PROFILE

Maria Breaux is a writer, filmmaker, and transformative justice activist based in San Francisco, California. She has been a presence in San Francisco’s indie filmmaking sphere for over 20 years, with films like Vulveeta and Lucha, both recognized with Frameline Audience Awards. Her career spans directing, writing, producing, and acting, extending beyond film into plays, solo performances, sketch comedy, improv, and original music contributions. Her feature film Mother Country premiered at the American Black Film Festival and won Best Independent Low-Budget Feature at WorldFest-Houston. Her full-length play, The Mark Ten’s Fantastic Parade, for which she contributed original music, was awarded the First-Place New Works Fund Grant from Theatre Bay Area and was staged by Boxcar Theatre. Her short plays, solo performances, and sketch comedy shows have been mounted at venues including New Conservatory Theater, Climate Theater, Theatre Rhinoceros, Brava Theater, and Josie’s Cabaret and Juice Joint. She’s a two-time winner of the Highsmith Playwriting Award for her full-length plays, Day After Forever and I’m Bernie, She’s Hil.

Maria is also a seasoned marketing writer for notable organizations such as the Greater Good Science Center, Common Sense Media, ITVS, and Pinterest, leveraging her expertise cultivated through a master of fine arts in playwriting from San Francisco State University and a bachelor of arts in English from Stanford University. Recently grappling with an unimaginable loss—the tragic passing of her brother David Breaux, known locally in Davis, California, as “the Compassion Guy”—Maria is drawing from her brother’s profound legacy of collecting definitions of compassion to write a braided memoir named after David, Compassion Guy. The memoir excavates the unexpected common ground shared by Maria, David, and Carlos Reales Dominguez, the young person who killed him. Compassion Guy has received support from The San Francisco Arts Commission, Hedgebrook, Community of Writers, and Lighthouse Writers Workshop, and was longlisted for the 2025 CRAFT Memoir Essay and Excerpt Contest, guest-judged by Roxane Gay.