about me

Nico Pang is a Cantonese writer, director, and performer telling stories of diasporic belonging, ancestral memory, and queerness & transness as possibility.

Nico’s plays include I Think I Was Born Missing You (developed with IAMA Theatre Company, O’Neill 2026 NPC semifinalist), Moonbow (Hantext New Works Festival at East West Players), and My Body Is a Season (commissioned & produced by SpeakEasy Stage). Nico is the 2025 recipient of Artists at Play’s Emerging Playwright Commission, and an alum of IAMA Theatre Company’s Emerging Playwrights Lab and Company One Theatre’s PlayLab.

As a director, Nico has helmed the world premieres of Trans Lineage: Rites of Passage and Tales of the Transcestors: The Divine (Celebration Theatre). Other credits include Twink Death of the Universe (Joy Who Lived Festival) and Isabel (The Theater Offensive & CHUANG Stage). They associate/assistant directed …but you could’ve held my hand (IAMA Theatre Company), The Chinese Lady (Chance Theater) and A New Brain (Celebration Theatre & LA LGBT Center).

Nico is the director of Trans Lineage, Celebration Theatre’s trans-centered new works program, where they facilitate the annual playwrights lab and guide projects from pitch to world premiere. Nico also co-founded Passion of the Cut Sleeve, a multidisciplinary collective reimagining queer Chinese folklore, for which they write and direct all performance work.

As a performer and actor, they’ve appeared in the Hollywood Fringe Festival, LA Get Down Festival, and Creating Equal for American Repertory Theater. Nico has coached youth and adult poetry slam teams, designed programs for queer/trans youth and families, and led trainings in the reproductive justice movement. They believe in storytelling as refuge and blueprints for liberated futures.

CURRENTLY / UPCOMING:

🏛️ Directing a staged reading of Back East by Maddox Pennington at Center Theatre Group for their LA Writers’ Workshop Reading Series (July 2026)

🕯️ Writing a new play as the recipient of Artists at Play’s Emerging Playwright Commission

✨ Directing two short plays for The Grand Event: APIDA Playwriting Festival at the Democracy Center at the Japanese American National Museum (July 2026)

🏔️ Associate directing and dramaturgy for The Dance and the Railroad with Artists at Play at the Los Angeles Theater Center (Fall 2026)

RECENTLY:

🥀 Associate directing …but you could’ve held my hand at IAMA Theatre Company (June 2026)

🪩 Directing TWINK DEATH OF THE UNIVERSE at the Joy Who Lived Festival (April 2026)

❤️‍🔥 Directing and performing in Passion of the Cut Sleeve: Galloping Into the New Year, presented by City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs for Lunar New Year (February 2026)