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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 #7 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 #7 WRITERS
Cara Greene Epstein
CARA GREENE EPSTEIN (she/her) isn’t a doctor, but she has played one on TV. As a filmmaker, she wrote, co-directed, and starred in the award-winning feature film Dragonfly, currently streaming on Amazon Prime, and is an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Screenwriting Fellow. As a theatre-maker, Cara has worked with companies including The Old Globe, Steppenwolf, Lookingglass, New York Theatre Workshop, and the American Theater Wing, and currently serves as the Executive Director of IAMA Theatre Company. In her TED Talk How Theater Weathers Wars, Outlasts Empires, and Survives Pandemics, Cara explores how the arts build a better world. She really hopes that’s true.
Andrew X.I. Grace
Andrew X.I. Grace is a writer, actor, and director. Growing up, he was homeschooled in a right-wing Evangelical community, so his dramas explore multi-racial experiences, queer identity, and feature protagonists hiding secrets, searching for belonging, or attempting to unite people with drastically opposed values. He has had original stage plays produced at Playhouse West, screened his short films across the country, and won the Austin Film Festival's Virtual Pitch competition. He recently completed UCLA's Professional Program in Producing and EST/LA's New West Playwrights program. As an actor, he has appeared in projects for SHOWTIME, Netflix, Disney, and more.
John Guerra
John Guerra is a Latinx writer who left home to find his fortune in the theatre. He never found the fortune, but he did become a 2019 Sundance Theatre fellow and a member of The Ghost Road Company. When he's not divising with Ghost Road, he's writing about class, California, and minotaurs. He's worked with orgz across LA, including: The Road, Ghost Road, The Blank, Coin & Ghost, The Fountain, Rogue Artists Ensemble, Will Geer's Theatricum Botanicum, the Vagrancy, Pomona College, and Cal Poly Pomona. Upcoming projects: The Room By the Sea (Coin + Ghost, Current Season).
Aja Houston
Aja Houston is a nomadic playwright from Everywhere, USA, due to an army brat adjacent childhood. Aja creates with passion, politics, and magic to boldly build off-kilter, uncanny worlds to tell monolith-breaking Black stories. Starting her career as an actress in London, she moved to LA, where she earned her MFA in Dramatic Writing from USC. Her thesis play Journey to Alice, was a 2019 Eugene O'Neill Theatre Conference Semi-Finalist. Some of her other plays have been developed in Playwrights Groups at The Road Theatre, Antaeus Theatre, and Ammunition Theatre Company where she is a member.
Donnie Jarman
Donnie Jarman has had nine of his stage plays produced for Los Angeles and New York stages. His most recent, Things to Avoid in a Eulogy, premiered at the Hollywood Fringe Festival this past June, winning Best of Broadwater, Pick of Fringe, and the Hollywood Producers Encore Award. Tiger Lilies (which had productions in both Los Angeles and New York) and Nine Ball were both Critic’s Choice recipients in the Los Angeles Times and produced as feature films, alongside his first play, Go Fish. Donnie also recently wrote and directed the short film In Pieces for the 48HFP Los Angeles, which won the Audience Award and was nominated for Best Writing, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Film, and also won Best Short in the Washington Film Awards. Another among Donnie’s eight new full length plays that he wrote during Covid, Hubcap Moon, was recently given staged readings at both the Actors Temple Theatre and the AMT Theater in New York, both directed by Steven Ditmyer, and will be having it’s world premiere Off Broadway this Spring.
M.J. Kang
M.J. Kang (she/her) is a playwright and actor. Born in Seoul, Korea, raised in Toronto, Canada, she is a Canadian and American citizen. She’s been awarded the AGE Legacy Award, Signpost Fellowship, The Breath Project New Play Award 2022, Best Play Toronto Fringe Festival 2025, and has been commissioned by Portland Playhouse, Shotgun Players, and AFO Solo Shorts. Her plays have been produced by Son of Semele, Pan Asian Rep, East West Players, Theater Passe Muraille, Tarragon Theater, Factory Theater, Blyth Festival Theater, Shakespeare in Action, AFO Solo Shorts, Shotgun Players and many others. She’s been playwright in residence at Nightwood Theater and Theater Passe Muraille and been part of many writers groups across the US and Canada. She was nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best New Play and has received other awards, fellowships, and nominations including grants from the Canada Council, Toronto Arts Council, and scholarships from Groundlings, UCB, Westside Comedy Theater and Impro Theater. She's been on the writing staff as Story Editor on a HBO Max one hour drama and has acted in films, television, radio and seen on stages across Canada, the US, and London, England. Most recently as an actor, she was a recurring guest star in Star Wars: Skeleton Crew (Lucasfilms) and Gangnam Project (BBC/CBC). As a screenwriter, she will begin shooting her first feature project in August 2025.
Shawn Christopher Lovell Nabors
Shawn Christopher Lovell Nabors is an Actor, Writer, and Musician originally from Brooklyn, NY. He holds an MFA in Acting from the American Repertory Theater/Moscow Art Theatre Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University and a BFA in Acting from Syracuse University. Most recently, he starred as MOSES in Pass Over at Studio Theatre in DC. He was a California Creative Corps grant recipient, developing his new play, The People with the Trees in Their Chest, with Grand Vision Foundation. His work has been supported by The Liberation Theatre Company, Fire This Time Festival, Atlantic Theater Company, and more.
Jonas Oppenheim
Jonas Oppenheim is an eclectic comedy writer whose plays have received over 50 productions. His guerrilla satires have been performed in parking lots and alleys across the country, in the streets outside presidential conventions, and on the doorstep of the A.D.L. Also inside some theaters. He recently received an Individual Artist Grant from the California Arts Council. Jonas is a story producer for American Gangster: Trap Queens on BET+. His podcast sitcom, The Love Ark (it’s The Love Boat on Noah’s Ark!), is available everywhere. He lives in Los Angeles with excellent wife, child, cat, and garden.
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