Haruna Lee, theater maker, screenwriter, and educator, and Peter Jay Fernandez, actor, teacher, and Co-Head of Acting at Columbia, are in residence this spring, leading creative development workshops with The Actors Center’s Resident Company focusing on writing and scene work.
Haruna Lee is a Taiwanese/Japanese/American theater maker, screenwriter, educator and community steward whose work is rooted in a liberation-based healing practice. They wrote for AppleTV+’s Pachinko, HBO Max’s The Flight Attendant, and have been in TV development with Composition 8, Chatham Grove, Alloy Entertainment and WBTV, JuVee, Archer Gray, and other projects. Plays include War Lesbian (Dixon Place 2014), Memory Retrograde (Ars Nova 2017, UTR 2018), plural (love) (WP Pipeline Festival 2022, Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab 2019) and Suicide Forest (Ma-Yi Theater & Bushwick Starr 2019, remount 2020), for which they received an Obie Award for Playwriting and Conception and was on the 2020 Kilroys List.
Lee has received the Steinberg Playwright Award, the Ollie New Play Award, FCA Grants to Artists Award, a MacDowell Fellowship including the Keith Haring Fellowship, the Map Fund Grant, the New Dramatists Van Lier Fellowship, and is a currently a member of New Dramatists (2023-2030) and a member of the 2019 artEquity cohort. Their writing has been published by 53rd State Press, Theater Magazine, Table Work. They’ve collaborated as a writer, performer, and in other myriad roles with artists such as Lynn Nottage, Vanessa German, Aya Ogawa, Ralph Lee, Mac Wellman, Cesar Alvarez, Kate Benson, Minor Theater, Normandy Sherwood, Taylor Mac, Andrea Geyer, David Lang, NAATCO and Anohni—among others. They’ve taught playwriting and devised theater at Brooklyn College, Stanford, NYU, Pace, and York College. harunalee.com
Peter Jay Fernandez is co-head of Columbia University’s MFA acting program. He previously served as co-head of acting in the graduate theatre program at The New School and has also taught at Yale School of Drama, Sarah Lawrence College, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, the Black Arts Institute, the Brown University/Trinity Repertory MFA Program, and the Berklee College of Music, among others.
Peter is a two time Audelco winner and has appeared on Broadway in productions of All The Way, Cyrano De Bergerac; Julius Caesar; Henry IV; Jelly’s Last Jam; and The Merchant Of Venice. He originated the role of Caesar in August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean at the Goodman Theater, the role of Curtis Lowe in the premiere of Ben Bettenbender’s Bliss at the Rattlestick Theatre Company, and the role of ‘the Oldest Old Man’ in Father Comes Home from the Wars, by Suzan Lori Parks, at the Public Theater. Off-Broadway credits include Macbeth (Theatre for a New Audience), Othello, As You Like It, Coriolanus, The Winter’s Tale, Henry VIII, Spell #7 (Public Theatre), Red Speedo (New York Theatre Workshop), Zooman and the Sign (Signature), Too Much Memory (Fourth St. Theater), The Pain and The Itch (Playwrights Horizons), Thunder Knocking On The Door (Minetta Lane), RICHARD III: Born with Teeth and Widowers’ Houses (Epic Theatre), among many others.
He has worked throughout the United States at regional theatres including Arena Stage, Goodman Theatre, Old Globe, Long Wharf Theatre, Hartford Stage, McCarter Theatre, Seattle Rep, Williamstown, Alliance Theatre, Milwaukee Rep, Cincinnati Playhouse, Geva, The Wilma, among others. Peter’s film and television credits include Shades of Blue, Luke Cage, Royal Pains, Gotham, Elementary, House of Cards, Fringe, Deception, Damages, Law and Order(s), The Good Wife, Blue Bloods, Body of Proof, The Adjustment Bureau, Preaching To The Choir, and Funny Valentines.
