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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.
COHORT #5 FACILITATORS
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
Rosie Narasaki
ROSIE NARASAKI is a Los Angeles-based playwright and actor. Her acting highlights include IN LOVE AND WARCRAFT and TWO MILE HOLLOW with Artists at Play, as well as a pre-Greta Gerwig turn as Amy in a multicultural transposition of LITTLE WOMEN. Her play UNRIVALED is to be produced by Playwright’s Arena in
2023 and her play WHEN YURI MET MALCOLM is currently touring schools across Los Angeles with East West Players’ Theatre for Youth Program.
2023 and her play WHEN YURI MET MALCOLM is currently touring schools across Los Angeles with East West Players’ Theatre for Youth Program.
Jacob Surovsky
Jacob Surovsky is a playwright, game designer, and puppeteer from Southern California. He is currently a member of EST/LA's New West Playwrights, and a participant in the first cohort of EST/LA's Ignite Project. He likes writing plays that are highly theatrical, sometimes about Judaism, and often featuring puppets. As a playwright, past favorite projects include Mira and the Whale, Christmastown, Happy Puppet Hour 2, and Emma and Richie's Big Viking Funeral!
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 #5 WRITERS
Ang Cruz
Ang Cruz (they/she) is a digital media professional and storyteller. Ang's work has been praised by numerous organizations such as the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Hollywood Foreign Press, and NBC Universal. They've also completed fellowships and labs with Outfest, the LA LGBT Center, Justice For My Sister, REACH LA, Pothos Art and Theater House, and Playwrights’ Arena. Along with their work in narrative writing, Ang is also a freelance journalist and board member for the Transgender Film Center. In their free time Ang enjoys watching video essays on horror movies and perfecting their iced lavender matcha recipe.
Chen Gu
Chen Gu is a writer-director born in Chengdu, China, and raised in Dallas, Texas, which explains their love of spicy food and sequined fringe. Their stories highlight unconventional families, queer love, and American loneliness. Chen was a writer on the Snapchat short form show “Two Sides: Unfaithful,” nominated for an NAACP Image award, and recently participated in the Moonshot Initiative pilot accelerator program. They believe that representation is not only about bolstering one’s own stories but that of other marginalized voices, and encourage everyone to amplify Palestinian journalists like @wizard_bisan1 and @lama_jamous9 in their freedom struggle.
Alberto Isaac
ALBERTO ISAAC has appeared in various local and regional theatres as well as on film and TV. Directing credits include ART, YANKEE DAWG YOU DIE, THE MAIDS, HUGHIE, PERFORMANCE ANXIETY, YELLOWFEVER (East West Players), CLAIM TO FAME, TROJAN WOMEN, 10 TO LIFE (Lodestone Theatre), and the world premieres of Ken Narasaki’s GHOSTS AND BAGGAGE , INNOCENT WHEN YOU DREAM and NO-NO BOY. His one act play CODA was produced at East West Players and at the Asian American Theatre Company in San Francisco.
India Kotis
BIO: India Kotis is a playwright and anthropologist chiefly interested in why and how the meanings of things change. Plays include BISEXUAL SADNESS (The Road); SYBILLE OF HARROGATE (G45 Productions); THE SECRET LIFE OF BICYCLES (The Blank); THE TANGIBLES (Playscripts, Inc.) and PHILIA (James E. Michael Prize in Playwriting), among others. India has held fellowships with the Museum of the City of New York and the American Museum of Natural History, where, until recently, she taught courses on anthropology, archaeology, the natural world and the known universe.
Chelsea Yakura-Kurtz
Chelsea Yakura-Kurtz is an actor, writer, and vagabond who splits her time between Los Angeles, New York and France. She is a member of Antaeus Theater Company and a co-founder of the Heretic Voice, a mobile theater company that specializes in actor-centric story-telling. Favorite theater credits include Elena in Uncle Vanya at Pasadena Playhouse and Sei Shonagon in Boston Court’s Unrivaled. Recent film/ tv credits include Swarm and Law & Order: SVU. She is a Shakespeare-lover, a mythology buff, and a sci-fi fanatic.
AJ Layague
AJ Layague (she/her/hers) is a Filipino-American playwright and composer with degrees from Stanford University, CalArts, and UC San Diego. Her play Cowgirl Katarungan’s Recipe for Adobo received a 2022 Finalist Prize in the Frank Moffett Mosier Fellowship for Works in Heightened Language Competition at Synecdoche Works as well as a 2023 Larking House Theatre Company Playwrights Intensive workshop and reading. She is also a 2023 Puffin Foundation Artist, a four-time semi-finalist for the Eugene O’Neill Music Theater Conference, a current semi-finalist for the Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference, and premiered new work at the 2023 PanAsian NuWorks Festival in NYC.
Zach Ring
I graduated from the University of Southern California with a BA in theater. Upon graduating, I workshopped one of my plays - Linda's Journey - at The Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. I then served as assistant director to Laura Gordon on a production of The Book of Will by Lauren Gunderson at Santa Cruz Shakespeare. Most recently, my fifteen-minute play (The Man at the Door) premiered at the Queens Short Play Festival in Woodside, New York.
Inger Tudor
INGER TUDOR is a graduate of London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art classical theatre program and Harvard (college and law School). She is a member of The Road and Rogue Machine Theatre companies and a guest artist with A Noise Within and Antaeus theatre companies. Her favorite recent credits include Lifespan of a Fact at Fountain Theatre and Rubicon Theatre, Merchant of Venice, Annotated with Theatre Dybbuk (Stage Raw award for Best Ensemble), Rose McClendon in Voodoo Macbeth (Amazon Prime, Apple TV), and the voice of Bree Stone in the new James Patterson audiobooks, Cross Down and Triple Cross.
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