Elle Thoni (they/them/theirs)
Elle Thoni is a queer playwright and public artist from Dakota land in Minneapolis, MN. In search of wildness amidst this Great Unraveling, they write plays about shapeshifters, emergent ecologies, and unlikely kinship. Drawing from a background in ensemble-devised performance, puppetry, and documentary theater, Elle creates pieces that are as lush and dynamic as the living systems they are inspired by. They are the recipient of the Rosa Parks Playwriting Award, second place Paula Vogel Playwriting Award and Mark Twain Comic Playwriting Award, and a Planet Earth Playwriting Award from the Kennedy Center. Their work has been supported by the New Harmony Project, Everwood Farmstead, the Mid-America Theater Conference, the MN State Arts Board, the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, and the Network of Ensemble Theaters, among others. Elle holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from Carnegie Mellon and is a proud member of The Dramatists Guild. They keep bees, and vice versa. ellethoni.com