 Kia T. Barbee (she/her) Born and raised in New York City and she has been writing stories since the age of five. She enjoys creating flawed character driven inclusive stories exploring acceptance of self with sometimes non-pc humor. Her play Roommates was nominated to be considered for the 2023 Susan Smith Blackburn Award. As a creative producer and freelance script and development consultant, she has worked with award winning screenwriters and filmmakers to strengthen story structure, character development and dialogue. Her current goal is to continue to create riveting plays for a diverse audience and IP based content for film and televesion, in addition to highlighting and mentoring other underrepresented writers via her live read showcase ScriptRead. She is a member of the WGAE and Dramatist Guild.
SOCIAL MEDIA/WEBSITE TW: KiaBarbee IG: @kiatb MORE ABOUT ME I feel most like myself when I'm creating stories and producing. It's my happy place. / What's one thing nobody knows about you that nobody (creative peers) don't know? I'm an bonafide animal lover and wanted to become a veterinarian. My favorite animals are cats (big and small) and wolves. WHAT I'M WORKING ON A new full length play about teachers called Snobs Vs The Underdogs to be completed by early fall. KEYWORDS Black, BIPOC, Queer, Buddhist, Satire, Dramedy, Drama, Psychological Thriller, Supernatural/Sci-Fi, Dystopian, Teen Dramas  Tracie Evette Morrison resides in Newark, New Jersey. She earned her BA in English from Rutgers University, Douglass College, and her MA in Counseling from Montclair State University. A former high school Teacher of English and Professional School Counselor, Tracie is currently a high school Vice Principal. Her inaugural stage play, The Prayer Dancer, was performed at the George Street Playhouse in 2004 and later published in 2015. Tracie returned to developing her craft as a playwright through the Writers Theatre of New Jersey Playwriting Workshop in 2019 and is currently a member of the Dramatist Guild, African American Playwrights Group (AAPG) and Honor Roll Playwrights. In November 2021, Tracie released her new book, PRAY-ER Talk, Listen Obey: Starting and Strengthening Conversations with God. Her 10-Minute play Flip Your Lid was selected for a reading in the MAC One Acts Festival in June 2022. Preach, Preacher, Tracie’s newest full-length play was selected for the Reader's Theatre of New Works at the National Black Theatre Festival in August 2022 and for the Pacific Northwest Multicultural Festival in August 2023. Her 10-Minute play Water Bar will be presented in the Jersey Voices 2023 Festival. Tracie is excited to share her writing with others and hopes to inspire, encourage and empower diverse audiences!!!
SOCIAL MEDIA AND WEBSITE IG: @playwrightgirl FB: TracieTheWriter MORE ABOUT ME When I'm not writing, I enjoy the art of daydreaming. Daydreaming allows me to separate from the harsh and sometimes cruel reality of life. I don't have to wear the "I'm every woman cape". I don't have be "Black woman strong"...I can just be in the space of my daydreams. It is safe, calming and, at times, cleansing to just be... WHAT I'M WORKING ON I am currently working on 10-Minute play and a project for work. KEYWORDS BIPOC, Female, Christian, Authentic, Drama/Comedy, Relationships, Relevant, Unique  Jeanmarie Simpson wrote and performed her first solo show in Toronto in 1972. She wrote and performed hundreds of times (including Off-Broadway) A Single Woman about Jeannette Rankin, the first US Congresswoman. She performed the piece at CalArts as Surdna Distinguished Guest Artist in 2005 and starred in the film version that features Judd Nelson, the voices of Martin Sheen and Patricia Arquette, and Joni Mitchell’s music. After winning the Sacramento News and Review’s Best Theatrical Surprise award, A Single Woman toured 53 countries on five continents. Tony Award winner Zakes Mokae directed her as Elsa in his 2003 staging of The Road to Mecca, and in 2007, Leonard Nimoy directed her in the US premiere of Vern Thiessen’s solo tour-de-force, Shakespeare’s Will. She again toured the world with Coming In Hot, playing 19 military women. From 2011-19, she toured globally with her original solo performance HERETIC – the Mary Dyer story. In 2021, her play Pineapple and Other Options played in the Pandora New Works Festival and was staged and filmed in Phoenix, and her play The Jewish Question won Honorable Mention by the Jewish Plays Project. In 2022, she won a Living History Foundation grant for Bambino Mio – Bright Little Flame about Maria Montessori. She is the recipient of six Sierra Arts Foundation and twelve Nevada Arts Council grants to artists, a National Endowment for the Arts Theatre grant, and myriad other awards. Founding Artistic Director of Universal Access Productions/Arizona Theatre Matters, based in Arizona, Nevada, and on the company’s YouTube channel, she served on the panel for the 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Theatre Grants for Arts Projects. Jeanmarie is a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographer’s Society, the Dramatists Guild of America, and is retired from Actors Equity Association and Screen Actors Guild/AFTRA.
SOCIAL MEDIA AND WEBSITE Website: http://jeanmariesimpson.com MORE ABOUT ME From a long line of bilingual writer-editors and a long line of WASPS too polite to even read the kind of political journalism my mother’s people wrote, I clearly take after her side of the family. Growing up with a mother and grandmother to run to when I needed help writing was a luxury. Having the Spanish and English languages to play with, as well as the profoundly Yiddish-informed Brooklynese my mother spoke, gave me a love of language and permission to play with words. I came to look to those fierce critics, not for approval but for the sharpness and clarity my work needed regardless of form. In my mid-forties, I felt I had earned the right to fictionalize. I am a Feminist, and I’m drawn to the stories of strong women who prevailed in the face of discrimination and repression. My work is influenced by non-traditional staging techniques developed in Eastern Europe during times when resources were nonexistent, and theatre was a crime. I am an archaeologist of the collective soul discovered when I explore the lives and events of others – women who lived before running water, brick houses, and suffrage. Women inspire me when they step out of their assigned places and with my work, I aspire to cast light on their stories and, in the process, illuminate my own. WHAT I'M WORKING ON A Little Bumpy Air - a memoir about surviving childhood sexual assault, ongoing abuse and loss. KEYWORDS Writer, Mother, Grandmother, Political, Historical, Queer, Jewish Latina.  A queer playwright residing in the DC area, Anne strives for a depiction of humanity that lets itself off the hook—people are going to make mistakes and decisions that can seem flawed at times. She believes that in today’s world one of the toughest things to come by is someone who will let you off the hook, who will say it’s okay to be flawed, it’s okay not to have conquered all of your challenges, it’s okay to have humble dreams. It’s okay… Receiving a PhD in Literature from Temple University, Anne has made writing the center of her professional life for the past twenty years. She’s had plays presented by Baltimore Playwright’s Festival, Rockford New Words, Jersey City Theatre Center, Arts Fort Worth Original Works Series, Philadelphia Artists Collective, Burlington County Footlighters New Works Festival, Project Y Women Theatre Festival (Honor Roll! Monologue Slam), Stella Adler Studio, Creative 360 Art Speaks Festival, among others. She lives with her fiancée and their 2 highly untrainable pups, Tiberius and Athena—Goddess of Wisdom.
SOCIAL MEDIA/WEBSITE Website: http://anne-valentino.com MORE ABOUT ME Why do I keep doing theatre? I came out later in life. Too late to avoid many of the emotional issues that made a huge chunk of my twenties and thirties a blur of self-abnegation. I married my high school sweetheart. I had what you’d call a checkbox kind of life. Colonial house on 2.3 acres – check, yellow lab – check, PTA mom – check, country club membership – check. But it was never a life I fit into. Just a life I faked my way through. And then, when my children grew up, I began to understand that faking one’s way through life was the most empty feeling in the world. I came out just before 40. I eventually met the woman of my dreams…a woman who taught me how to dream. And I began my writing career in earnest. I initially focused on writing poetry and personal essays, tried my hand at a novel or two. But what I found was that these forms of writing, for me at least, were in some ways more of the same—I still felt isolated and alone. And then I began writing plays. The very first time I got to attend a rehearsal and watch what I wrote come alive as embodied by these wonderful actors was absolute nirvana for me. Then when an audience was involved—my god, what bliss! I was enthralled, I was smitten with theatre, I knew I’d found my writing “home.” In the theatre, not only do I get to tell my story (my real story), but I get to do so in a communal way as a member of a "family." I get to truly be a part of something and I get to make art while doing it…now what can be better than that! WHAT I'M WORKING ON Currently, a couple of pieces...One is a play about the women scientists and researchers who tried to prove the existence of a Viking Warrior Woman despite the many doubters. And the second is a fictional account of Anne Sexton and the formation of her "band." KEYWORDS Lesbian, queer, LGBTQIA+, magical realism, romantic comedies, dark comedies, absurdist, political activism  Internationally produced queer playwright Bayla Travis began writing and directing at NYC's famed WOW Cafe Theatre. Since then, her work has been seen at the Belvoir St. Theatre in Sydney, the Drill Hall Theatre in London and cities across the U.S. Her work has broad appeal across generations of lesbians as well as to general audiences. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and loves teaching writing of all genres. Bayla has also worked in television at the The Cosby Show and the PBS show In The Life. She makes her home in Oakland, CA.
SOCIAL MEDIA: https://newplayexchange.org/users/14829/bayla-travis MORE ABOUT ME: I saw A Chorus Line many times. I was swept up in the music and stories of artistic struggle. The finale of that show is all the members coming together to sing in unison. Each is critical part of the whole. This is how I see the collaborative work of theatre; and opportunity for exquisite joy in community, for belonging. I call in creative partners who hold this vision and have skills to bring it into reality with compassion. WHAT I'M WORKING ON As a member of the Executive Committee of Honor Roll! I am in service to women+ to live their best creative lives by holding each other up and collectively removing obstacles to our visibility and full participation in theatre. KEYWORDS: Lesbian, Queer, Buddhist, Jewish  Jackie got a BFA in acting from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. After graduating she moved to NYC where she performed Off-Broadway, Off-Off Broadway and Where-The-Hell-Is Broadway before landing a role in the Off-Broadway production "Tony n'Tina's Wedding". She has been lucky enough to be a part of the Lincoln Center New Works Series, The Public Theatre’s Reading Series, The New York Fringe Festival and to perform at the National Theatre in Washington, DC. She’s also done commercials, voiceovers and stand-up comedy in all the major clubs before making her way to Los Angeles in 2000. In Los Angeles, she’s continued to do theatre and in 2001 she received an Ovation Award nomination for her solo show, “Last Stop: Neverland” which she wrote and performed. She also did short films, was a regular skit performer on Fox’s THE BEST DAMNED SPORTS SHOW EVER and can also be heard as the voice of Harley on the Xbox games "Outlaw Golf I and II", "Outlaw Volleyball" and "Outlaw Tennis". In 2007 she was featured on National Lampoon Comedy Radio Networks’ Comedy Countdown, the Los Angeles Comedy Festival and the Las Vegas Comedy Festival while performing stand-up in clubs in and around Los Angeles. In 2009 Jackie moved back to New York City where she continues to pursue her acting career and is a proud member of The Barrow Group/FAB (theater FOR, ABOUT and BY women).
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA Website: http://www.jackiemaruschak.com FB: Facebook.com/jackiemaruschak MORE ABOUT ME I keep doing theater because it was my first, truest and longest lasting love. It is where I feel most alive. It's been there for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health and I will love and cherish doing it until death do us part. WHAT I'M WORKING ON I am currently playing the Nurse/Lady Montague in an upcoming production of MAD Company's Romeo & Juliet at the Abrons Arts Center (3/23 - 4/2) and writing a solo show with the working title "RAISED BY WOMEN". KEYWORDS Comedy, Women of a Certain Age, Theater, Storytelling  Rosemary’s plays, for which she has won several NJ State Council on the Arts Playwriting Fellowships, include Pushing the River, Jersey City Theatre Center, (developed in residency with the New Jersey Women’s Playwrights Project) a darkly comic exploration of memory, consciousness and eminent domain; A More Opportune Time, a free adaptation of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus; and Paterson Falls, commissioned by Writers Theatre of New Jersey, about about silk strikes, salons and the power of theatre. Earlier plays include Standing in the Shadows (Wings Theatre, inspired by the Sharon Kowalski story); Voices Carry (Drew University); Motherless Child (Chicago Cooperative Stage); Horsefeathers, Women Playwrights Collective (Intimate Acts play anthology, Brito Lair); The Raw and the Cooked (Hallie Flanagan Play Series).
Shorter works include: Wombats, 10Fest; The Hanukkah Bush, Speranza Theatre; Breaking Quarantine, The Coronavirus Plays Project; Texas Walmart, Monologues & Madness, Panjera; Bella For The Revolution, Monologues and Madness, Cornelia Street Cafe; Sensitive, SHEatre; Can-Can, Cathedral Arts Live; and Totally Not Liam, Speranza Theatre Company. A member of the Dramatists Guild, Rosemary serves on the board of directors of ICWP (International Centre for Women Playwrights). She is a founding member both of Sheilah, a mixed genre writers group as well as Write Where You Are, for playwrights. Rosemary received her MFA from Rutgers. She is a professor of Theatre and Dance at Drew University where she directs the Playwriting program. She and her wife, Laurie Wurm, live in Maplewood, NJ, with their two children, three cats and one hamster.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA FB @RosemaryMcL Twitter @RosemaryMcL IG rpmclaugh Spoutible @RosemaryMcLaughlin MORE ABOUT ME Senior year of high school I was visiting a friend in DC. I’d always loved A Midsummer Night’s Dream and we heard it was playing at the Kennedy Center. We showed up at the box office an hour after the early curtain, doubly disappointed to learn it was sold out. Seeing people come out for the first intermission, we decided to follow them inside and lurk in the back of the theatre until someone threw us out. They would have had a fight on their hands. What we had stumbled into was THE Midsummer, directed by Peter Brook. I’d grown up going to Broadway, thanks to the two-fer discount tickets my Dad would bring home, but nothing had prepared me for what I was seeing: a white box with trapezes representing Athens and the forest. Sally Jacobs’ brilliant set design and how Brook’s direction used it blew me away. Everything about this RSC production made me think: “THIS is what theatre can be and do!” Ten years later, enrolled in Rutgers Playwriting MFA program, I could hardly believe it when they announced Sally Jacobs would be teaching stage design there. I took every class with her I could. She was a delight, thoroughly inspirational and vastly good humored about my scrambling to catch up with classmates who actually had a design background. Her impact, and that of Peter Brook, have had a lasting influence on my work as a playwright and as a teacher of playwrights. WHAT I'M WORKING ON Works-in-progress include Thank You, Dark (developed in residency with Women Playwrights Circle) about gentrification, theatre and LGBTQ+ activism; Seven Fishermen, inspired by a would-be missionary’s tragic encounter with uncontacted people; and The Triumph of Realism, a screenplay in which a retired Art Historian’s past becomes a thriller for her grandchildren. KEYWORDS Gay, LGBTQ+, Women, Comedy, Lesbian, Satire, Historical, Political, Gentrification, Liminal, Adaptations  Michole Biancosino is the Co-Founding Artistic Director of Project Y Theatre Company. With Project Y, she has led various professional productions, as producer, director, creator and writer. Her credits included the long-running shows, Trump Lear (co-created and directed) and the award-winning, David Carl’s Celebrity One-Man Hamlet (co-created and directed), both of which toured regionally and performed at Edinburgh Fringe, as co-productions with Richard Jordan Productions (UK), The Pleasance, and Underbelly. Recently Michole has been devising and writing plays. Since the pandemic she’s ventured into digital theatre-making and hybrid theatre in Vermont via Tiny Barn Theatre. Recently she co-wrote the cosmic raga opera, Waves of Gravity with Neel Murgai (LaMama CultureHub) in 2021. She was also the co-creator of the award-winning “Landmarks & Transformations.” Currently, she’s co-writing and creating an app-enabled play with digital technologist, Todd Anderson. As a performer, she’s currently playing the title role in Lia Romeo’s one woman show, Yoga With Jillian, and was just featured on “All Things Considered,” Recipient: Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, Sir John Gielgud Fellowship. Michole has been featured on Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls for her work with the Women in Theatre Festival.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA Website: www.projectytheatre.org FB:https://www.facebook.com/michole.biancosino IG: https://www.instagram.com/projectytheatre/ MORE ABOUT ME Many of my most successful projects come out of outside-the-box processes, where my multi-hyphenate theatre-making identity comes in handy. I am interested in playing with the relationship between the artist and the audience, reimagining what theatre is and can be. On any given new play or project, I want to find a way to surprise the audience and surprise myself as an artist. I especially love making works with a large number of writers/creators involved, bringing together a multiplicity of voices alongside my own to create both dissonance and harmony. My latest ventures are in experimental theatre-making using a combination of analog and digital technologies to form connections with the audience and test out the notion of community. WHAT I'M WORKING ON I'm working on putting together the annual Women in Theatre in New York City in June at ART/New York Theatres. It's an incredible celebration of new work by women+ writers and lead generative artists and I am excited about this year's lineup (as always!). KEYWORDS Women, New Plays, New Works, Immersive, Hybrid, digital theatre, Historical, Experimental, Edinburgh Fringe, Writer/Director, Shakespeare  Lindsey Brown is a New Zealand writer whose passion for the performing arts started at a young age. Initially a keen musical theatre and improv performer, she then moved into the world of writing. She obtained a Masters of Scriptwriting from Auckland University of Technology, and since then hasn’t looked back. Lindsey has had pieces performed around the world, including London, New York, Hollywood, Florida, Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, Sydney, Dubai, Queenstown and Auckland. Successes to date include being the winner of Mixing It Up Productions New York One Act Competition 2022, 2020 recipient of the PANZ Outstanding Achievement Award, winner of the 2021 Long Beach Playhouse New Works Festival, California, and winner of Show Off 2022 for Camino Real Playhouse, California. Lindsey often favours comedy in her writing, believing that when we laugh, we are most open to learn. It’s also more fun to write! Her plays contain strong roles for women that like to challenge those themes that are universal to us all.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA Website: https://www.playmarket.org.nz/playwrights/lindsey-brown/ MORE ABOUT ME The plays/productions that changed my life: I would like to mention three. 1: Les Mis - as a performer myself, I was in constant tears of emotion the first time I saw this. It just blew teenage me away. Theatre in it's EPIC state. Oh, how I wanted to play Eponine one day....'a little fall of rain....' - still waiting for the chance (am I too old?) 2:The Play that Goes Wrong - Oh, how I laughed! It reminds us of the FUN that theatre brings, and such fabulous roles for actors! It really inspires my writing - the ridiculousness, the entertainment, the FUN. 3 - Celebrating the Musical - I was a performer in this one and met a group of women who have helped shape my world since. They are a creative rock that I was so lucky to find. WHAT I'M WORKING ON I am just finishing the final editing for a piece called 'A Woman Over Forty' - Synopsis: Invisible? I don't think so. A quintet of dark comedic monologues celebrating the trials and tribulations of 'a woman of a certain age'. No matter what life throws at them, which is a lot, they remain FABULOUS! (partly inspired by Honor Roll!) KEYWORDS Dark Comedy - to the point of bordering farce, women centered stories  There are always stories behind the stories we get to tell. I learned this as a public radio correspondent and communications strategist for more than 30 years. As a reporter I was tasked with explaining why so many societal problems were hard to resolve. As a playwright, I continue to be drawn to life’s complexities, but now it’s the drama of it all that I hope compels the truth and our shared humanity. The COVID pandemic accelerated retirement, granting me more space to focus on ten-minute & one-act plays. My one-act play, The Last Appointment, was staged at the Vineyard Playhouse in 2011, & a monologue, Accident Report, was performed virtually by the Vineyard Playhouse in 2021. I’m a member of Playwrights’ Platform (Boston), & a regular student in Peter Littlefield’s Playwrights’ Workshop Online.
MORE ABOUT ME I think my most gratifying moment in the theater so far was when I first listened to and watched what talented actors could do with my writing...my script. What was a bunch of words on a page, on my computer, became the ideas and feelings of people on stage. I didn't "own" the work anymore, which was absolutely liberating. The actors discovered meaning and irony in places that hadn't occurred to me. It was an amazing process to witness. If I could say anything to an artistic director today it would be that wherever and whenever possible, look for new stories and less-explored but equally important topics among your many, many submissions. Consider plays that raise hard questions for audiences to ponder long after the curtain comes down. A good play does not, nor cannot, provide all the answers. Life isn't that pat. WHAT I'M WORKING ON I'm working on a series of very short (five minute) theatrical vignettes about an elderly woman and her daughter, who has become the primary family caregiver. The two have a lively relationship filled with daily adventures, frustrations, sarcasm, and deep love. I'm also working on a one-act play about the sudden death of a therapist and the challenges one of her clients faces in the immediate aftermath. The play asks this question: Was there any way to prepare for the possibility of a sudden rupture in the relationship? KEYWORDS Farce, Humor, Women, Family, Dysfunctional |
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