Ellena Eshraghi (me, hi, who has committed to writing this in the third person) is an Iranian-American actor, writer, producer, and creative based out of NYC & LA. She is a 2022 graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts where she studied Drama and Dramatic Writing. While at NYU she wrote and performed sketch comedy with Hammerkatz along the east coast and in the city at venues like UCB, Asylum, and the PIT.  In her latter two years on the group she served as the director and head writer, producing and curating their monthly live show. Since graduating, Ellena has made her off-broadway debut in HOUND DOG at Ars Nova, produced a 1/2 hour dramedy pilot Minor Inconvenience, and has been directing music videos for NY based artist antide. She most recently made her feature film debut in Mean Girls: The Musical (Paramount).

Ellena is a huge proponent of guerrilla filmmaking, playmaking, and all around art-making— often employing a skeleton crew of multitalented individuals to accomplish larger than life ideas. Her primary goal is to just make cool things with friends (frequently strangers turned friends, rarely friends turned strangers).

She’s fascinated by the subconscious—— how one’s emotional and mental constitution impacts their outward behavior; this is the lens she often enters a story, coupled with the influences of her intersectionality. Her work examines gender-power-relations, mental illness/the capabilities of the human mind, and the thin line between fantasy and reality. She explores these topics through multiple mediums, from film, to immersive live performance, to painting.

She hopes to speak to what is unconscious and introduce audiences to new realities.