About

Shannon Tyo is an award-winning actor, writer, and director based in New York City.

Broadway: Yellow Face. Off-Broadway: The Comeuppance (Signature Theatre), Regretfully, So the Birds Are (Playwrights Horizons), The Far Country (Atlantic Theater, Pulitzer finalist), peerless (Primary Stages), The Chinese Lady (Ma-Yi Theater at The Public), Kentucky (Ensemble Studio Theater), and Bikeman (Tribeca PAC). Select regional credits include The Good Book (Berkeley Rep), Fun Home (Baltimore Center Stage), The White Snake (The Old Globe), Broadway Bounty Hunter (Barrington Stage), Smart People (Geva Theatre), The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Northern Stage, Tuacahn Center), and Miss Saigon (Pioneer Theatre, MT Wichita). She specializes in new works and has helped develop countless new plays and musicals in New York and around the country. 

Shannon has received two Obie Awards (Sustained Achievement in Performance, and a Special Citation for the cast of The Comeuppance), a Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lead Performance in a Play (for The Chinese Lady), a Theater World Award, the Connecticut Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play, a Bessie nomination, and a Drama Desk nomination. 

As an audiobook narrator, Shannon has narrated dozens of books and is an Earphones and SOVAS Award winner, and an Audie finalist.

She has directed for the Adirondack Theatre Festival, Ma-Yi Theater Company, the American Playwriting Foundation, and Theater J in DC.

Her one-act play, Younger Battles the Possible Ghost, was produced at Ensemble Studio Theatre and is published in the 2023/2024 TRW Short Plays collection.