The Song Collective continues its writers lab for Viet and Viet- American playwrights in an effort to inject new perspectives into the American Theatre canon and to further expand our community connections.

In keeping with our mission, we are devoting this process to subverting preconceived notions of Vietnamese, Asians, Asian-Americans, and our story in America. We are investing in our community and providing a more holistic exploration of the Viet identity and our personal histories.

The Viet Writers Lab is structured to encourage investigation–to form a community where Viet artists excavate memories, culture, and history.

Let’s tell our stories.

The 2026 cohort is made up of Brandy Hoang Collier, Brigid Leahy, and Kat Phan with Diana Ly serving as the Lab Director.

Brandy Hoang Collier is a Manhattan-based playwright, poet, and problem-solver from deep in the heart of Texas. She did her book learning at Texas A&M and NYU Tisch and has worked on marketing campaigns, construction sites, Off-Broadway stages, sales floors, sidewalks and more. In some ways, Collier identifies as mixed race, Asian-American, disabled, and queer. In other ways, she identifies as a noncorporeal entity with no identifying features and also no flaws. Selected works include book for Yoko’s Husband’s Killer’s Japanese Wife, Gloria (5th Avenue Theatre Commission, O’Neill NMTC, NAMT Festival, Vivace Award, Relentless Award Finalist) and book and lyrics for The Blazing World (Polyphone Festival). On top of writing music and making theatre, Collier works for the New York Yankees, but thinks it’s funny not to disclose what she does there. Just like she won’t disclose her age.

Brigid Leahy is a Vietnamese-Irish-American writer and actor from Orange County, California working across the US and Ireland. Her award-nominated play The Chalice premiered at the Dublin Fringe Festival, supported by the Irish Arts Council and the festival’s Weft Studio. She is the co-writer and co-producer of the award-winning short film Good Chips, which received the Writers Guild of Ireland Award for Best Short Film Script and won Best Short Film at the 2023 Viet Film Festival. A feature-length adaptation of Good Chips was later recognized on the CAPE x Black List. Her play DADDY ISSUES has been developed with support from the Irish Arts Council, Weft Studio, the Irish Theatre Institute, and the MAKE residency. In 2025, Brigid was selected for Ireland’s National Theatre, the Abbey Theatre’s playwright development program, Box of Tricks. She holds degrees in History from UCLA and Trinity College Dublin.

Kat Phan (given name: Phan Xuân Quế Phương) is an organizer, researcher, and writer whose work advances migrant power and economic liberation. Her theater, visual, and performance art practices explore Southeast Asian futurities, removed from the grief industrial complex and all forms of empire-making. She received degrees from Stanford University and Princeton University.

Diana Ly (Lab Director) is a Vietnamese-American screenwriter and playwright who tells stories about women and people of color coming into their power, agency and artistry. She grew up in the Philippines, studied Computer Science at Stanford and previously worked at Google. She has been a Baryshnikov Arts Resident (with Charlotte Bydwell) and a member of the Universal Pictures Writers Lab, Orchard Project’s Greenhouse Lab, and the WIF|Black List Feature Residency. The Omnivores co-production with The Sống Collective of her play Sex and the Abbey at the Brick was warmly recommended by Helen Shaw in the New Yorker. She completed her MFA in Playwriting at Hunter College and is currently a fellow in Juilliard’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program.