BIO

Alethea Shirilan-Howlett

When Alethea Shirilan-Howlett was in kindergarten, she put on one-woman stage play adaptations of her favorite visual texts (the 2007 cult classic Enchanted, Top Chef: Miami, and the more gruesome episodes of Doctor Who) for her classmates. These were so highly revered among her peers that all of them avoided playing with her at recess. Now, Alethea Shirilan-Howlett is a playwright and actor. She is a three-time winner of The Blank Theatre’s Young Playwrights Festival, which has produced her plays VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED (2020), THE FANTASTIC ADVENTURES OF BONNIE AND FRAN (2021), and LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT AND OTHER WILD FROG FACTS. Her full-length play NO EXODUS was also honored as a winner of the Growing Stage’s Young Playwrights’ Festival in 2021. She has been recognized by the national Scholastic Art and Writing Awards for her play PEELING ORANGES (2019) and Princeton University for VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED (2019). Alethea is passionate about social justice and hopes to make art that inspires social and political change. She considers Jim Henson and Sufjan Stevens to be her biggest artistic influences. When she’s not writing, you can find her researching topics ranging from unique methods of nitrate film preservation to vaporwave pedagogy.