Sona Tatoyan (Writer, Actor, Founder & Creative director, Hakawati) is a first generation Syrian-Armenian-American actor/writer/producer and founder of Hakawati.

As an actress, stage credits include world premieres at Yale Repertory Theatre, The Goodman Theatre, The American Conservatory Theatre and others. She starred in The Journey, the first American independent film shot in Armenia (winner, Audience Award Milan Film Festival, 2002). 

As a writer her first feature film script, The First Full Moon, was a 2011 Sundance/RAWI Screenwriters Lab participant and 2012 Dubai Film Connection/Festival Project. 

As a writer and actress, Ms. Tatoyan created the storytelling piece Azad, performing most recently at the University of Michigan Keene Theater, Clark University and the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. She created the multimedia play AZAD (the rabbit and the wolf) with two time Obie Award winning director/multimedia designer Jared Mezzocchi, and producer Bill Pullman. Development residencies: the Vineyard theater in NYC,  inaugural University of Connecticut Global Affairs Digital Media residency May 2023, Harvard Artlab September 2023 and Wake Forest University Character and Leadership February 2024. The multimedia play world premiered April 2025 in San Francisco at Potrero Stage, a co-production between Hakawati and Golden Thread Productions. 

Ms. Tatoyan is the co-creator, along with Isaac Sabu,  of 1001 Nights Experience, an iterative peace building project celebrating Middle Eastern storytelling, music, food and culture.  She is a Georgetown Global Politics and Performance Lab Fellow, 2024-26.

 Ms. Tatoyan served on the World Cinema Jury of the Duhok IFF in Iraqi Kurdistan (2016) and as Rudolf Arnheim Guest Artist Professor at Humboldt University in Berlin, (2017). Speaking engagements include: “Storytelling as Spiritual Vehicle: A response to the Armenian Genocide and Syrian Refugee Crisis” at The Brandenburger Gate Foundation, Berlin; “Trauma, Magic, Love: Being in Aleppo with Karagöz Puppets, My Ancestors and the Spirit of Osman Kavala” at CMES Harvard University; and most recently “Paradox and Liberation: Bones, Puppets, and Psychedelic Journeys in the Play of Identity” as the 2024 Distinguished Haidostian Lecture at the Center for Armenian Studies at the University of Michigan.

Ms. Tatoyan is a second degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do, received her yoga teaching certification in Goa, India, and is a graduate of the William Esper Studio in NYC, where she studied acting with Bill Esper. Ms. Tatoyan is a graduate of Wake Forest University with a B.A. in English and Theater, where she was mentored by Dr. Maya Angelou.