NEW YORK CITY: The Cherry Lane Playwrights Collective, a collaboration between Cherry Lane Theatre and playwright Annie Baker, have named their inaugural cohort of six writers as part of the new playwriting fellowship. The selected writers are Hannah Applebaum, Jeesun Choi, Banna Desta, Jimmy Fay, Onyekachi Iwu, and Maureen Sebastian. They begin the program on Sept. 13. The nine-month developmental program will meet over ten Sunday evenings at the Cherry Lane, culminating in a series of individual readings from the cohort.
Hannah Applebaum is a writer and actor who lives in New York City. She has worked with the Wooster Group and New York City Players. Hannah– whose work spans theatre, fiction, and journalism– has written for outlets such as Byline and the Jersey City Times.
Jeesun Choi is a transnational Korean playwright based in New York. Plays include Bia Kim, Melanie in Minneapolis, and To the Ends of the Earth / 땅끝까지. Her work has been presented at Soho Rep, JACK, NYTW, Playwrights Realm, Bushwick Starr, American Opera Project, Nashville Rep, and more. She has received a Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, a MacDowell Fellowship, and an NYC Women’s Fund grant.
Banna Desta (she/they) is an Eritrean and Ethiopian American writer for the stage and screen. She crafts stories about and for people of African descent.
Jimmy Fay self-identifies as a transdisciplinary dykefag and is writer from Arizona. They have just completed their MFA at Brown University.
Onyekachi Iwu is a Nigerian American playwright and director from Nashville, TN. Her Southern horror play, the magical south, is currently in development at Vineyard Theatre. As a director, Iwu has developed new plays with National Black Theatre, MCC Theater, New Dramatists, Mercury Store, Public Theater, and The Civilians.
Maureen Sebastian is an award-winning performer, writer, and producer. She was recently listed as a finalist for the Leah Ryan Playwriting Prize and can currently be seen in AMC’s The Terror: Devil in Silver. She is a proud member of Ma-Yi Theatre’s Writers Lab and the Actors Center.
This collaboration between Baker and Cherry Lane highlights the theatre’s history of fostering up-and-coming playwrights in New York City. As a non-profit, the Cherry Lane Playwrights Collective seeks to foster bold, innovative voices in the theatrical arts by cultivating spaces where artists can take risks, deepen their craft, and shape new worlds for the stage.
As the city’s oldest Off-Broadway theatre, Cherry Lane Theatre has hosted early and experimental works from legendary artists, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eugene O’Neill, Samuel Beckett, Pablo Picasso, T. S. Eliot, Tennessee Williams, Sam Shepard, and more. Acquired by A24 in 2023, the theatre has undergone a multi-year renovation and reopened in September 2025.
