Playwright · Screenwriter · Professor · Producer · Queer Jester from Amish PA
(they/she)
LA/NYC/London/🌏
"First-rate and surprising."
-Steve Martin (for real, not a bit)
"I hope you won't pass on the opportunity to experience the creation of this wonderful playwright."
- Lynn Nottage
“A bold, intense, unapologetic writer with comedic dialogue, historical intentions, and stunning
expressionism, who chooses great stories to tell, leaving you feeling disturbed, inspired, and seen.”
-The Athena Project
Ellis (they/she) is a produced and commissioned playwright and screenwriter, Columbia University Playwriting MFA graduate (2023), professor, theatre producer, and queer disgrace to their Amish PA upbringing. They write irreverent yet intimate, shamelessly Gen-Z, coming-of-age dark comedies that deteriorate into dramedies, seeking love and identity within niche real communities in our world today.
Ellis’s full-length plays have been developed in residency at Williamstown Theatre Festival (2024), off-Broadway in NYC at 2nd Stage Theater, Chain Theatre, Wild Project and Under St. Mark’s Theater, to name a few (2023-present), Barons Court Theatre and Bush Theatre in London (2026), and numerous international and regional productions.
Recently, they held an industry reading of ONCE ON RUMSPRINGA in NYC, starring Fina Strazza (John Proctor is the Villain) and Andrew Keenan-Bolger (Newsies), and received a TV option from Fifth Season (Severance) (2026).
Currently, Ellis is working on commissions including a feature film about depressed Disney adults with Andrew Barchilon (Bad Trip), original musical with a jukebox twist about 90s boy bands under Taylor Banks and Micheal Lamon (Merrily We Roll Along ), and feature film about gay silent film star Billy Haines (Manchester Film Festival Semifinalist 2026) for filmmaker Paul Baker (2025-26).
Professionally, Ellis has been a mentee of Steve Martin (2023), Showrunner of five-part weekly series the Episodic Theater Project (2024), Writer's Assistant to Bess Wohl (2022), professor at Columbia University and Penn State (2023-present), and full-time screenwriter for Inkitt-Galatea (2019-20).
Ellis's scripts have semi-finalized or finalized in competitions hosted by O’Neill Conference, Ojai Festival, Dramatists Guild, Emerson Stages, American Blues Theater, Pipeline Playlab, Kernodle, Faultline Theater, and Lanford Wilson Festival, et. al (2023-present). Their pilot has been a semi-finalist in Slamdance, Stage 32, The Script Lab, Filmmatic, and ScreenCraft and ranks in the Top 1% of 160,000 scripts on Coverfly (2025).
Additionally, she's been a Resident Playwright at Prague Performing Arts Academy (2019) and Wallace Stegner House (2020), member of writers groups at Speranza Theater (2021-2025) and Yonder Window Theater (2022), and published in Borderless Thalia Anthology sold at The Drama Book Shop (2023).
Lowkey, Ellis has also completed five degrees, two honors theses, and two fellowships at Penn State (2019), backpacked solo across numerous continents, and worked as a stand-up comic and certified psychotherapist before realizing she needed therapy.
Ellis is repped by Independent Artist Group.
