We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Shea Formanes a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Shea, appreciate you joining us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?
My realization that I wanted to pursue a career in the arts was gradual, captured in incremental stages as I grew into the kind of creative I wanted to be. However, there were several moments that come to mind. It could’ve been when four-year-old me declared to everyone at my preschool graduation that I loved giraffes and wanted to be an artist, or when six-year-old me painted a collection of pensive, colorful flowers that made me realize that I could create art to share with others. However, I think the most informative moment in my artistic journey was when my second-grade teacher, Ms. Williams, encouraged me to keep writing. My class had just finished a creative writing assignment where we had to write and illustrate our own storybook and share it with the class. What started out as a simple story about a fairy princess turned into a surprisingly complex tale about espionage, political strife, and an attempted coup that was only thwarted thanks to her quick wit. The deeper I delved into the story, the more I realized how much I enjoyed the process of creating it, as well as the sense of accomplishment I felt once it was completed. At the time, one of the proudest moments in seven-year-old me’s life was hearing my second grade teacher tell me that she loved my story, and wants to read more of it someday. It was that moment where it dawned on me that not only was I capable of telling stories that had depth and meaning, that could be funny and entertaining, but that it’s something that others could enjoy and help brighten their day, even if it’s just a little.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My name is Shea Formanes, I’m a Seattle-based, queer Filipino-American writer/filmmaker born and raised in New York City. Growing up lower-middle class, I’m the eldest child of a Filipina immigrant and a first-generation Filipino-American. With many of my loved ones being disabled and/or autistic, I know what it’s like to be ostracized because of one’s identity. It’s my life mission to center voices that otherwise have been suppressed. I’m committed to telling sci-fi/drama stories about complicated families from BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ communities that heal from traumatic events through trust.
My journey into becoming a writer and filmmaker wasn’t linear. From the time I learned how to read, I knew that I wanted to tell stories, drawing on any surface I could find, the images flowing into a semi-coherent narrative that I would shape with my little sister. However, the reality that many children (especially from low-income families) grow up with is that oftentimes, you have to choose financial security over personal fulfillment. Being from a multigenerational Filipino family, when I was in fifth grade, I became determined to be the first woman in my family to become a mechanical engineer, wanting to follow in the footsteps of my paternal grandfathers. I wanted to build things to make people’s lives better. However, after the stark realization that I am terrible at mathematics, I had to change gears.
On my seventeenth birthday, I came across the novel, “The Power Broker”, written by Robert A. Caro, which chronicled the life and death of Robert Moses, the infamous urban planner that shaped New York City into what it is today. Reading about the impact that the design of city infrastructures had on the shaping of communities (especially communities of color), coupled with the deep connection I had with the city I grew up in, compelled me to pursue a career in urban planning and landscape architecture, since it seemed like the happy compromise between the arts, STEM, and social justice. To me, urban planning was just another means of storytelling, of mapping the complex histories of different communities and how they intersected with each other. To me, that’s life encapsulated in a single concept.
But like with the rest of the world, everything changed when the pandemic began. Being restricted to being solely around my work and studies 24/7, a slow disconnect between myself and the discipline I chose began to form. As the chasm deepened, I found myself gravitating to the arts once again, throwing myself into my creative writing classes and reading anything I could.
Then, just by chance, for a class project in a landscape design class, I created a documentary about the vandalism incident at Bellevue College in Washington State, where a mural made in remembrance of the Japanese internment camps during WWII was defaced. I loved the research that went into the project, disseminating information about different Japanese-American families that shared their experiences in the internment camps, as well as collecting and editing B-roll footage to shape the documentary. Making the documentary helped me form a better understanding of the history itself, but also the real people who lived through it. When I presented the documentary to my class, the reaction took me by surprise: people were not only taken by the documentary, but now had a desire to learn more about the history of Japanese internment camps in the United States, a history that is rarely discussed or taught. In that single moment, I learned two things: (1) that films can compel people to learn more and teach each other about communities and histories they otherwise wouldn’t know about, and (2) I think I wanted to be a filmmaker.
By no means did I have the resources to get into film/TV development, especially during the pandemic. However, I didn’t let that stop me. After doing an extensive amount of research into different kinds of production companies and studios, I began cold-calling and cold-emailing anyone and everyone, asking if they were looking for interns to hire for school credit. Many turned me down, and even more didn’t reply at all. Still, I had to keep going. It took contacting over 100 companies before I even landed my first interview, which eventually turned into my first film/TV development internship. And that just opened up the door for everything that came after. By the end of my college career, I was an English Honors graduate, and was nominated for the Dean’s Medal by the Department of Cinema & Media Studies, where I double-majored with creative writing. Despite being based in Seattle, I had the opportunity to work for multiple different studios and production companies in both the United States and abroad, as well as worked in various facets of publishing and journalism.
Today, I’ve slowly built a portfolio of works that I feel capture my modus operandi of creating unique, lyrical stories about underrepresented peoples; I’ve directed the queer coming-of-age short film, “The Kettle”, and the sci-fi/drama stage play, “Bahay Kubo”. I was the 1st AD apprentice in the Action! Narrative Apprenticeship Program through the Northwest Film Forum, and was selected for the Above the Line – Education Forum through Washington Filmworks. Most recently, I was selected for the 2025 Green Room, a cohort of nine screenwriters who are mentored by the Northwest Screenwriters Guild to write a feature film script over the course of nine months, and currently freelance as a videographer, video editor, 1st Assistant Director, and Production Assistant.
The biggest project that I’ve worked on so far was writing/directing my debut feature film, “I Watched Her Grow”, which won Best Sci-Fi Film Award from the Toronto International Nollywood Film Festival, Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Feature Film at the Tri-Cities International Film Festival, Best Makeup in a Feature Film from the Toronto Independent Film Festival at Cift, and is a Quarter-Finalist at the Urban Mediamakers Film Festival. It was also selected by the Seattle Black Film Festival, the San Diego Filipino Film Festival, as well as by the Scope Screenings Underground Film Festival.
Coming up, I recently wrote the fantasy drama short film, “Diwata”, the screenplay for which was a finalist at the San Francisco IndieFest Screenplay Competition 2025, and am currently writing my next feature film, the romantic sci-fi drama, “On This Bridge, We’ll Dream”. Outside of film, I’m currently working on my first novel, as well as a collection of short stories.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
As a Filipino-American person, I grew up living on the margins in terms of cultural identity. Not many of my peers knew what the Philippines was, let alone point it out on a map. Consequently, I had the understanding that to be Filipino-American means trying to convince yourself that the world hasn’t forgotten about you or where you come from. It also means living in a country that’s published thousands of volumes about choosing what defines you: the culture you’re raised in, or the culture that you choose. It means giving up one’s culture in favor of the mainstream, embracing a culture synonymous with being accepted.
This is an internal conflict that I confronted head-on while I was in college, specifically when I wrote and directed my first theater stage play, “Bahay Kubo”, a time-travel journey that centers a multigenerational Filipino family as they try to reconnect with one another. At the time, the theater industry in Seattle was, and still is, largely-white. A hard truth I had to accept while leading my stage play is that those in positions of power will pick and choose what they want to promote, whom to give more resources, etc. – more often than not, they would provide that grace to productions with casts and crews that look like them: homogenous; the same. I had to tell myself that this was the system that was in place, and it was unlikely to change anytime soon. As a result, I had to learn to not necessarily learn how to operate within that system, but how to subvert and challenge it with the limited power I had.
Regardless, I made the best of what I had, ensuring that my cast and crew of diverse artists and actors felt appreciated and valued, especially in sharing a story that was so personal to me. It was terrifying, but the results: being able to show my parents and my cast and crew’s families what we made, as well as the connections and bonds that were forged from creating this show? They meant the world to me. Seeing so many people relate to the story of my Filipino family, portrayed by a diverse and passionate group of talented artists, told me that being Filipino-American doesn’t have to mean living in the margins, or worrying that people will forget who you are. In fact, if you trust yourself to make your voice loud enough, it could mean stepping out into the light, and sharing with others everything that makes you who you are.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
My ultimate goal is to write/direct films and novels to start my production company within the Greater Seattle Area, especially with the contacts that I have made with new and emerging professionals in the film and writing industry, and hope to expand the burgeoning filmmaking landscape in Western Washington to Eastern Washington, especially to empower marginalized filmmakers in the area to create their own films and tell their stories.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://sheaformanes.myportfolio.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sheaformanes/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shea-formanes/
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@avidubeconsumer?si=BJ52Sf_HvsyPNMJ3
Image Credits
Headline Photo by Jack Danger Cross
Headshot by Matthew Mee