Kim Dunbar(I)

Kim Dunbar is a playwright and screenwriter born and raised in Los Angeles, California. She was a high school theater geek and graduated from Fairfax High School, before pursuing theater as an actor in college. While studying and living near the Del Mar racetrack in San Diego, Kim encountered a black "lawn Jockey" on the front porch of a resident. The incident that followed led her to research the origin of the statue and became the subject of her first written stage play, Porchmonkey. Kim studied theater at UC San Diego and The Juilliard School. She was a member of L.A. Black Playwrights, and invited to join the the Mentor Playwrights Project & the Blacksmyths Playwrights Lab, both at the Mark Taper Forum. Her other plays include The Giver, and Banned and Burned in America, (co-written with Bryan Davidson), which covers four classic novels that continue to be banned in American classrooms. Kim's plays have been developed or produced by Watts Village Theater Company, River Stage in Sacramento, Mark Taper New Work Festival, The Working Theater NYC, ASK Theater Labs, Crossroads Theater in New Brunswick, The Greenway Court Theater, Black & Latino Playwright's Conference, and the BAM Festival, Austin TX. Kim has also written several plays for young people at the Virginia Avenue Project, which provided free, after-school programs using performing arts in conjunction with long-term mentoring. The goal was to give kids the skills to think creatively, critically and courageously about life goals and choices. She also worked with young students at the RFK Speak Truth to Power Theater Camp in Los Angeles. She served as co-director of LAYTE, (Los Angeles Youth Theatre Ensemble), made up of high school students from several Los Angeles area schools, and co-directed Arts & Activism; a theater camp focused on exposing students to Social Activism & Human Rights. Kim has broadened her writing to include screenplays, and received a grant from the Mark Taper Forum to study at UCLA's Writer Extension program. Her unique point of view brings characters together that often intersect class and racial lines, whether they join forces or collide. Her screenplays include Taco Mundo, Broken Chords, and Flush, and have placed in such notable screenplay contests as The Page International Screenwriting Awards, Final Draft's Big Break Screenwriting contest, and the Austin Film Festival Screenwriting Awards. Her day job has been the long-term manager of the office of actress Alfre Woodard, who is also attached to star in Kim's riveting drama, Taco Mundo.