Octavia Chávez-Richmond is an actor, playwright, and storyteller whose work has been featured at international film festivals and regional theaters. She holds an MFA in acting from Brown University/Trinity Repertory where she received the David Wickham Playwriting Award. After graduating, Trinity Repertory awarded Octavia with the Margo Skinner Memorial Fellowship for 2018.
Octavia was recently commissioned by director Kate Bergstrom to write a contemporary, experimental opera, Quake, which debuted at the Culture Project Women’s Lab in October 2018.
In 2016 and 2017, Octavia starred in the award-winning films From Nowhere and Who We Are Now, which debuted at SXSW and TIFF, respectively.
Recent stage performances include Lulu in Between Riverside and Crazy (Stephen Adly Guirgis) at SpeakEasy Stage Company, under the direction of Hamilton director Tiffany Nicole Greene, and Cannibal Queen in Airness (Chelsea Marcantel) at Chautauqua Theater Company. In 2018, she played Mrs. Cratchit in Trinity Repertory’s production of A Christmas Carol and in 2019, starred in the title role of José Rivera’s Marisol.
Octavia’s writing focuses on women’s relationship to their bodies. She is particularly interested in women of color and their sexual agency. Her work disrupts hierarchy, racism, and misogyny and challenges conventional beauty standards.
