LEILANI CHAN
TeAda Productions
Leilani Chan (she/her) is Founding Artistic Director of TeAda Productions, a nomadic theater of color based in Los Angeles. Chan is Co-Chair of the National Asian American Theater Conference and Festival to be held in Hawai’i in 2024. Chan’s devised ensemble plays include Global Taxi Driver and Refugee Nation. Her latest work Masters of the Currents, premiered in 2017 at the Honolulu Theatre for Youth and toured to the Maui Arts and Cultural Center and the University of Hawai’i, Hilo Performing Arts Center, and to Brava Theater Center in San Francisco’s Mission District and to Pangea World Theater in the Twin Cities. This work received a NEFA’s National Theater Project and the MAPFUND awards and is Chan’s 4th NPN Creation Fund. Leilani is currently on the Board of the Consortium of Asian American Theaters and Artists and is member of the U.S. Delegation to the International Theatre Institute.
TeAda Productions is a nomadic theater of color, rooted in the stories of immigrants and refugees. TeAda Productions’ mission is to honor the displaced, exploited, and overlooked, by fostering opportunities for healing through artistic expression and community building. A trailblazer in social justice theater, TeAda has developed various programs and theater productions that seek to empower communities of color. The TeAda artistic process starts with conscious listening of the intimate experiences of the people, then documenting the stories. The stories culminate in performances and workshops reflective of these communities’ realities, offering transformative acts of service that have a positive rippling impact throughout the most vulnerable and neediest.
TeAda Productions educates the general public about the issues facing underserved communities by offering community-based workshops, master classes, forums, staged readings, and by presenting and touring innovative performances, both locally and nationally in traditional and nontraditional venues. TeAda Productions’ purpose is to enrich the lives of underserved communities and support artists of color through artist exchanges, supporting national level networking, ongoing ensemble building and training through programs like the TeAda Performance Artist Impact Fellowship, Refugee Nation, and Masters of the Currents.
