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Amanda L. Andrei

@theamandalandrei

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🎭 playwright, translator, critic, journalist 📝
🇵🇭🇷🇴🇺🇸
📍LA
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I am so thrilled to share that I have been selected as a 2026 California Arts Council Emerging Artist Fellow! 🎭🎬📝 The 2026-2027 cohort includes 66 Emerging Artist Fellows, 32 Established Artist Fellows, and 3 Legacy Artist Fellows, and I'm honored to be among these talented practitioners and culture bearers.

Miraming salamat, mulţumesc, thank you @calartscouncil and @laperformancepractice 🌻

#CaliforniaArtsCouncil #IndividualArtistFellowships #LACountyArtists #LAArtists taken in Los Angeles, California by @theamandalandrei

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4 days ago

From film fest to lit fest, let's go!! Looking forward to this panel at @filbookfestival on 10/17 and conversing with @thegiovanniortega @consplayspace @ericawriteaway & @aureena . Actors will be reading some excerpts of our work, and there will be many more panels & readings from poets and authors. I'm excited to get some books and get them signed 🖋️

full schedule on the @filbookfestival site 🗓️
Hope to see you in the Bay! 🌻

(Scoring this post with @zosimomusic -- he'll also be there signing books!) taken in San Francisco Public Library by @theamandalandrei

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5 days ago

To be a mother on the rock and also be mothered on the rock: This is my Yosemite.

I cannot think of a better first time to enter this sanctuary of nature than for the #yosemitefacelift and to take part in stewarding this land, climbing its granite, and camping with some of the finest folks I’ve met thanks to @mommas_who_climb . I’ll pick up microtrash for hours if it means I can stand on a slab, let go of the rope, lean backwards, and breathe.

Huge love to @otpandaclimbs for leading me in my FIRST MULTI-PITCH!!! with @linkedout keeping me safe and confident the entire time we were on Swan Slab. And how lucky was I to demo the greatest climbing socks in the world by @gracewul_climbing_socks during that ascent (pretty darn – ha, ha – lucky!)

We stayed in the legendary Camp 4 during our stay, hanging out early in the week with @escalemosorg and checking out Coffee & Climb with @negusinnature @browngirlsclimb @filipinup & @yosemiteclimbingassociation towards the weekend. I love the casualness of running into people over these past few days, new faces turning into familiar ones.

It’s really something to wake up to these stone walls and stars. It’s not otherworldly – it’s This World. Our World. We deserve to be in deep relation with each other. by @theamandalandrei

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16 days ago

****FRIDAY PANEL****
Friday, October 2nd at 1:00pm

“Creativity and Responsibilities in Filipino American Storytelling”

As filmmakers with Filipino roots and identities, we draw on the vast and various cultural traditions, folklore, mythology, and languages of the Philippines to enrich our stories. How are we inspired by our various cultures? What responsibilities, obligations, and solidarities do we share within the diaspora and with the homeland, and how do we infuse them into our work?

• ARA CHAWDHURY - BISAYA BENGALI IMMIGRANT TRANSLATOR, FILMMAKER, AND THEATER MAKER

• ROGER Q. MASON - WRITER, PERFORMER, AND THOUGHT LEADER

• LEO PARTIBLE - FILMMAKER, COMIC BOOK CREATOR AND SINGER-SONGWRITER

• REUBEN DOMINGO - PRODUCED MORE THAN A DOZEN DOCUMENTARIES ON FILIPINO ARTS AND CULTURE

• KIRBY ARAULLO - HISTORIAN, AUTHOR, AND CULTURAL BEARER

MODERATED BY AMANDA L. ANDREI - PLAYWRIGHT, ARTS JOURNALIST, CULTURAL CRITIC, LITERARY CO-TRANSLATOR, AND EXPERIMENTAL FILMMAKER

Tickets on sale now! Link in bio! by @theamandalandrei

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17 days ago

Now that I'm getting more familiarized with what truly matters in the film distribution space, I’ve been thinking so much more about the importance of audiences & the enormous challenge of actually getting "butts in seats."

Showing up in a cinema for a filmmaker’s theatrical run is one of the most direct ways we can support their work, their career, & the possibility of more films getting made & seen.

It’s been so much fun putting together Studio Iró Cinema Field Trips & gathering everyone to experience cinema as it should be: together, in community. Here's the next one!

Come join #StudioIró + @ThePalanggaArchives on Thursday, September 3 at 7:00 PM @ the Laemmle NoHo 7 in North Hollywood! There will be a special in-person Q & A w/the Director Rafael Manuel!

A whole crowd of us is coming out to support the theatrical rollout of director Rafael Manuel’s incredible feature, FILIPIÑANA as it lands here in Los Angeles!

The film premiered at Sundance 2026, where it won the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Creative Vision!

Let’s show up, fill those seats, and celebrate this beautiful moment for Filipino arthouse cinema together.

TIX here: https://bit.ly/golfinblue

We already bought our block tickets & will be taking over Row's L & M....join us there! Runtime is 100 minutes.

About Filipiñana:
Amid stifling heat and pervasive drought, Isabel (Jorrybell Agoto), a 17-year-old Ilokana from the rural north, works @ a posh country club outside Manila, lining up golf balls for powerful men to drive into the verdant horizon. New to the job, she wanders the immaculate grounds sampling its luxuries as members, including an industrialist & his expatriate niece, the club president & his pampered wife, & a slew of Chinese tourists, engage in a complex dance w/the club’s doting and subservient staff. But something is rotting beneath the pristine fairways of the elite resort, as Isabel discovers when she tries to return a mislaid golf club to its patriarchal director, Dr. Palanca (Teroy Guzman). The deeper she journeys into its most exclusive corners, the closer she gets to the violent truths of the club, her native Philippines, & her own past. taken in Laemmle NoHo 7 by @theamandalandrei

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2 months ago

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2 months ago

We’re thrilled to announce Amanda L. Andrei (@theamandalandrei) as the commissioned playwright for East West Players’ 2028 sports play! As shared in our 61st Season announcement, her new work, REDPOINT MY HEART, will be one of three featured plays at EWP’s 2027 bi-annual New Works Festival.

Inspired by the thrill of Olympic climbing and the questions it raises about identity, struggle, and connection, Amanda shares: “With its competition at the Long Beach Climbing Theater in 2028, the L.A. Olympics describes climbing as ‘a dynamic and explosive sport that sees athletes demonstrate endurance, power, creativity and coordination to scale climbing walls.’ I also see it as a relationship between you and yourself. Who are you on the wall? Who are you when you struggle? What does the rock have to teach you? How do other people help you, and how do you trust that they’re there to catch you? These are themes I’d love to explore further in this play, especially when it comes to intimacy, attraction, and vulnerability. And while I see the major dramatic question of the play being, ‘Will our heroine fall in love?’ I also see an overarching theme and question as: ‘Everyone has a climber inside them. What does it take to bring them out?’”

This opportunity was shaped by a phenomenal group of finalists:
Robin Berl • @robin.leann2018
Cris Eli Blak • @criseliblak
Carolina Đỗ • @carolinakaydo
Oscar K. • @velveteen_fxggot
Samah Meghjee • @samahmeghjee
Susan H. Pak • #SusanHPak
Nico Pang • @nico__pang
Aditi Pradhan • #aditipradhan
Kit Yan • @middleagedtransguy

Their stories remind us that the future of theater is vibrant, daring, and deeply inclusive.

A huge thank you to our panelists and community for supporting the next wave of AAPI and BIPOC storytellers. We’re honored to champion new voices, new works, and new visions at East West Players.

Learn more about Amanda, our finalists, and what’s next for EWP at the link in bio. Join us as we celebrate and uplift these powerful creators!

#EastWestPlayers #lathtr taken in East West Players by @theamandalandrei

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3 months ago

MEZCALERÍA. I stayed quiet about this play since last September. I had lots of stops and starts, lots of inspirations who led me to different inspirations. I felt like a ship in the ocean passing among islands, a caravan mapping out an unknown desert.

I’d love to go on and on about all the inspirations for this play: iconic Mexican nun/playwright/polymath Sor Juana, the Manila galleon era, Filipinos’ influence on the mezcal-making process (Filipino distilador, hello!), the influence of horses on local folklore in the Philippines and Mexico alike (monsters taking the shape of mutant horses in the wake of colonialism) –

BUT

So much of that inspiration are the big broad waxy leaves protecting the tender sugar heart of this play. Questions about and to God. “Why would He choose me, and why would I choose Him?”

I started writing this play last fall during a time of deep uncertainty and fog. I started learning about different ways to pray—what prayer even is, or could be. What my image of God is, and what it has been, and what it could be.

I didn’t grow up Catholic but I am fascinated by Catholic culture around the world, especially since sometimes being Filipino and practicing Catholicism become synonymous. It’s a connective tissue between Filipinos and Latinidad—just like mezcal. The ocean and the desert in a glass.

I am eternally grateful to my amazing director @lisabierman who helped shape the piña of this play into something fragrant and succulent; to all the actors who helped read it in all its versions; and to @ballyboolove as Dayang, @saraacevedoreuben as Sor Berenice, @post_moderngirl as Sor Rosa, @ladykalm as Reverendra Madre (the most difficult name to say), @eriklumins as double-duty Kunsad & Sto. Niño, and @dramallama247 as the Devil/Tikbalang. Big thanks to @katherinevondy for her dramaturgy and watchful distillation of the work in @the_vagrancy container

Espero que esta obra me lleve adonde quiera ir 🥾🥾
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#newplay #lathtr #filipinoamerican #filipinodiaspora taken in The Lyric Hyperion by @theamandalandrei

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4 months ago

FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT: AMANDA L. ANDREI

What stories live in the places we call home?

Director Amanda L. Andrei shares the inspiration behind Walking in Tupi, a film that explores memory, history, and identity through a journey across a village and an archive.

Get to know the filmmaker behind the film and learn more about the creative process that brought this thoughtful story to life.

Watch Walking in Tupi as part of Episode 1: Echoes of Heritage and Episode 17: The Visual Feast on "THE CROSSING: Finding Our Way Through Stories" presented by
@filamcreative and @kapamilyatfc

The whole interview is on FilAm Creative’s YouTube channel

#TheCrossing #FilAmCreative #WalkingInTupi #AmandaLAndrei #FilmmakerSpotlight by @theamandalandrei

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4 months ago

FILM SPOTLIGHT: WALKING IN TUPI. We're proud to feature "Walking in Tupi" as part of "THE CROSSING: Finding Our Way Home Through Stories", the FilAm Creative & ABS-CBN Program.

Directed and written by Amanda L. Andrei, Walking in Tupi is a poetic journey through place, memory, and history. Through a walk across a village and an archive, the film reflects on the stories, identities, and connections that shape our understanding of home.

Thoughtful and visually evocative, Walking in Tupi invites audiences to consider how landscapes and archives preserve the memories of generations past.

Congratulations to the entire creative team.

Watch Walking in Tupi as part of Episode 1: Echoes of Heritage and Episode 17: The Visual Feast on THE CROSSING on TFC around the world.

@facfilmfestival @kapamilyatfc @theamandalandrei

#TheCrossing #FilAmCreative #WalkingInTupi #AmandaAndrei #FilipinoStories by @theamandalandrei

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4 months ago

So excited for this combo of writing, art, and climbing co-hosted with the incandescent @s0delightful ! First time climbers and climbing/art-curious are welcome!

🧗🏼🧶📝

Join us for a half-day retreat for folks with self-directed creative projects and peer-supported climbing projects! Enjoy some quiet, devoted writing time, followed by social indoor climbing time. See what metaphors the wall unlocks for your creative process.

More in the bioooooo 💪🏻

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#writingretreat #artistretreat #climbingretreat #losangelesevents taken in Pasadena, California by @theamandalandrei

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4 months ago

SPRING IN ROMANIA 🌱

White poplar fluff in the wind, Aperol spritz on the patio, international theater across the city. My first time here in the spring.

New start, new foundations. I love how Bucharest has changed. I did a double take.while walking to the Art Museum in Craiova, thinking of four years ago when I was roadtripping through Oltenia with my dad. I thought of my first time in his home, almost 16 years ago, how different the surroundings and my interior world.

I had dessert and coffee with one of my authors, met up with @monica.v.cure , went through old photo albums with my cousin and packed them up to bring back to my L.A. home.

This trip, I served as part of the American delegation with @louharrywriter for the International Association of Theater Critics conference, held at the same time with the @shakespearefestival -- reflecting on the meaning of the Bard to people around the world.

I climbed on limestone in Sinaia, rappelled from a metal cross near a shrine to Sfanta Anna, felt the spirit of the Carpathian Mountains and the primeval forests.

I am glad to carry this spirit with me wherever I go. taken in Romania by @theamandalandrei

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4 months ago