Celine Song, Playwright
An Academy Award nominated screenwriter, Celine Song is a filmmaker and playwright whose debut feature, PAST LIVES, earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Motion Picture.  Loosely based on and inspired by Song’s own life experience, PAST LIVES, which she wrote and directed, was released by A24 in Summer 2023 after making its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.  

Acclaim for Song's debut feature PAST LIVES has been far and wide. The film won dozens of awards from film critics groups in the USA and abroad including the Directors Guild Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in First-Time Feature Film for Celine and Best Feature Film at the 2023 Gotham Awards. Song and her film earned five Independent Spirit Award nominations including Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Feature, five Golden Globe nominations including Best Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture Drama, three BAFTA nominations including Original Screenplay and Best Picture and two Academy Award nominations including Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture.   

As a playwright, Song is best known for ENDLINGS, which premiered in 2019 at American Repertory Theater and had its New York debut in 2020 at New York Theatre Workshop. She has been a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and a semifinalist for the American Playwriting Foundation's Relentless Award. Song also wrote on the first season of Amazon series THE WHEEL OF TIME. 

Kalina Ko (Director) (she/her) is a Cantonese-American theater director, dramaturg, and literary administrator interested in the radical connection and community building of storytelling. She is currently a Co-Coordinator for the Ma-Yi Writer's Lab, Literary Manager at Atlantic Theater Company, and a Curator for Hedgepig’s Expand the Canon. Past experience includes directing Lizzie Hagstedt’s Sophie Blanchard’s Rock N’ Roll Extravaganza (Moxie Arts),  Laura Neill's Pink Unicorn Frappuccinos (Chain Theatre), Nina Ki's Rescues (Clubbed Thumb Emerging Writers Group), Paige Conway’s Tag (drafted), and Sophie Poole’s Ethanol (NOMADS). She has served as associate director for Yoko’s Husband’s Killer’s Japanese Wife Gloria (NAMT, dir. Jess McLeod), assistant director for T. Adamson’s The Straights (The JACK, Brooklyn, dir. Will Detlefsen), and script assistant for Hansol Jung on Wolf Play (Soho Rep). She was also a NAMT Directing observer in 2021 and was part of the 2023-2024 Moxie Arts Incubator Cohort. www.KalinaKo.weebly.com