Carla Ching is a Chinese American native Angeleno who called NYC home for 16 years. She writes plays that interrogate why people do terrible things to people they love. Her work centers on women and people of color, especially with the endeavor to allow Asian Americans to be portrayed in their full complexity, depth and nuance, going to a different corner of the map than traditional identity plays and historical plays (not that there’s anything wrong with them).
Carla stumbled upon pan-Asian performance collective Peeling at the Asian American Writers Workshop and wrote, performed and produced autobiographical theater with them for three years, which she still considers her first theater training.
Her plays include The Play I’m Writing So I Don’t Die from Rage (Developed in Playtime 2022), Revenge Porn or The Story of a Body (Ammunition Theater Company 2022; Toulmin Commission for The Atlantic; O’Neill Playwrights Conference 2021), Nomad Motel (NNPN Rolling World Premiere at City Theatre, Pittsburgh, Horizon Theatre in Atlanta and Unicorn Theatre in Kansas City; NY Premiere at The Atlantic Theatre in NYC), The Two Kids That Blow Shit Up (Artists at Play, Theatre Mu), Fast Company [South Coast Rep (Heideman Award), Ensemble Studio Theatre] The Sugar House at the Edge of the Wilderness (Ma-Yi),and TBA (2g). Carla’s full-length plays have been produced or workshopped by Aurora Theatre, Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor, CTG Writers’ Workshop, Huntington Theatre Company, The Kitchen, The Lark Playwrights Workshop, Lyric Stage, Ma-Yi, Midnight Rice, PFP and The Women’s Project among others.
Former artistic director of 2g. Founding member of The Kilroys and alumni member of New Dramatists. Carla is a co-recipient of the 2021 Horton Foote Playwriting Award from the Dramatist Guild with Mfoniso Udofia, Donja R. Love, Kia Corthron, and Aleshea Harris. With Ammunition Theatre Company, she was a recipient of The 2021 Los Angeles New Play Prize for the production of Revenge Porn or the Story of a Body. BA, Vassar College. MFA, New School for Drama.
Fast Company is published by Sam French and Two Kids and Nomad Motel are published by Theatre Rights Worldwide.
On television, Carla has written for Graceland, Fear the Walking Dead, I Love Dick, The First, Preacher, Home Before Dark and the forthcoming Mr. and Mrs. Smith co-created by Francesca Sloane and Donald Glover. She is currently developing a new project with Monkey Paw and Superfrog, and another project with Field Trip and Hivemind for FX.