Chisa Hutchinson

Chisa Hutchinson is an American playwright.

Career Hutchinson was a Lark Fellow as well as a Dramatist Guild Fellow. She has been a Humanitas Fellow and the Tow Foundation Fellow at Second Stage.

Hutchinson has been a cast member of the Neo-Futurists in New York, a staff writer for the Blue Man Group, and a member of New Dramatists. She was among the first wave of commissions for Audible's Emerging Playwright program, and her Proof of Love was the first full production from the program.

Hutchinson was a writer on the 2024 Starz television series Three Women. Currently, Hutchinson teaches creative writing at the University of Delaware.

Early life Chisa Hutchinson was born in Queens, New York in 1980. At the age of four she was unofficially adopted by a family in Newark, New Jersey. At the age of 14 Hutchinson relocated to the Short Hills section of Millburn, New Jersey to attend Kent Place School. It is here that she was exposed to theatre for the first time. While attending high school, her drama teacher took her to attend a debate between August Wilson and Robert Brustein which inspired her to write African American centric theatre.

Education Hutchinson attended Vassar College where she received an A.B. in Dramatic Arts. She would later go to earn her M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing from Tisch School of the Arts.

Plays Amerikin (59E59) Surely Goodness and Mercy (New Jersey Performing Arts Center) She Likes Girls (Lark Play Development Center, Working Man's Clothes) Proof of Love (Minetta Lane Theater)

Awards GLAAD Award (2010) Lilly Award (2010) New York Innovative Theatre Award (2012) Paul Green Award (2013) Helen Merrill Award (2013) Lanford Wilson Award (2015) Kilroys List - Somebody's Daughter (2017)

Personal life After the opening of her play She Likes Girls in 2008 Hutchinson's sexuality was put into the spotlight because the play centers around a young lesbian woman. Hutchinson however is bisexual.

In 2022, Chisa Hutchinson was included in the book 50 Key Figures in Queer US Theatre, profiled in a chapter written by theatre scholar La Donna L. Forsgren.