Rachel Graf Evans

Rachel Graf Evans (she/her) is an award-winning writer and theatre artist whose dramatic writing explores love, identity, faith, connection, and adventure. Her creative, teaching, and scholarly work centers around the arts as a garden for empathy, where we work to nurture, grow, and transform community. She is currently based in NYC.

RGE holds two graduate degrees in dramatic writing and the creation of new theatre work. She received a Master of Fine Arts in Musical Theater Collaboration from the George and Joy Abbott Center for Musical Theater Collaboration at Temple University, where she created and developed new dramatic work as a book writer, lyricist, playwright, composer, dramaturg, performer, and instructor. She also completed Graduate Certificates in Gender, Sexuality, & Women’s Studies and Teaching in Higher Education during her time at Temple. RGE also holds a Master of Fine Arts in Playwriting from the Hollins University Playwright’s Lab, where she was a first year merit scholar in 2019.

Notable mentions from RGE’s portfolio include:

RANDI & ROXANNE, a queer high school rom com re-envisioning of the Cyrano de Bergerac tale, was a finalist for the inaugural Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival in 2021. The play received a workshop production in January 2024 as part of the Hollins Playwright’s Lab 2024 Winter Festival and will receive a university production in April 2024 at the Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau, MO. RESPAIR, a dark comedy loosely inspired by the harrowing NXIVM scandal, was developed and presented at the 2023 Hollins Playwright’s Lab Summer Festival of New Works. CHERISHED, a family drama about gender identity and the weight of love, was the winner of the 2022 David Shelton Award for the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival Region IV. PHEROMONE, a quirky sex farce about modern dating, was a finalist for Philadelphia Theatre Company’s 2021 Terrence McNally Award. WHEN THE LIGHT GETS LOUD, a one-act piece of historical fiction written in plain speech, explores the complex historical relationship between Quakers and music and was featured in the 2022 Hollins Summer Festival.

RGE’s professional engine is fueled by a desire to “be in the room.” To this end, she is also highly skilled in direction, technical direction, scenic carpentry, dramaturgy, vocal music arrangement, props design and fabrication, costume construction, and performance. She has worked professionally in Atlanta and New York City, including as the Technical Director at Synchronicity Theatre, a Teaching Artist with Playmaking for Girls, an Education Associate at the Essential Theatre, a Props Designer at New Georges, and an MFA Mentor at Horizon Theatre’s New South American Playwrights Festival, to name a few. She recently co-directed, curated, and performed in a cabaret of works by undersung musical theatre creators with her friend and colleague Vallea E. Woodbury at Synchronicity Theatre.

In early autumn 2023, RGE served as a Resident Teaching Artist with the 9th graders of Alleghany Highlands, VA with The Lighthouse Project, a visionary initiative taking steps to combat loneliness, social isolation, and the range of subsequent negative health effects these factors have on individuals, through creative space making and dramatic writing.

As of 2024, she is once again based in NYC (third time’s the charm!) where she writes, composes, sings with Sirens of Gotham chorus, and works as the Program Coordinator for Arts Education at Barnard College.

M.F.A. Playwriting
Hollins University, 2023

M.F.A. Musical Theater Collaboration
Graduate Certificate: Gender, Sexuality, & Women’s Studies
Graduate Certificate: Teaching in Higher Education
Temple University, 2021

B.A. with High Honors: Theater | Gender, Sexuality, & Feminist Studies
Oberlin College, 2012