Los Angeles News Geraldine Inoa First Recipient of IAMA’s Shonda Rhimes-Backed Commission The Brooklyn-based playwright will develop a new play for the L.A. company with the help of its new patron.

By Olivia Clement

February 13, 2018

Brooklyn-based playwright and activist Geraldine Inoa is the first recipient of The Rhimes Unsung Voices Playwriting Commission from Los Angeles’ IAMA Theatre Company. TV producer and writer Shonda Rhimes, who was named IAMA’s first Patron of the Arts last spring, created the commission to support an underrepresented writer of color who has not yet had a play professionally produced,

Read: SHONDA RHIMES NAMES IAMA THEATRE COMPANY’S INAUGURAL PATRON OF THE ARTS

Inoa is a member of the Public Theater’s 2016–17 Emerging Writers Group. Her play Scraps was developed through the Labyrinth Theater Company’s Up Next Series and was a semifinalist for the O’Neil National Playwrights Conference. She was a finalist for the 2017 Van Lier New Voices Fellowship at the Lark in New York City and winner of Pride Films and Plays’ 2016 LezPlay Contest. Her work has been developed at the Future is Female Festival, the All Out Arts Reading Series and the Gallatin Arts Festival.

“We searched the country for the past six months and were blown away by the level of talent we came across,” said IAMA co-artistic directors Stefanie Black, Christian Durso, and Katie Lowes in a statement. “We are honored to name Geraldine as our Unsung Voice. She’s a fresh, dynamic, strong storyteller, and we are thrilled to share a platform with her and bring her voice to our L.A. audiences.”