MSG Lab Playwrights for 2020-21
We are excited to share vAct‘s announcement of the 2020-21 MSG Lab Playwrights. The MSG Lab is vAct’s Playwrighting Theatre Program for developing new Asian Canadian work. Over the next eight months, the MSG playwrights will be receiving development support for their new scripts and working with PTC dramaturgs.
Grace Chin – A Funny Thing Happened On My Way To Canada
Meghna Haldar – Termite
Jenna Masuhara – Before They Cut Down Our Tree
Meet the Playwrights
Based in Vancouver, BC, Grace Chin writes, edits, produces, and acts. She co-founded the Pan-Asian Staged Reading Society; is General Manager of Ruby Slippers Theatre; and is on the board of Vancouver Short Film Festival. She is a member of the PGC and UBCP/ACTRA. Locally independently-produced plays include Twisting Fortunes, The Quickie, and The C-Word. Most recently, she was commissioned to write and perform a solo piece, A Funny Thing Happened On My Way to Canada, for SEACHS/Rumble Theatre. Her play The Eulogy was workshopped in translation in Tokyo, Japan, and she subsequently received a playwriting commission from ARC Works. A co-written feature screenplay, BollyCop, was optioned by Massey Productions. As a performer, Grace has appeared on ABC, CBS, CW, E!, Showcase, Hallmark, Freeform, CBC, and Netflix. She served on the board of Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre, and was Festival Director of Vancouver Asian Film Festival. Grace is googleable.
Meghna Haldar is a storyteller, educator and screen based artist based in Vancouver whose work has screened at museums, conferences, festivals and art galleries in Taiwan, Britain, Ireland, North America, Guatemala and India. She has taught at ECUAD, Arts Umbrella and University of Texas at Austin and is an alumni of WIDC, NSI Features First, Melting Silos and the Wet Ink collective. Her essay “Dirt: A Social Mirror” was published in the book From Conflict to Recognition: Moving Multiculturalism Forward by Rodopi/Brill in 2012. An advocate for trauma-informed care in the provincial child welfare system, she has been a jury member for Canada Council, BC Arts Council, DOXA, Praxis and Cineworks amongst others and is presently on the board of the frank theater company in Vancouver.
Jenna Masuhara is a non-binary artist. They graduated from SFU with a Bachelor of Arts in Communications with minors in Business, Publishing, and Dialogue in 2018. Jenna’s been working with Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre as their Operations and Communications Manager since 2018. They are excited to now work with the company as one of their MSG Lab Playwrights.