Abigail C. Onwunali

Abigail C. Onwunali (she/her) is a Nigerian-American storyteller whose work spans playwriting, performance, and poetry. She is a member of the 2026 Page 73 Writers Group, a 2025 NYTW 2050 Artistic Fellow, a New Harmony Project Resident, and a recipient of Faultline Theatre’s Irons in the Fire Award. A Princess Grace Award winner and Red Bull Theater Short New Play Festival winner, Abigail is a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Obie-winning Youngblood collective and an alumna of the Liberation Theater Company Residency Program. Her work has been recognized as a finalist for the Fire This Time Festival and Rattlestick’s Terrence McNally New Work Incubator, and as a semi-finalist for Ars Nova’s Artist-in-Residence, Forge NYC, and the Colt Coeur Residency.

As a performer, she appeared in the five-time Tony-nominated Jaja’s African Hair Braiding and won the Elliot Norton Award for her lead role in The Grove at The Huntington Theatre Company, where she was also a two-time nominee. She will play Martha Pentecost in the 2026 Broadway revival of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. A graduate of the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale and an inaugural member of Lena Waithe’s Hillman Grad Mentorship Program, Abigail creates ritual-driven work that conjures the unseen and illuminates the inner lives of Black women through ceremony and story.

 
 
This playwriting fellowship, mentored by Justin Elizabeth Sayer, is supported by Jerome Foundation.
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