Gabriela Furtado Coutinho is a writer (plays/poetry/prose), actor, cultural strategist, and proud graduate of Northwestern University (Theatre/English Creative Writing BA). For the past three years, she has guest lectured at Northwestern in the theatre department and served as an editor of TCG’s American Theatre magazine. Grateful for previous work with the Emmy's/Television Academy, The Kennedy Center, and various Chicago collectives, she holds experience in developing both new work and tangible care practices. 

 

Recent projects include Goodman Theatre's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (understudy actor); Blood Wedding (lead actor); The Bloody Bricks and Blows of American Dream High (playwright); Much Ado About Nothing: A Miami Party to Joy, featured in the Latinx Shakespeares archive (director); and Lookingglass's Circus Quixote (dramaturg). Gabriela is a past fellow of the Fornés Playwriting Workshop and O'Neill National Critics Institute. She was also a 2026 semifinalist for the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference.

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Her theatrical writing practice, like the Brazilian identity, embraces hybridity and excavates ancestral specificity. Raised between Rio and Miami, three languages, and stages of her family’s disability experience, Gabriela likes to translate the silences and voices that can’t quite be heard. Her multigenerational, lyrical plays abound in movement and ground themselves in intensive research. She believes playwrights are bridges, minding gaps in language, understanding, knowledge, experience, hope, and isolation. They trouble binaries and stand at the crossroads, taking the hands of both other creatives and audiences. As such, Gabriela is into de-centering and sees herself as an engaged “people writer,” working not just on her plays, but reimagining what's around them and serving the theatre ecology and community at large.

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AT bylines include creative nonfiction piece "How to Survive a Dictatorship, the Theatre Artist's Way" (highlighted in TCG's Fall of Freedom participation), personal cover story "Tomorrow's Tamoras and Titanias," and poem "in your hands, american theatres" (the editor's letter for AT's Immigrant Imaginations issue). She feels deeply honored that many of her stories have been featured in syllabi around the country, from high schools to university programs. 

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Latest endeavors include contributing to a new Routledge companion on Latine and Caribbean musical theatre, leading the new monthly series Re:working Chicago Theatre at The Understudy Coffee + Books, and honing in on her playwriting craft and new works at the intersection of migration and disability justice.

 

She also loves to reimagine classics, embody power roles, empower youth, and dream up kinder futurisms with friends whose language is laughter. She brings a warm Brazilian sensibility and optimism to all her work, and creates across her three native languages.

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Please feel free to contact her at gabriela.furtado.coutinho.us@gmail.com. As an actor, Gabriela Furtado Coutinho is represented by Talent X Alexander (lsmith@talentxalexander.com).

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She looks forward to being in community with you!