Elizabeth Wong

Elizabeth Wong (she/her) joined the Conservatory in 2020. She is a playwright/director known for her unique melding of comedy and social justice issues. Her latest play, Space Nuns of the Rescue Mainframe, is an experimental interactive dystopian comedy: think Library of Congress—but set in space! Wong’s award-winning plays have been produced nationally and internationally. Her recent work includes @Lys, a modern take on Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, written especially for Berklee LBGTQ2S+ actors and commissioned by the Conservatory. The Los Angeles Times also commissioned her to write a personal essay about the January 23, 2023 mass shooting in her hometown of Monterey Park, California. Her plays include Letters to a Student Revolutionary, Kimchee & Chitlins, Dating & Mating in Modern Times, and China Doll. 

She directed Lucy Kirkwood’s nuclear disaster play, The Children, for Fairhaven Summer Repertory Theatre, and has directed her own plays at SUNY Geneseo and SUNY Albany. Her memberships include the Dramatist Guild, PEN, and the Writers Guild West. Currently, Wong is an inaugural member of the Odyssey Ensemble Theater’s writers group. She also recently produced and wrote Voices of the Universe, a multimedia interactive video and soundscape commissioned in 2024 by the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. The video was projected onto the exterior walls of the famous Mt. Wilson Observatory, which is where the existence of other galaxies was proved and where it was confirmed that the universe was/is expanding.
 

Highlights

• Worked with Margaret Cho as a staff writer for her ABC sitcom, All-American Girl
• Worked with director Jennifer Chang on the audio play Bingo Bitches (written by Elizabeth Wong) for Antaeus Theatre
• Worked as a dramaturg with playwright Jon Lipsky on his Cambodia Odyssey, produced by Actors Theatre of Louisville
• Worked as director/producer (with legacy Asian American novelist Eleanor Wong Telemaque and playwright Velina Hasu Houston) on a stage adaptation of It’s Crazy to Stay Chinese in Minnesota for the Ebell Theatre

Awards and Recognitions

Wong’s awards include the Tanne Foundation Award for Artistic Achievement, the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award, and the Kennedy Center’s David Mark Cohen National Playwriting Award. She has also been a Disney Writing Fellow, and she has received residencies at The Hermitage, UCROSS Big Red Foundation, and YADDO. She was an artist in residence at the Ecole Cantonale d’art du Valais in Sierre, Switzerland.