Antoinette Nwandu
Playwright
Antoinette Nwandu is a playwright who also writes for film & tv. Her play Pass Over (LCT3; Steppenwolf) was a NYT Critic’s Pick and won a Lucille Lortel Award and a Jeff Award for Best Play. A filmed version of Pass Over—directed by Spike Lee—premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and at SXSW, and is currently streaming on Amazon Prime. Pass Over premiered in London at The Kiln. Her play Breach: a manifesto on race in america through the eyes of a black girl recovering from self-hate premiered at Victory Gardens. And her play Tuvalu, or The Saddest Song will premiere at The Vineyard Theater during the Spring 2020 season. Antoinette is under commission from The Denver Center, Ars Nova & Audible. Antoinette’s writing has won the Whiting Award, the Samuel French Next Step Award, the Cullman Prize, the Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, the Sky Cooper Prize, and spots on the 2016 and 2017 Kilroys lists. She is a MacDowell Fellow, a Dramatists Guild Fellow, and an Ars Nova Play Group alum, and her work has been developed & supported by The Sundance Theatre Lab, Space on Ryder Farm, Ignition Fest, The Cherry Lane Mentor Project, Page73, PlayPenn, Southern Rep, The Flea, Naked Angels, Fire This Time, and The Movement Theater Company. In film & tv, Antoinette wrote for Season 2 of Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It (Netflix), and is adapting the short story “Wash Clean the Bones” for Amazon Studios from the collection Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson-Spires.