2025-2026 Cohort
Noa Gardner
Noa Gardner is a Native Hawaiian poet and playwright born and raised in Kaimuki on the island of O’ahu. He recently graduated from the University of Southern California with an MFA Dramatic Writing. Noa investigates different aspects of Hawaiian culture, people, as well as his own family, through his writing. Much of his work centers on family dramas, specifically Hawaiian families in Hawaiian homes. He was a national finalist for the Gary Garrison Ten Minute play award (2016) and has had his plays read in collaboration with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Son of Semele Ensemble, Los Angeles Theatre Company, and Pasadena Playhouse.
Sean Dunnington
Sean Dunnington is a New York–based playwright from Hawai‘i Island. His plays include Failed Artist, Jew Bash, The Children's Farm, Zap, Flat Fish, and Hawaiian Shake. His work has been produced nationally and internationally, with premieres and showings at TheatreLab (Off-Broadway), Magic Theatre, Lounge Theatre, LAMDA, Centre 42 (Singapore), as well as in libraries, state museums, old attics, public radio stations, film festivals, and LGBTQ+ centers. Sean has been a resident playwright with the Orchard Project, Centre 42, East-West Center, Waiwai Collective, and the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. He has received fellowships from MacDowell, the Dramatists Guild Foundation, Magic Theatre, Creative Labs Hawai‘i, the National Collaborative for Health Equity, the California Arts Council, and the Henry Luce Foundation. He is the founding director of Tree Moss (est. 2021), a collective for emerging and established Hawai‘i playwrights, which received the Dramatists Guild Foundation’s Catalyst Fellowship. Sean holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU Tisch School of the Arts (2024) and a BA in Applied Playwriting from the Johnston Center for Integrative Studies at the University of Redlands (2019).
Keali'iwahine
Hokoana-Gormley
Kealiʻiwahine Hokoana (she, her) is a Native Hawaiian dramatist from the island of Maui. She received her BA in Hawaiian Studies from the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, her AA in Liberal Arts from University of Maui College and her high school degree from the Kamehameha Schools. In 2003 she co-founded a local 501(c) 3 non-profit theater company in Hawaiʻi called Talking Stories, where she wrote and produced many of the productions. Keaʻs plays have shown all over Hawaiʻi and even at The Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her play “The Legend of Kaululaʻau” was housed at the Ritz-Carlton-Kapalua for about a year. Her play “Koi, Like the Fish” was made into a film and shown all across Maui by the Office on Aging as an impetus for discussion about elder abuse. She is in her third year of being a member of Tree Moss.
Mākena Miller
Mākena Miller (She/They/Mak) grew up in Honolulu, Hawaii. Mak moved to New York City and experienced her first winter (yikes!) when she attended NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and as a result Mak now has a proper winter coat. Soon after Mak dove into improv at UCB (advanced study), as well as other comedy theaters in New York. Mākena has an MFA in Acting from American Conservatory Theater and recently trained with Philippe Gaulier, CLOWN ALERT!
Mak co-wrote, produced, and performed in her play, 3HAMS. After touring 3HAMS in Brooklyn, they brought it to The Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2024!
Daniel Akiyama
Daniel Akiyama is the author of the full-length plays A Cage of Fireflies (Sundance Institute Theatre Lab selection; O’Neill finalist) and Games for Boys (Sundance and O’Neill finalist). His short plays include Udder Paradise, The Bitter Fury and Magnificent Vengeance of Don Clown, and an adaptation of The Yellow Wallpaper. Daniel has worked with members of the Keakalehua Playwrights Hui on Searching for Keaka and Waiau, two experiments in linked collaborative writing. A graduate of the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Daniel studied playwriting with Dennis Carroll, Y York, Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl, and Daniel A. Kelin II. He’s a member of the Dramatists Guild, New Play Exchange, and Tree Moss Playwrights, is honored to serve on the board of directors of Keakalehua and on the community advisory board for the Edward Sakamoto Collection at UH Mānoa, and was a nominee for the 2023 United States Artists Fellowship.
Hannah Ii-Epstein
Hannah Ii-Epstein (she/her/hers) was born and raised on the North Shore of ʻOahu and received her MFA at Northwestern University. She is a creative writer, award winning dramatist, and Artistic Director of Nothing Without a Company. Hannah is a founding member of BearCat Productions, a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists, a 50th season writer at Kumu Kahua Theatre, a board member at Aloha Center Chicago, and a member of the Ke Aliʻi Victoria Kaʻiulani Hawaiian Civic Club, Ke Kula Kupaa O Ka Pakipika hālau, and Tree Moss a professional collective for Hawaiʻi playwrights. Hannah is a 2021 recipient of 3Arts Make a Wave grant and About Face Theatre’s Playwright Artist Grant. In 2023, Hannah worked as a Co-Curator on "Chicago’s Legacy Hula” exhibit at The Field Museum (closing March 9, 2025) as well as a panelist and playwright at the first ever APIDA Arts Festival in Chicago, IL.
Jeannie Barroga
Jeannie Barroga has been a Bay Area-based playwright and workshop teacher at various institutions and within theater writing programs. Upcoming addition to The Jeannie Barroga Papers, Stanford University Green Library’s Special Collections, is due soon (current online Searchworks link): https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/11056978.
Commemorating the collection, readings of her play AURORA were presented throughout the Bay Area and Valley institutions and performance spaces including Stanford University/Palo Alto High School, University of the Pacific, and Foothill College.
Ms. Barroga is a Lifetime Dramatists Guild Member.
Selected highlights of awarded plays are BUFFALO'ED, on the presence of African American soldiers in the 1899 Philippine War, awarded the Wallace Alexander Gerbode/William & Flora Hewlett Foundation Playwright Collaboration Grant. The play premiered at San Jose Stage in 2012; a second production was staged at Kumu Kahua Theater in Honolulu 2016. WALLS on the Vietnam Memorial designed by Maya Lin and awarded the National Endowment for the Arts Access to Artistic Excellence Grant has been produced across the country, is published, and anthologized. BANYAN, a fantasy metaphor on 9-1-1’s impact on a young shredder in an Enron-like stockroom, was awarded the Arty Award for Best Original Production. That play garnered eleven of 37 nominations.
Selected national productions are RITA’S RESOURCES at Pan Asian Repertory, New York; EYE OF THE COCONUT, her first main stage production at Seattle’s Northwest Asian American Theater; WALLS at San Francisco’s Asian American Theater with subsequent productions; and TALK-STORY, at multiple theaters. Gaining notoriety, WALLS was and continues to be produced, published, and taught in national and international institutions. The play had also been awarded an NEA Access to Artistic Excellence Award. She then received the Maverick Award in Los Angeles from Women’s Playwrights. Unproduced NEW PLAYS since housing 2012's Archives to Stanford's Green Library: AURORA, M, MAKAʻAINANA, NORTH SIDE STORY, TRACKING KILROY, and TRAITS (read at Keakalehua 2021-23.) She currently is among readers for the 2025 OSF Ashland New Play scripts.
In 1981, she had founded the Playwright Forum, now TheatreWorks’ New Works.
Ms. Barroga had read scripts before becoming TheatreWorks’ first Literary Manager with a brief stint in that position at the Oakland Ensemble Theater. She also served as Interim Artistic Director for both Asian American Theater Company and Bindlestiff Studio.
Other projects include novels TURN RIGHT AT THE WATER BUFFALO (a mother-daughter trip to the politically simmering Philippines post-Marcos era heats up their personal encounters) and MARKED, a mystery paranormal novel.
She has been an indie film co-producer for Encounters on Earth and on YouTube.
Barroga was an actor in the international cult film I AM A GHOST, Live Oak Theater with Those Women Productions (a 2018 Theatre Bay Area Best Anthology Production Finalist), at CentralWorks, and with Playground. She toured her one-woman show A GOOD FACE throughout the West Coast including the Mark Taper Forum, Stanford University, Warehouse Rep, Seattle Center, etc.
For the National Asian American Theater Conference, she directed AATC’s chosen play at LaMama’s, New York following other directing roles at TheatreWorks, Brava Theater Center, etc. A favorite project of hers was shaping personal scenes with and directing residential recovery clients at Brava Theater.
She held writing workshops and served on grants panels nationwide. Based in San Francisco by the early 1990s, Barroga traveled from Honolulu to Boston for lectures and workshops including Seattle, Colorado Springs, Chicago, Minneapolis, Washington, D.C., and New York. She co-produced both SOMA webisodes on YouTube and Encounters on Earth shorts on Vimeo. For the California tour of The ROMANCE OF MAGNO RUBIO, Barroga served as consultant to producers at the Bob Hope Theater, Stockton and at Skyline College, San Bruno.
Personal Details: Barroga was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to a second-generation of Filipino parents in America. With five siblings all educated in the Midwest among only a few others in a Filipino immigrant community, After the University of Wisconsin, Barroga moved to Palo Alto, California in the early 1970s. She secured positions at Stanford in both the Pediatrics and the Alumni departments with further employment at a young magazine eventually renamed Mother Jones. She returned to the Midwest, married, gathering more magazine and graphic arts employment all the while ushering for the Milwaukee Pabst Theater. Back in Palo Alto by the early 1980s, she kept graphics jobs while honing her playwriting skills. Her idea to start a playwrights’ group, Playwright Forum, spun her career forward. In 2024 after 50-some years in the Bay Area, she is based with her husband of 24 years in Northern California.
Website: www.jeanniebarroga.com FaceTime Instagram Related: www.iamaghost.com
JOSHUA "BABA" TAVARES
Joshua "Baba" Tavares (he/him) is a Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) actor, singer, dancer, writer, director and teacher based in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. He received his MFA in Acting and Hana Keaka (Hawaiian Theatre) from UH Mānoa, and now is the head of acting there, serving as the newest Assistant Professor of Acting
Known for his standout performance as Angel in the 20th Anniversary National Tour of the Broadway musical RENT, he's also a pioneer in Hawaiʻi's theatre scene, originating captivating roles and creating original works including: Haku Wale and Glitter in the Paʻakai.
He also has credits in TV/Film with his most recent co-starring role in Fox's Rescue HI Surf. You can also catch him singing in Cirque du Soleil's sensational Waikīkī show, ʻAUANA.
Baba is a passionate storyteller, artist and teacher. His deep commitment to his craft, community and lāhui shines both on and off the stage and screen.