Adriana Sevahn Nichols, a native New Yorker, is an award winning actress and playwright. She received the 2008 Middle East America Distinguished Playwright Award which has gifted her with a generous commission, to research and write a new play, inspired by her Armenian grandparent’s survival of the Genocide in 1915. The play, NIGHT OVER ERZINGA, is currently being developed by the award’s host theatres: The Lark Play Development Center in New York, Silk Road Theatre Project in Chicago, and Golden Thread in San Francisco. In September, the Lark hosted a Studio Retreat of the play, in New York, followed by two sold out readings directed by Daniella Topol.
Her critically acclaimed one woman show, TAKING FLIGHT, has been thrilling audiences across the country since opening in Los Angeles in 2006. The play was awarded a San Diego Theatre Critics Circle Award, a Los Angeles Womens Theatre Festival Award and the audio CD was a finalist for a 2008 Audie Award.
From Television
to the Stage
As an actress, she has appeared in multiple guest-starring roles on television which include: Law & Order, Sex & the City, The Unit, Deadline, Dellaventura, and Law & Order: Criminal Intent. She has just finished shooting a lead in the feature film, Harvest, with Barbara Barrie and Robert Loggia. In 2005, she won the best actress award at The Denver International Film Festival for her portrayal of Priscilla, in Patrice Johnson’s debut film, King’s County.
Onstage highlights of her theatre credits include: Boleros for the Disenchanted (Yale Rep), The Clean House, Caucasian Chalk Circle (South Coast Repertory), Anna in the Tropics (South Coast Repertory, Coconut Grove Playhouse, LA Theatre Works), Two Sisters and a Piano (The Public Theater, South Coast Rep), Our Lady Of 121St (LA Theater Works), Derek Walcott’s The Odyssey (Willow Cabin Theater Co.), Indian Ink(ACT), Another Part of the House (Classic Stage Co.), Henry V (Shakespeare & Co.), and Macbeth (HERE).
As a playwright, she has created, developed, and performed her work at the Sundance Theater Lab, South Coast Repertory, The Mark Taper Forum, The Goodman Theatre, LA Theatre Works, The Fountain Theatre, INTAR, Rio Hondo College, Dixon Place NY, and The Lark Play Development Center.
Her play, TAKING FLIGHT, had its world premiere in May 2006 produced by Michael Ritchie and Diane Rodriguez/Center Theatre Group, at The Kirk Douglas Theatre and was named by the LA Daily News as one of the 10 best plays of ‘06. The show was then recorded live with LA Theatre Works for a nationwide broadcast, on Public Radio, for the series, “The Play’s The Thing.” TAKING FLIGHT continues to tour the country regionally and is currently being published by Samuel French.
Mentoring
Youth
One of Adriana’s biggest passions is bringing theatre and young people together. She began in 1992 when she had the privilege of being a founding member of Kristin Linklater and Carol Gilligan’s, Company of Women, a multigenerational group of women illuminating Shakespeare, through a woman’s perspective, and empowering girls through the medium of theatre. She has taught workshops nationally and internationally for young people, most recently at The Goodman Theatre in Chicago, ORRAN center for at risk youth in Armenia, and she continues to lead transformational mentoring workshops for teenage girls, living in group homes, in Los Angeles. Adriana uses creative writing, improvisation, and something she calls “personal myth making,” as tools for these extraordinary young people to discover their vibrant, vital, and unique voices.
