Chingwe Padraig Sullivan (he/they/she/nákum) is a New England based two-spirit Indigenous actor (Shinnecock and Montaukett nations), exploring how to bring Indigenous storytelling into western theatrical spaces. After studying for three years at the Brown/Trinity Rep MFA Acting Program, where she played Adam/Leo in The Inheritance at Trinity Rep, he left in order to pursue work more tied to Indigeneity, leading to playing Levi in the world premiere of Cashed Out at San Francisco Playhouse. Other notable work includes Venessa, Joe Tiger, and Rex Starr in Tara Moses’ Oklahoma Cycle plays, Iago in Othello at the South Dakota Shakespeare Festival, Felix Turner in The Normal Heart, and as the present and future version of themself in the world premiere of JaMario Stills’ 2216: The Remix of a Global Experiment.

As an artist, Chingwe is drawn to work about the ocean, about inheritance, about responsibility and relationship between land and people. Work that raises questions of belonging, both in a spiritual and material sense. These projects hit particularly close to home as a member of an Indigenous island nation, who cannot legally live on their own land.