Isabella Dionne Madrigal (Cahuilla/Turtle Mountain Chippewa) is a writer/director/actor. A 2025 Sundance Native Lab Fellow, Isabella’s work centers on empowering Indigenous communities through the arts. Isabella co-leads the Luke Madrigal Indigenous Storytelling Nonprofit, an organization that empowers Indigenous ways of knowing through performance art. She is a recipient of the Center for Cultural Power’s Culture Bearer Award, the Center for Native American Youth’s Champion for Change Award, the California Arts Council Impact Grant, and the First Peoples Fund’s Native Performing Arts Fellowship.
Isabella graduated from Harvard College with a degree in English and was awarded the Hoopes Thesis Prize for her screenplay Menil and Her Heart. As a playwright, her work has been nationally recognized. Her play Menil and Her Heart won the Yale Young Native Storytellers Contest in 2020 and has since been performed at over sixteen venues across the U.S., including the United Nations and the California State Capitol, where it contributed to dialogue on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives (#MMIR). The play was also included on the Native Theater Project’s list of 15 recommended #MMIR plays on the New Play Exchange.
As an actor, Isabella is known for her roles in Menil and Her Heart, Peacock’s Rutherford Falls, and Marvel’s Echo. Driven by a commitment to meaningful representation and cultural continuity, Isabella continues to develop original film and theatre projects.