EMMA SCHILLAGE is an actor, writer, singer, director, self-proclaimed interpretive dancer, and, most recently, a first-year MFA Playwrighting candidate at Columbia University. She is a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, and is a recent graduate from Loyola University New Orleans, where she received her BA in Theatre Arts with a concentration in Acting. During her undergraduate years, she has studied different programs in New York City at The Stella Adler Studio of Acting and in London at The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts.

In New Orleans, Emma worked professionally as an actor and theatre educator. She is a member of the Southern Rep Theatre Acting Company and is a teaching artist for youth programming.

Emma is proud of her Southern Italian-Sicilian heritage which has influenced her writing and spawned her first full-length play, La Famiglia È Tutto which received a staged reading at Loyola University New Orleans. Since then, she has written various short plays and one-acts. She considers herself a sentimental writer who is constantly questioning life’s perpetual insistence to surprise her.