Working Theater’s Playwright in Residence program brings today’s most talented and dynamic writers into our creative home to develop daring new work that explores the rich, complex lives of working people.
Joining us for a season and receiving support and development, our resident playwrights craft stories rooted in the realities of labor, community, and resilience. Their work centers voices too often left out of the spotlight of NYC theater and celebrates the dignity and drama of everyday working life.
2026/27 Playwright in Residence
Andrea Ambam
Andrea Ambamis an award-winning storyteller and truthteller whose roots sprout from Cameroon. Currently, Andrea is the Director of Programming at Level Forward – where she stewards and hosts the Anthem Award-winning audience engagement platform More To Talk About (previously seen at Sundance Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, SXSW, and monthly in NYC at Soho House). She is a 2026 JACK Resident Artist, the 2026-2027 Playwright-in-Residence at Working Theater, and under commission by the Perelman Performing Arts Center and Civis Foundation for her experimental new play Twelve Angry Black Women. Pulsating at the intersection of art and social change as a playwright, performance artist, and creative producer – Andrea has developed her unruly imagination and multi-hyphenated practice through residencies and fellowships with New York Theatre Workshop, PEN America, Hi-ARTS, Anna Deavere Smith, Broadway Advocacy Coalition, The Playwrights Realm, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Signature Theatre, EmergeNYC; collaborations with BAM Fisher, Rattlestick Theatre, The Billie Holiday Theatre, Classical Theatre of Harlem, NYU Verbatim Performance Lab, The Apollo, National Black Theatre, Harlem9, and more.
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Her plays include: Twelve Angry Black Women (PAC-NYC Democracy Cycle), Date of Release (Working Theater and Broadway Advocacy Coalition’s Stage Left Festival), Fragile State (Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference Semifinalist, Theatre503 International Playwriting Award Longlist), R(estoration) I(n) P(rogress) (NYU Educational Theatre/Provincetown Playhouse, 2023), Rehearsing Justice: A One-Woman Show (Brooklyn Arts Exchange), Angelina Weld Grimke (Classical Theatre of Harlem/Playbill, Broadway Podcast Network), and more. She’s been a finalist or semi-finalist for the Rattlestick Van Lier Fellowship, Portland Center Stage’s JAW New Play Festival, Fault Line Theatre’s Irons in The Fire, NewVictory Labworks, and Ars Nova Play Group. At a collegiate level, Andrea was a competitive public speaker/performer where she was awarded 10 national championships including "Top Speaker in the Nation'' three times, and went on to debate conservative pundits on live TV. Andrea lives in Brooklyn where the rent is too damn high and holds a Masters degree in Art & Public Policy from NYU Tisch. www.andreaambam.com
In conjunction with this residency, Working Theater is thrilled to join The Action Lab as an Anchor Partner. In doing so, we are able to offer our Playwright in Residence more resources towards development while reaching new audiences to ignite conversations and spark change in our communities.
In addition to being a Playwright-in-Residence at Working theater, our Playwrights will be an Artist in Action Fellow at The Action Lab. The Artists in Action Fellowship aims to further cultivate the relationship between art and social justice by connecting artists to organizers and organizers to artists. This allows our Playwrights in Residence to play a more tangible role in our push toward liberation as well as provide organizers with new creative tools for their arsenal.
The Action Lab is a strategy center for social movements that sparks political and personal liberation. They provide rigorous and joyful spaces for organizers, leaders and artists to learn, to create and to strengthen our capacity to win. They strive to build a powerful culture that lifts us out of the immediate and enables us to envision and realize a just future.
Past Playwrights
2025/26: Kallan Dana
Kallan Dana is a playwright originally from Portland, Oregon. Her plays include Lobster (The Tank/Needy Lover, Best Theater of 2025 in The New Yorker and Vulture/New York Magazine) and RACECAR RACECAR RACECAR (The Hearth/A.R.T. NY). She has developed or presented work with Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, The Hearth, The Tank, Artists Repertory Theatre, The Cell, Portland Theater Festival, Bramble Theatre Company, Dixon Place, Northwestern University, and Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute. She is a New Georges affiliated artist and 2025 Audrey Resident, and a recipient of the 2025 National Theatre Conference Paul Green Award. She co-founded the artist collaboration group TAG at the Tank and makes theater with her company Needy Lover. MFA: Northwestern University.
2024/25: Alex Lin
Alex Lin is just a girl from Jersey. Plays developed at Roundabout, Second Stage, NYTW, MTC, the O’Neill, Rattlestick, Working Theater, Ojai, South Coast Rep, New Harmony, Two River, Playwrights Realm, Cape Cod Theatre Project, Central Square Theatre, Amphibian Stage, and Theater Mu. Guest lectures at CMU, Rutgers, and Union College. As an actor, she has performed at NYTW, Actors Theatre of Louisville, New Victory, Fault Line, HVSF, Ma-Yi, Jewish Plays Project, Amphibian Stage, Cape Cod Theatre Project, Ojai, and Commonwealth Shakespeare. Stavis Award winner, Susan Smith Blackburn Prize finalist, and Weissberger Award nominee. Colt Coeur Resident Artist, Rattlestick Van Lier Fellow. Juilliard. instagram: @hemeiling