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The Ignite Project is an 8 week lab for artists to create brand new plays
written for or inspired by our company. Learn more.
COHORT #6 FACILITATORS
Makeda Declet
Makeda Declet is a Guyanese-American playwright, TV/film writer, and performer. She was shaped by network television, bootleg CDs, and an unwavering love of the WB. Originally from Brooklyn, NY, Makeda holds an MFA from Northwestern University in writing for the screen and stage and a BFA from New York University, Tisch School of the Arts.
David Johann Kim
David's award-winning plays TWO STOP and PANG SPA had their Los Angeles premieres produced by EST/LA and CHALK REP respectively in Spring of 2024, to critical acclaim. Both plays were awarded the Los Angeles New Play Project Award, as well as Venturous Theatre Fund Grants.
As an actor on both coasts for over two decades, David was part of the development of many new plays. He recently taught playwriting at Loyola Marymount for 3 semesters. He holds an MFA from UC San Diego and is a member of The Dramatists Guild, The Playwrights Union, Circle X Theatre's 2024 Evolving Playwrights Group, Chalk Rep’s Writers group, Playwrights ThinkTank, EST/LA’s Playwrights Unit and is a co-founder of EST/ LA’s Ignite Project.
His latest play IMAGINED NOISE... is currently in development...
As an actor on both coasts for over two decades, David was part of the development of many new plays. He recently taught playwriting at Loyola Marymount for 3 semesters. He holds an MFA from UC San Diego and is a member of The Dramatists Guild, The Playwrights Union, Circle X Theatre's 2024 Evolving Playwrights Group, Chalk Rep’s Writers group, Playwrights ThinkTank, EST/LA’s Playwrights Unit and is a co-founder of EST/ LA’s Ignite Project.
His latest play IMAGINED NOISE... is currently in development...
Jennie Webb
Jennie Webb is a Los Angeles-based playwright and dramaturg with works produced locally by Inkwell Theater, Rogue Machine Theatre, EST/LA, Santa Monica Rep, Virginia Avenue Project, Theatre of NOTE and La Jolla Playhouse’s WOW Festival as well as in Canada, the UK, India, Iran, Iceland and at colleges/universities. Her plays have been presented by Great Plains Theatre Conferences, The Playwrights’ Center, Moving Arts MADlab, Blank Theatre, Playground-LA, Climate Change Theatre Action, Rogue Artist Ensemble’s Rogue Lab, Road Theatre Summer Playwrights Festivals & inaugural “Under Construction” Group, and published by Heinemann Press, Smith & Kraus, Next Stage Press and ICWP. National recognition includes Finalist (O’Neill Playwrights Conference, Gulfshore Playhouse, City Theatre) and Semi-Finalist (O’Neill, PlayPenn, Athena Project, Trustus) nods; she is the recipient of Max K. Lerner Playwriting Fellowships and a WIT Red Carpet Award. Member: the Playwrights Union, EST/LA, Honor Roll!, Dramatists Guild; co-founder: LA Female Playwrights Initiative (LAFPI). jenniewebbsite.com
PROGRAM COORDINATOR
Angela Bullock
Angela Bullock is an Actor/Writer and Teaching Artist. Most recent appearance: "Young Sheldon" (CBS). Soon to appear in Jonah Hill’s film "Outcome." She has received both a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle and Stage Raw nomination for "Watching OJ" at Ensemble Studio Theater Los Angeles, and an NAACP nomination for "Cassiopeia" at The Boston Court. Television guest and costars appearances include "Shameless", "Dexter", "Californication", "Oz" and "The Sopranos." Regional theater includes The Guthrie, Yale Repertory and Actors Theater of Louisville. Angela has published in "Arts & Letters and Lunch Ticket." She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University LA and is currently working on her first book.
COHORT #6 WRITERS
Rafeal Clements
Rafeal Clements has worked as an actor, storyteller, teacher, and director. He has performed in theaters throughout the United States such as New York’s Public Theatre, Houston’s Alley Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Hartford Stage Company, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Portland Stage Company, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Playmakers Repertory Company, New Federal Theatre, Target Margin, Circle Rep Lab Company, HERE, Prospect Theatre Company, The Hotel Savant, Ensemble Studio Theatre East, Sacred Fools, Company of Angels, City Garage, and Independent Shakespeare Company. Rafeal has told original stories at venues such as TRUE STORIES at EST/LA, STORY SALON, REVEALED, JAM Creatives, and CHILL VIBES.
Carolyn Huynh
Carolyn Huynh loves writing about messy Asian women who never learn from their mistakes. Her debut book, The Fortunes of Jaded Women was a Good Morning America book club pick and is being adapted for television by Heyday Studios and Universal. Her sophomore book, The Family Recipe, comes out from Atria in spring 2025. When she's not writing, Carolyn daydreams about having iced coffee on a rooftop in Ho Chi Minh City.
Victor Lesniewski
Victor Lesniewski's plays include The Fifth Domain (WP CATF), Couriers and Contrabands (WP TBG Theatre NYC), Cloven Tongues (WP The Wild Project NYC), Where Bison Run (Ars Nova Reading Series, NY Times Profile), Khardal (Berkeley Rep’s The Ground Floor), Cold Spring (ANPF), and The Hunt for Benedetto Montone (ANPF). He has also developed work at Roundabout, NYTW, Geva, SF Playhouse, Pioneer, Florida Studio, and others. Victor currently has a new play under commission from the EST/Sloan Project. He is a member of The Playwrights Union and is proud to sit on The Dramatists Guild’s DEIA Committee.
DeLane McDuffie
DeLane McDuffie is a Southern-bred, LA-based playwright, screenwriter, and poet. He was a Lower Depth Theatre “Cycle of Poverty” Play Commission Fellow. His play Follow the Lady was a finalist in The Crossroads Project's 2024 Diverse Voices Playwriting Initiative. Other plays include The Inaugural, Amy & Neil, Cop & Fiske, For the Love of God, Monomachia, Use as Directed, and Juice Box. His work has been produced by/at Towne Street Theatre, Fade to Black Play Festival, Seoul Players, and The Road Theatre Company. A Morehouse College and University of Miami grad, he also attended Royal Holloway, University of London.
Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera
Chicana Feminist and former Rodeo Queen, Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera writes so her desert childhood can be heard as loudly as her urban adulthood. A former high school teacher, she earned an MFA at Antioch and a PhD at USC. Her play Blind Thrust Fault was featured in CTG Writers’ Workshop Festival and her one-act play Temporary Arrangement was featured in the Short+Sweet Festival Hollywood. She is the author of a YA novel, Breaking Pattern (Inlandia Books) and a prose chapbook, Stories All Our Own (Bottlecap Press). She is a Macondista and works for literary equity through Women Who Submit.
Mak Shealy
Mak Shealy (they/she) is a writer and performer originally from a field in South Carolina and now based in Los Angeles. Mak's plays are nerdy, muscular, darkly comic stories usually centered on rural life, queer relationships and the thin line between life and afterlife. Mak loves a good TikTok conspiracy as much as they are obsessed with turn of the century literature and obscure, ambitious science experiments.
Chelsea Sutton
Chelsea Sutton is a writer and theatre maker of what she likes to call gothic whimsy. She’s a PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow, a Humanitas PlayLA award-winner, a graduate of the 2022 Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop, and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UC Riverside. Chelsea was a 2018 Sewanee Writers Conference Playwright Fellow and has been an invited playwright at the 2023 South Dakota State University New Works Festival, the 2024 Valdez Theatre Conference Play Lab, and the 2024 Kayenta New Works Lab. Her first flash fiction chapbook Only Animals is now available through Wrong Publishing.
Jenapher Zheng
Jenapher Zheng is an LA Native Actor, Writer, Cosplayer, and Multi-hyphenate with training from CalArts. Past acting work can be seen on NCIS:LA, played via Oculus Rift, heard on Audible, and witnessed live when it was at Geffen Playhouse, La Jolla Playhouse, Wuzhen Theatre Festival, South Coast Rep, and East West Players. She is the Art Director/Editor for all-female all-Asian company Kwento Comics. Most of her writing exists as poetry, with some works produced as short films or prose fiction. This is the first play she’s written in more than ten years. Ever onwards and upwards.
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