Christopher Chen is an Obie award-winning playwright whose full-length works have been produced and developed across the United States and abroad, at companies such as the American Conservatory Theater, Arcola Theatre, Artists Repertory, Asian American Theater Company, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Beijing Fringe Festival, Berkeley Rep/Ground Floor, Central Works, Crowded Fire, Cutting Ball Theater, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Finborough Theatre, Firefly/Think Tank, The Guthrie/Full Circle, hotINK Festival, Impact Theatre, InterAct Theatre, Just Theatre, Lark Play Development Center, Long Wharf Theatre, Magic Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, Playwrights Foundation, Playwrights Horizons, Rep at St. Louis, San Francisco Playhouse, Seattle Rep, Shotgun Players, Sideshow, Silk Road Rising, Singapore Repertory Theatre, Soho Rep, Sundance Theatre Lab, Theatre Mu, U.C. Berkeley/Zellerbach Playhouse, The Vineyard, The Wilma, and Wooly Mammoth Theatre Company.

 

Honors include: 2021 USA Fellow; 2020 Steinberg Playwright Award; 2017 Obie Award for Playwriting (for Caught); 2017 Lanford Wilson Award; the 2015-2016 Sundance Institute/Time Warner Foundation Fellowship for theater; Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, through which he was the 2013-2014 playwright-in-residence at The Vineyard Theatre; Barrymore Award (for Caught​); PHINDIE Critics Award (for Caught​); Drama League Nomination (for Caught); Glickman Award (for The Hundred Flowers Project); Rella Lossy Playwriting Award (for The Hundred Flowers Project); shortlist for the James Tait Black Award (for The Hundred Flowers Project); nomination for the Steinberg Award (for The Hundred Flowers Project); 2nd Place in the Belarus Free Theater International Competition of Modern Dramaturgy (for Into the Numbers). 

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Current commissions include American Conservatory Theatre, Audible, Cutting Ball Theater, Playwrights Horizons, Portland Center Stage and The Wilma. Publications include American Theatre Magazine, Dramatists Play Service, Theatre Bay Area and Theater Magazine (Yale). 

 

Chris' plays examine the hidden patterns beneath complex systems: socio-political systems, psychological systems, systems of power. He combines naturalism with the absurd within maximalist kaleidoscopic structures. A Bay Area native, Chris is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley and holds an M.F.A. in Playwriting from S.F. State.