ANNE SOLOMON RUTLAND’s plays include Sit-Down, Moth Variations and Dinner with Sid. RUTLAND’s work has twice been read at GEVA THEATER CENTER’S REGIONAL PLAYWRIGHTS FESTIVAL, and also at BUFFALO X, STUDIO ARENA THEATER. Member: DRAMATISTS GUILD, PLAYWRIGHTS CENTER, and GRUB STREET. Rutland earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Dramatic Literature from the UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, and a J.D. from SUFFOLK UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL. In addition to her prior work as a legal editor for Thompson Publishing and as a court attorney writing legal decisions, she is also a novelist and poet.

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Facebook: arutland1

MORE ABOUT ME
My most gratifying moment in the theater was the reading of my play Moth Variations at the Geva Theatre Center's Regional Playwriting Contest. I had worked as a actress before going to law school, becoming a lawyer, and having a baby. I started writing Moth Variations (about the composer Gustav Mahler) while I was pregnant. When my child was five, I won the contest that enabled me to hear that play read. That rehearsal process was the most fun I ever had in my life. How do you imagine telling stories in these times? Using my own voice, this voice I have been developing through the years of Day Jobs and raising kids. It is what is is, the humor, the rage, the silliness, the wisdom, the core.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
A Young Adult novel about relations between Native Americans and White settlers in Buffalo during the War of 1812.

KEYWORDS
Feminist, Historical, Period, Biography, Native Americans, Political, Unions, Equality, Teenagers 
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Karin Diann Williams writes speculative fiction, plays and screenplays. Her work has been produced by San Diego's Fritz Theater (where she served as playwright-in-residence from 1992-2001), NYC's Looking Glass Theater, Art House Productions, Space 55, Long Island Theatre Collective, New York New Works Festival, Flush Ink! Productions, the Gertrude Stein Repertory Theatre Digital Performance Institute, Lamia Ink!, Collaboraction Theater, Boston Theaterworks, and many more. As a Partner in the motion media company CulpepperWilliams, she wrote and produced The Captive (Webby People's Choice Award & NYTVF "Best Web Series" Award) and the independent feature Jordan. Her plays are available through Original Works Publishing and YouthPlays.

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Website: http://karindiannwilliams.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/karindiann

MORE ABOUT ME
If I could bring one change to theater, I would ensure that all voices are represented on the world stage – and that every community has access to live performance.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
A novel, a new play, a screenplay and interactive fiction

KEYWORDS
Family, Mystery, Thriller, Political, Nature, Equality, Pandemic, Climate, Environmental, Historical, Adaptations, Fable/folktales, Immersive/site-specific, satire, fantasy, science fiction, radio plays, verse, horror, Young Audiences, farce, holiday, zoom, drama, comedy

TAMMY RYAN is a resident playwright of New Dramatists class of 2027 and a 2020 Haas Fellow. Her work has been performed across the United States and internationally at such theaters as The Alliance Theater, Florida Stage, Marin Theater, People’s Light and Theater Company, Portland Stage Company, Theatre Lab, Pittsburgh Playhouse, Pittsburgh Public Theater and City Theatre Company among others. Awards and honors include the Francesca Primus Prize for her play Lost Boy Found in Whole Foods, and the American Alliance of Theater in Education’s Distinguished New Play Award for The Music Lesson. Her plays have also been nominated for both the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the ATCA Steinberg Award. Other plays include Hurricane Colleen (formerly entitled The Wake) (Playfest, Premiere Stages Festival Winner), Molly’s Hammer (Repertory Theater of St. Louis), Tar Beach (Luna Stage), Soldier’s Heart, (Pittsburgh Playhouse) and Baby’s Blues (NCPA, Mumbai). Her work has been featured in the National New Play Network’s national showcase and she has received support from the New Harmony Project, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Sewanee Writers Conference, the Heinz Endowment, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Pittsburgh Foundation and the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust She is a long time member of the Dramatists Guild of America and on faculty for DGI Plays in Progress. 

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Website: http://www.tammyryanplays.com

MORE ABOUT ME
An obsession with dialogue is what first compelled me to write for the theater. I’m interested in language driven by character: the real, common, spoken form as well as the poetic found in the everyday. I’m interested in silences too, in subtext and in dialogue that engages emotionally. I find my way to my audiences’ intellect through their hearts. I write plays to be in the rehearsal room with collaborators. I’ve been lucky to have started out with an artistic home at the Pittsburgh Playhouse for the first part of my career, so I’ve always had the understanding that writing for the theater meant working with a team, but more than that: each production creates a family, a “circle of love,” around it. Now as my work reaches audiences and collaborators outside of Pittsburgh my circles are wider but more scattered. One of the greatest gifts of my artistic life has been being welcomed into New Dramatist as a resident playwright, connecting me to a community of writers who share a common purpose, providing energy, inspiration, and renewed commitment. While conflict is essential to drama, I write intentionally towards connection. Both in my work and in my life, what brings human beings together has always been more important to me than what tears us apart. In Jose Rivera’s 36 Assumptions About Playwriting, Number 35 says: “In all your plays be sure to write at least one impossible thing.” I write for the theater as an act of faith, not only in theatrical impossibilities, but in the possibility of change in the real world. 

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
North of Forbes, an adaptation of Agatha Christie's first novel, commissioned by the Pittsburgh Public Theater for their PlayTime Commission's N'at series.

KEYWORDS
Woman, family, drama, comedy, memory, hurricanes, rape in the military, grief, sisters, 1977, motherhood, marriage, antigone, dysfunctional, Queens, gun violence

Sara Farrington is an NYC & NJ based playwright and co-founder of Foxy Films theater company with Reid Farrington. MFA from Brooklyn College w/ Mac Wellman, HARP Artist at HERE Arts Center for her play CasablancaBox, which was nominated for two 2017 Drama Desk Awards: Unique Theatrical Experience & Outstanding Projection Design. Sara's plays have been critically acclaimed by The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The Village Voice, American Theater Magazine, NY1, El Diario and more. Recent plays include BrandoCapote, CasablancaBox, Mendacity, Great Hunger, Leisure Labor Lust, Honduras, Cosmicomics, The Return, Near Vicksburg, Mickey & Sage, The Rise & Fall of Miles & Milo. Her work has received support from The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, The New York State Council on the Arts, The Venturous Fund, MediaTHE, Axe-Houghton Foundation, Arch & Bruce Brown Foundation. Sara was an AFO Artist-in-Residence, Phoenix Theater Ensemble collaborating artist, MacDowell fellow, Connecticut College & NTI @ Eugene O'Neill Center grad, Wooster Group intern & actor for 3 seasons at the great Jean Cocteau Rep. Plays published by Broadway Play Publishing and her book, The Lost Conversation: Interviews With An Enduring Avant-Garde is published by 53rd State Press. She is one of the original founders of the non-profit Immigrant Families Together & a champion of the #MeToo movement, resistor of fascist American regimes, hypocrites and Karens, mom to Jack & Levi. 

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Website: http://www.ladyfarrington.com
Facebook: sarajfarrington
Instagram: ladyfarrington
Twitter: ladyfarrington1

MORE ABOUT ME
What was your most gratifying moment in the theater? One comes to mind: I remember a sold out performance at Incubator Arts Project of a play of mine where the audience could not stop laughing. Just waves and waves of laughter at every moment. I was sitting in the last row of the theater thinking, this is bliss, this is like surfing.
What play or production changed your life? The Wooster Group's The Emperor Jones. Seeing it changed the course of my life artistically, personally, professionally, emotionally. I feel most like myself when I …. am writing an epic 2-hander.
How do you overcome disappointment? I'll indulge myself in a good 24 hours of spite, bitterness & self-pity, then quickly forget about it & keep writing. If you could bring one change to theater, what would it be? That we stop overvaluing young playwrights. Very few writers wrote anything good in their 20s. It's way more interesting to read a play written by a committed 40, 50, 60, 70 + year old playwright who's been rejected 500 times, who's experienced real life, grief, pain, love, childbirth, loss, failure, success, etc... We've fetishized young writers, it's embarrassing. I don't know any playwrights who are proud of the plays they wrote in their 20s. Most consider them training wheel plays, or as Robert Wilson says, "passports to the next one."
What do you want artistic directors to know? If a play reads well on the page, it's probably boring on the stage.
What’s the one thing nobody knows about you that you’d like them to know? I know all the words to every single Simpsons episode between 1989-1999.
Why do you keep doing theater? It is the most flexible art form there is & something I do for myself to survive. 

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
"Mendacity" a darkly comic 'pataphysical play/film about Lindsey Graham trapped in a Tennessee Williams universe. "Great Hunger" a 2-hander about the Great Hunger in Ireland. "They Had Faces Then," a piece I'm building with/for Zoe Van Tieghem about actresses in Hollywood in the 1930s. Also finishing my book with 53rd State Press, "The Lost Conversation: Interviews With An Enduring Avant-Garde" out Dec 2021.

KEYWORDS
Comedy, Drama, New Media, Avant-Garde, Historical, Political, Young Audiences, New York, Period, Adaptations, Queer, Psychodrama, Two-Hander, Large Cast, Old Hollywood
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Shirley Kaplan, painter, director, and playwright has worked extensively in theatre within the United States and Europe.  At an early age she received a grant to study in Paris at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere and spent four years painting in Paris during the artistically active post war period of the 1950s. Returning to New York she exhibited at The Stable Gallery and began to work collaboratively. She is one of the co-founders of the OBIE-Award winning Paper Bag Players and she is the founder/director of Painters’ Theatre. She has painted images for many of her own plays including The Dream Box, Neon, and Floating Cathedral and has designed and painted projections for all of Ben Bagley’s Cole Porter shows . She is a longtime member of Ensemble Studio Theatre where has had numerous production of her work in the Marathon and where she directed first productions of Richard Greenberg, Eduardo Machado, and many others. She has written and directed plays at La Mama, UBU Repertory, Playwrights Horizons, All Seasons Theatre Group, The Zipper, and The Powerhouse. She was commissioned to create an original visual piece for Festival St. Archangelo in Italy with an ensemble of Italian performers. She is the founder and co-Director of Sarah Lawrence College Theatre Outreach program where she also was the Director of the Theatre Program from 1988 to 2006. She is now Faculty Emeritus. Recent projects include Sailors and Dreamers, a song cycle which was performed at The Merkin Concert Hall (lyrics by Kaplan, music by Chet Biscardi). Her new play The Unending Life of Ernst Mann had a staged reading at Ensemble Studio Theatre in 2019. She is currently working on rewrites and rehearsing with musicians and singers on Arthur Siegel’s music for A Connecticut Cowboy, a past Susan Smith Blackburn Prize finalist. 

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Website: http://www.shirleykaplanart.com/
Facebook: Shirley Kaplan

MORE ABOUT ME
The companies of Complicité and Ariane Mnouchkine have been inspiring. I feel most like myself when I see honest performances. When I'm stuck I think of the next steps and stay active. When I'm not doing theatre I read and I cook. I keep doing theatre because of the power of communication. 

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
A Connecticut Cowboy revival

Jean Koppen is an award-winning playwright and founding member of Pipeline Playwrights. Her plays have been presented at the Kennedy Center's Page to Stage Festival and produced across the country including at Keegan Theatre (D.C.), the Capital Fringe Festival (D.C.), SkyPilot Theatre (LA), and The Alumnae Theatre (Toronto). Jean’s short play “Capsmittment” was Active Culture’s 2012 playwriting competition winner, and “Got a Light?” was a finalist in City Theatre’s 2019 National Award for Short Playwriting. Jean's full-length "Unprotected" was a Trustus Playrights' Festival Finalist and "Someplace Better" was a Finalist in The Garden script development program. Jean's play The Best Worst That Can Happen is available for purchase and licensing through Next Stage Press. Jean is an alumnae of the Kennedy Center Playwrights Intensive, a member of Honor Roll! and a Dramatist Guild member.

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Website: http://www.jeankoppen.com/
Twitter: TW @jeankoppen

MORE ABOUT ME
I keep doing theater because it makes me feel connected to humanity. I have connections (spouse, friends, family), but I think we all long for an understanding about what it means to walk on this earth and live and feel and want. Theater fills that desire in a unique way I rarely find elsewhere. If I can assist others in finding that understanding, that completeness - it is the ultimate gift. And it's quite a rush!

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
I am working on a full-length play about the experience of being forced to leave one's country in the hopes of finding Someplace Better.

KEYWORDS
Feminist, comedy, humanity

Dana Hall has been a Chicago-based actor for over two decades. She is also an accomplished and award-winning author, playwright, speaker, and mental health therapist. Her award-winning children's book, Beyond Words was released in 2020. She has been featured in the anthology, Made to Overcome and We All Belong: Musings on Inclusion, Acceptance, and Kindness. Her plays have been featured at Inkwell Theatre Ca., Drawing Cats Theatre (NYC), Palos Village Players (Chicago), Equity Theatre (NYC), Triangle Rainbow Theatre & Riante Theatre (NYC), The New Deal Deal Creative Arts Center (NY), Dramatic Question Theatre (DQT) (NYC), This Moment Productions (IL), and Scripps Onstage (CA). She is a 2021 finalist with Jakespeare VTC (MA) for her show Alone at the Automat, an Edward Hopper inspired piece. She was accepted to the Women’s Theatre Festival (NC) summer/2021 for her examination of social disparities with the piece, No Justice. Her show Unprovoked was featured as one of two PRIDE shows published by Barely Seen Editor 2021. Her original full-length virtual comedy The Tenant was featured in the Rogue Theater Festival (NYC) 2021. She was also nominated Best Director at Triangle Rainbow Theatre’s LGBTQ play festival (NYC 2021) for her work on a show she also wrote called Sunny Side Up. Her comedic monologue Plaque Kills is in Equity Theatre Library. She is thrilled to have her first TYA piece Magic Memories produced by 23 Miles South Theater summer/2021. In addition, she has been published with Smith Scripts UK & Stage Plays. She is the co-founder and artistic director of This Moment Productions, a virtual theatre company with the mission to increase access and equity in the theatrical arts. She is a member of the Dramatist Guild of America, International Centre for Women Playwrights, and HonorRoll! 

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Website: https://danalhall.com/
Instagram: @GoAskYourTherapist
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DanaHallLcpc

MORE ABOUT ME
Why do I keep doing theater? The power of storytelling has always fascinated me. As a child I would find myself lost in the writing of Beverly Clearly, Judy Blum, Roald Dahl, Arnold Lobel and others. As I sit with my youngest on my lap introducing another generation to these works, I cannot help but be moved by the power narratives have had in my life. Like most writers and actors we tell time by what pieces we were working. It is so interwoven into my life it isn't 'a thing I do' but part of who I am, like any relationship it ebbs and flows but I know it will be there when I need it. Whether I'm on the stage traveling through the experience of characters, or writing them myself, I am swept away by the ability to travel by only turning a page. I'd love for my legacy to be that I gave power to truth, took risks, and did my best to advocate for new and diverse voices to be heard in the arts. 

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
I just finished a piece inspired by an Edward Hopper painting called Alone at the Automat. It has served as a great prelude to the 1930s historic piece I'm gathering research for called Seven Miles Behind The Moon, which is an old slang term for someone with mental illness. This play will combine my background as a clinical psychotherapist with my passion for historical dramas. 

KEYWORDS
Drama, Actor, Historical, Comedy, Therapist, Mental Health Matters, Equality, Diversity, Period, Advocate, Family, Nature, Adaptations
​

Laura Thoma is a theatremaker originally from Tidewater, Virginia, whose work is published internationally. She started her career as a dancer and choreographer. She danced with Fernando Bujones, at the White House, and as Chessasrus Rex in Kraft’s National Mac and Cheese Tour. As a choreographer, Laura worked with Second City, Sheldon Patinkin, and innumerable regional theatres. She was an adjunct professor at Roosevelt University and Columbia College, where she served as the liaison between the dance and theatre departments. As a playwright, Laura has developed her work with many organizations including, Chicago Dramatists, Marist College, Stage Door Theatre, and the Blackstone Memorial Library. Her play Magpie was a semi-finalist in Theatre Odyssey’s first annual One Act Play Festival. As a Playwright in Residence with The Pawling Theatre Exchange, she continued to develop Magpie into a full length play—it was recently published by Next Stage Press and is scheduled to have its first production in the fall of 2022. Laura has had many short plays featured in regional short and new work festivals. She is the author of several non-fiction books and currently working on her first novel. Laura is a member of the Dramatist Guild, Honor Roll!, The League of Professional Theatre Women, and the Theatre Artists Workshop, where she is currently serving as Vice President of their Board. 

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Website: http://laurathomaplaywright.com/index.html
Facebook: @laura.thoma.coaching
Twitter: @laura.thoma.coaching
Instagram: @laura.thoma.coaching

MORE ABOUT ME
When I'm writing, my favorite thing to do is to take the time to discover the process needed and called for by the project. I love encouraging and creating the daily practice I will use when writing each particular play. Sometimes, it's about outlining, sometimes it's about capturing the visuals I see. Sometimes it's about creating a playlist or finding the ideal ASMR to use when writing. It's always about having my tea at the perfect temperature. Thank you, fancy electric tea mug! I love working on multiple projects in a day, and each having its specific process allows me to flow from play to play.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
I'm working on a a ReVision of a full length play, expanding several shorts, and revising a novel.

KEYWORDS
Lesbian, Queer, Historical, Family, Self-Actualization, Trauma, Military, Mental Health, Writer's Life, Middle Age Women, Identity, Connection, Drama
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Tracy Brigden has spent over 30 years in the theatre developing, producing and directing new work for the stage. She was Artistic Director of City Theatre in Pittsburgh for 16 years where she produced almost 200 new plays and musicals. Prior to City, Tracy served on the artistic staffs of Hartford Stage and Manhattan Theatre Club. In addition to the 50 plus plays she directed at City, she has also directed at Barrington Stage, Westport Playhouse, Cinncinati Playhouse, Pittsburgh Public, Atlantic Theater and many others. Tracy received her MFA in Dramatic Writing from Point Park University in 2019. Her play about Bram Stoker, Stage Struck, recently won the Pittsburgh Playlabs Competition. She has written two immersive plays, Road to Revolution and Legends and Hauntings, that have been produced by the Fairfield Museum and History Center. In addition to plays, Tracy is developing a film about QAnon with her brother, filmmaker Nick Brigden, and her first fictional podcast, Newfield, dropped in May and is available wherever you get your podcasts. 

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Website: http://www.tracybrigden.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tracy.brigden.5/
Twitter: @roaringbox
Instagram: @tpbrigden

MORE ABOUT ME
I have been immersed in the world of new writing in one way or another since I can remember, as my mother was a fiction editor. However, the first time I worked with a playwright was in college at Northwestern U when I was chosen to direct a play in their "Agnes Nixon Festival" of short new plays by students. Suddenly I found myself in a room with a person I had studied and revered and idolized but never met - a living playwright! The professors left us with no instruction as to how to navigate this new relationship and make a play that had never even been spoken aloud before, but the (very sadly, late) and great Mary Siewert and I jumped in head first to realize her play - a comedy about survivalists. (It was a huge hit!) Well, it was love at first sight and the collaboration with a writer and the realization of a play for the very first time became my passion. I have spent my whole career in service to playwrights - mostly as a dramaturg, director and producer. But a few years ago I decided perhaps I had something to say as a writer too, so I gave myself the gift of grad school in Dramatic Writing (at Point Park U). I was 54. If working as a director on new plays was a joy, writing new plays MYSELF has been a REVELATION! I have come the keyboard a bit late in my life, but in a way I have been here all along. :) 

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
An Audio Drama about a missing man in a little town in the Everglades. A rewrite of my play STAGE STRUCK about Bram Stoker. A film about Qanon.

KEYWORDS
Mystery, Thriller, Audio Drama, Quirky, Female Protagonist, Historical, biography, Women's issues, Immersive, radio plays, Horror, period. 
​

Donna Gay Anderson is a playwright/lyricist currently collaborating with composer Theodore Christman on the musical, Unfolded, based on the life and work of Susie Scott Krabacher. Other dramatic works including High and Mighty, Shrimp and Crab, and Formula One have been presented and developed in New York City, Chicago, Louisville, New Orleans and North Carolina. She is a contributing writer to Dramatists Magazine and MusicalWriters.com. Her fiction has been included in The Louisville Review (Fall 2020) and Arkansas Review (December 2020). MFA Spalding University. She and her husband Tom live in swampy south Louisiana with any dog willing to spend the night. 

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Website: http://www.donnagayanderson.com
Twitter: @dgbanderson1

MORE ABOUT ME
The most gratifying moment in the theatre was when the cast of my first musical took their first bow. At that moment I realized that I evaluate the success of failure of every project by the quality of the relationships forged throughout. If the relationships are healthy and supportive, then the work will have evolved into something honorable through mutual respect, honesty, hard work and the common goal of creating well constructed art. Each person on stage and off stage had become special to me and I felt a sense of gratitude for them. I'll never forget how fortunate I felt, not just for the production, but for the individuals involved. 

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
I am working on a few things; a new musical about a WWII pilot and his mother's quest to save his legacy, a monologue play about bidding farewell, and a musical about a former Playboy centerfold turned international humanitarian. I always have a short story in the hopper for fun.

KEYWORDS
Humans, dogs, cooking, books, equity, humor, education, love, Haiti, Christianity, diversity, friends, New Orleans and York, plays, yoga, mentor, service, MFA, adaptations, lyrics.