Ma-Yi Theater Company Calls for Applications to Ma-Yi Writers Lab

Ma-Yi Theater Company has announced a call for applications to the Ma-Yi Writers Lab, the largest resident company of Asian-American Playwrights ever assembled. The Ma-Yi Writers Lab is a professional peer-based workshop in permanent residence at Ma-Yi, designed to nurture and showcase Asian-American Playwrights across the country. Applications will open on Monday, July 1st and will close on Wednesday, July 31st, 2024 at 11:59 PM EST or when 100 applications are received. There is no fee to apply. Applications are currently available at https://ma-yitheatre.org/shows/ma-yi-writers-lab-now-accepting-applications/.  

Founded in 2004 by Sung Rno in connection with the NEA/TCG Playwright’s Residency program, the Ma-Yi Writers Lab underwent a shift in 2022. Now led by Gaven Trinidadand Kalina Ko, the Ma-Yi Writers Lab has welcomed new emerging AAPI playwrights each year in the Playground Program. Former Playground Labbies include Claro de los Reyes, ayla xuân chi sullivan, Seayoung Yim, Kaela Mei-Shing Garvin, Ankita Raturi, Minghao Tu, and Liqing Xu.

The Playground Program is a six-month program where four writers meet in-person every month along with two directors and three actors. Writers are encouraged to bring no more than ten pages of material each month for the director and actors to the stage. The goal is to play with space, movement, and staging to get a sense of how these pages and words might live in bodies and three-dimensions. Members will collaborate with directors and actors from the Ma-Yi community and beyond. The four writers selected for the program will be chosen based on an application process. Ma-Yi encourages self-identifying, New York-based, emerging writers from the AAPI diaspora to apply. 

Ma-Yi strives to ensure that each cohort collectively represents a diverse set of worldviews, backgrounds, and aesthetics. Ma-Yi is especially interested in elevating new voices that revel in the theatrical and have interesting inquiries in the world we live in.

An informational session will be held on Sunday, June 30 at 4 PM EST. Interested applicants are encouraged to attend. To sign-up, please visit https://forms.gle/tLWCjJuqbTH4zmQG8 

Applicants will be asked to respond to the following questions: Where are you in your life (both in playwriting/theatre and generally) right now? What is exciting to you? What is challenging? What are you trying to solve or learn about in your writing process? Can you tell us about a moment of discovery in a collaborative process that affected your writing going forward? What does a playwright driven development process look like? 

Additionally, a resume and a 20 page work sample, with an explanation for why you selected those pages, is required.

The next cohort for the Ma-Yi Writers Lab’s Playground Program will run from January - June 2025. Please contact lab-cocoordinators@ma-yitheatre.org with questions or comments.