more information about Shonda Rhimes and the Rhimes Foundation please contact Lindsay Rachelefsky at [email protected].
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