The AAP Emerging Playwright Commission Program supports an emerging Asian American playwright. The commission comes with a $1,000 award, institutional and artistic support to help advance their work on the commissioned play and a staged reading.

2025 Recipient
Nico Pang

Nico Pang is a Cantonese writer and director exploring diasporic belonging, memory, and queerness as possibility. Plays include: I Think I Was Born Missing You (IAMA Theatre Company Emerging Playwrights Lab Series), Moonbow (Hantext Festival at East West Players), and My Body Is a Season (SpeakEasy Stage). Nico is an alum of IAMA’s Emerging Playwrights Lab and Company One’s PlayLab. Nico has directed with Celebration Theatre, Greenway Court Theatre, Chance Theater, The Theater Offensive, and CHUANG Stage. They are currently leading the writers’ room for Celebration Theatre’s Trans Lineage: Rites of Passage and will direct its world premiere this December. nicopang.com

2021 Recipient
Ankita Raturi

No One Plays Badminton in America

16-year-olds Citra and Melati are nationally ranked badminton players determined to go pro – and represent Indonesia on the global stage. But when Citra’s family immigrates to America, she learns that she has other wants outside of her and Melati’s badminton dreams. And while Melati is on the path to achieve everything they wanted, she has never felt more alone. No One Plays Badminton in America asks us: Is making your country proud worth hardly ever seeing your family? Is the pursuit of a dream worth losing your culture?

The 2021 AAP Emerging Playwright Commission was awarded in partnership with Asian American Pacific Friends of the Theatre (APAFT). Finalists for the 2021 APAFT & AAP Emerging Playwright Commission were Kathryn de la Rosa, Lisa Sanaye Dring and Mary Lyon Kamitaki.