Evalena Lakin

here are some true things about me:

Evalena Lakin (née Friedman, she/her) is a Chicago-based playwright, educator, and bookworm. She received her B.A. in Theatre and Elementary Education summa cum laude from Northeastern University, where she helped launch the first-ever new play initiative on campus, producing dozens of student playwrights each year.

As a playwright, she has had the pleasure of working with Bramble Theatre Company (2024 Berry Award & Festival of Unfinished Work Winner), Great Plains Theatre Commons, Prop Thtr, The Annoyance, Strawdog Theatre Company, Chicago Dramatists, and NoMads Art Collective. Evalena has also performed original stories with the live lit series You’re Being Ridiculous at various venues around Chicago, including Steppenwolf Theatre as part of their LookOut series. She was part of the 2021-2022 Theatremacher Cohort with the Jewish Theatre Alliance and worked as a teaching artist with Lifeline Theatre for several years. She is currently the Library Assistant at the Poetry Foundation and is pursuing her M.S. in Library and Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Evalena’s plays are available for download on the National New Play Network’s New Play Exchange. You can read her book picks for the Poetry Foundation here.