Lina Patel

Lina Patel is a performer, playwright, and television writer. Her work seeks to make the difficult, the disabled, and the disenfranchised legible. Lina is the recipient of the 2024 Cornelia Street American Playwriting Award. She is proud a member of the WGA, SAG-AFTRA, The Dramatists Guild and member of Ammunition Theatre Company, where, during the 2023 WGA strike, she developed a new play, "Sick Girl or, Don't Hate Me Cuz I'm Pretty", which was part of The New Harmony Project's inaugural PlayFest Indy, dramaturged by Lexy Leuszler and directed by Daniel Talbott. Also during the strike, Lina finished a second new play, "Belonging" which was recently part of Rogue Machine Theater's festival of new plays (2024), dramaturged by Alice Tuan and directed by Guillermo Cienguegos.

Lina was...

Lina Patel is a performer, playwright, and television writer. Her work seeks to make the difficult, the disabled, and the disenfranchised legible. Lina is the recipient of the 2024 Cornelia Street American Playwriting Award. She is proud a member of the WGA, SAG-AFTRA, The Dramatists Guild and member of Ammunition Theatre Company, where, during the 2023 WGA strike, she developed a new play, "Sick Girl or, Don't Hate Me Cuz I'm Pretty", which was part of The New Harmony Project's inaugural PlayFest Indy, dramaturged by Lexy Leuszler and directed by Daniel Talbott. Also during the strike, Lina finished a second new play, "Belonging" which was recently part of Rogue Machine Theater's festival of new plays (2024), dramaturged by Alice Tuan and directed by Guillermo Cienguegos.

Lina was commissioned to adapt Lope De Vega's comedia, "The Widow of Valencia" for Playwright's Arena/UCLA in 2022. Lina's adaptation, "Traces of Desire" explores the cost of female desire through three generations of women. It will be published by Bloomsbury, UK in 2024. Her Center Theater Group developed play, "The Ragged Claws" about what happens when the adopted Indian son of a power couple questions his mother's politics, was nominated for Cherry Lane's Mentor Project and recorded for the Parsnip Ship's audio play series. Select plays: "Sankalpan", an adaptation of Chekhov’s "Three Sisters" set in pre-Partition India (The New Group; RADA New Play Festival, 2019); "Bonobos", a darkly comedic telenovela for the stage exploring female loyalty and friendship (Artists At Play, 2018).

Lina’s works have been presented/developed at PlayGround-LA, the Echo Theater Co, Ammunition Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Center Theater Group (Writers Workshop Alumna), Yale Repertory Theater (Commissioned Artist), Mark Armstrong's 24 Hour Viral Monologues, Samuel French OOB Short Play Festival, Circle X Theater, Silk Road Rising, among others. Her short play, "The Randomness of Bees" was published by YouthPLAYS. On television, Lina served as co-producer on Ava DuVernay's anthology series, "Cherish the Day"; DC's Superman origin-story, "Krypton" and CW's "Frequency".

Lina is currently working with BET Plus on her original series about mental health and law enforcement. She is in development with Trioscope Studios on a hybrid-animation fantasy series about a female rocket pilot searching for her mother and is working on her first graphic novel. In 2024 Lina, along with Joshua Conkel, will co-moderate Rogue Machine Theater's first Playwright's Round Table. Lina got her start as an actor and voice-over artist and serves as a Lecturer of Theater at Pomona College. If you've read this far, you might also care to know that she was born in Mumbai, raised in Irving, Texas, has a singluar creature of a daughter, a very smart and slightly stalker-y Border Collie-Shepherd rescue, and a linguist-historian-scholar of a partner (she definitely married up).

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Scripts

Sick Girl or, Don't Hate Me Cuz I'm Pretty

by Lina Patel

Cast Size
5
Genre
drama,
experimental,
fable/folktale,
immersive,
movement/physical,
political

Sick Girl or Don't Hate Me Cuz I'm Pretty is a painful and playful tale about a young immigrant woman, battling chronic illness within a family struggling with cultural dislocation and medical misdiagnosis. When western medicine focuses on fixing rather than listening, a hasty surgery leads to complications and sets parents on a path of self-recrimination, forcing them to confront their expectations and...

Sick Girl or Don't Hate Me Cuz I'm Pretty is a painful and playful tale about a young immigrant woman, battling chronic illness within a family struggling with cultural dislocation and medical misdiagnosis. When western medicine focuses on fixing rather than listening, a hasty surgery leads to complications and sets parents on a path of self-recrimination, forcing them to confront their expectations and vulnerabilities. Through a multi-faceted, experiential, and experimental exploration of disability, desire, and resilience, the play examines the value of broken things as Sick Girl’s journey toward healing.

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Traces of Desire

by Lina Patel

1
Cast Size
6
Genre
adaptation,
comedy,
movement/physical,
romantic comedy

Can desire be inherited? Or rather, can the inability to fulfill it trickle down through a family?
Once upon a time in Bombay, a widowed Uma Bhatt refused a suitor. He was Muslim; she was Hindu. Unwilling to risk her reputation, she shunned her heart’s desire. Shortly after this denial, Uma died. What might be the end of a tragic love story is, in fact, the spark that lights up Traces of Desire, a choral play...

Can desire be inherited? Or rather, can the inability to fulfill it trickle down through a family?
Once upon a time in Bombay, a widowed Uma Bhatt refused a suitor. He was Muslim; she was Hindu. Unwilling to risk her reputation, she shunned her heart’s desire. Shortly after this denial, Uma died. What might be the end of a tragic love story is, in fact, the spark that lights up Traces of Desire, a choral play chronicling the struggles and pleasures of female sexuality in one Indian family. Over three generations, these women gradually learn to embrace their bodies and yearnings, freeing themselves — and a fourth generation — of long-held notions of womanhood. Lina Patel explores the central questions of Lope de Vega’s The Widow of Valencia in this hilarious and moving adaptation as she takes on female agency and transgression, prejudice, and even the idea of womanhood itself. Commissioned by Playwright's Arena/UCLA for Golden Tongue's Diversifying the Classics, "Traces of Desire" is based on Lope De Vega's 16th century commedia, "The Widow of Valencia"/

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Belonging

by Lina Patel

Cast Size
6
Genre
comedy,
drama,
holiday

After her sick mother's death by accompanied suicide, Jo faces a father who insists a stray dog is his dead wife, reincarnated and must make a decision that might break the heart of the man who loves her. "Belonging" explores what it means to choose who and how we love in the face of our mortality.

After her sick mother's death by accompanied suicide, Jo faces a father who insists a stray dog is his dead wife, reincarnated and must make a decision that might break the heart of the man who loves her. "Belonging" explores what it means to choose who and how we love in the face of our mortality.

The Ragged Claws

by Lina Patel

1
Cast Size
8
Genre
drama

Set in the near future, The Ragged Claws is about what happens when ALEC, the adopted Indian son of a power couple questions his mother's politics and family pain tumbles out - like the tsunami about to consume Manhattan.

Set in the near future, The Ragged Claws is about what happens when ALEC, the adopted Indian son of a power couple questions his mother's politics and family pain tumbles out - like the tsunami about to consume Manhattan.

Bonobos

by Lina Patel

Cast Size
6—8
Genre
dark comedy

Four women extricate a friend from an abusive relationship. Chaos ensues. A darkly comedic look at female friendship, gone awry.

Four women extricate a friend from an abusive relationship. Chaos ensues. A darkly comedic look at female friendship, gone awry.

Sankalpan

by Lina Patel

Cast Size
10—11
Genre
adaptation,
drama,
period,
political

An adaptation of Chekhov's Three Sisters set in pre-Partition Bengal.

An adaptation of Chekhov's Three Sisters set in pre-Partition Bengal.

Karma

by Lina Patel

Cast Size
3
Genre
comedy,
holiday

A washed out ad exec brings a new friend for a surprise visit to her former assistant's home on Thanksgiving.

A washed out ad exec brings a new friend for a surprise visit to her former assistant's home on Thanksgiving.

The Randomness of Bees

by Lina Patel

Cast Size
2
Genre
young audiences

When nine-year old Ryder moves to a new town and meets Charlotte at swim practice, she finds the courage to tell her she's adopted. Her candor pays off, and as we follow the girls from ages 9 to 15, their chance encounter evolves into a true friendship. When Charlotte moves away, Ryder discovers that a good friend can still be there for you, even when they're not.

When nine-year old Ryder moves to a new town and meets Charlotte at swim practice, she finds the courage to tell her she's adopted. Her candor pays off, and as we follow the girls from ages 9 to 15, their chance encounter evolves into a true friendship. When Charlotte moves away, Ryder discovers that a good friend can still be there for you, even when they're not.