 Melissa Jordan Grey is a multifaceted artist, entrepreneur, and changemaker based in San Diego, California. A passionate polymath forever locked in a battle between the creative and logical, she tells vibrant stories through music, motion, paint, and pen——weaving pathos with absurdity along the way. A winner of both the 2021 and 2022 International Memoir Writer’s Association’s Memoir Showcases, her original pieces, “Trial and Error” and “A Walk in the Park”, were featured onstage at La Jolla’s Conrad Performing Arts Center. She most recently finished "Cringe", which explores themes of gender expectations, intergenerational language, and the impact of our digital landscape wrapped in a one-hour highbrow comedy.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA Website: https://www.melissajordangrey.com TW: @mindsiight IG: mindsig.ht MORE ABOUT ME I feel most like myself when I am creating. It could be composing music, recording a song, performing comedy, painting in my studio, exploring memoir, photographing expected finds, or writing an essay, play or poem. Creativity is my solace, oxygen and hope. WHAT I'M WORKING ON Currently, I am working on a play about the invisibility of women over 40. KEYWORDS Comedy, humor, satire, equality, feminist, musical.  Virginia-born and Chicago-based, Lisa Dellagiarino Feriend is an award-winning playwright, a member of the Dramatists Guild, and President of the Board of Arts For All, a NYC-based nonprofit bringing accessible artistic opportunities to children who face barriers to exploring the arts. She has a BFA in Film & TV from NYU and two kids who are disappointed that she doesn't write plays about dinosaurs.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA New Play Exchange: https://newplayexchange.org/users/38716/lisa-dellagiarino-feriend FB: Lisa Dellagiarino Feriend MORE ABOUT ME These times fill me with rage and anxiety, and I imagine that the best way to tell stories right now is through comedy. I've started taking my lectures on topics I feel passionately about and wrapping them in comedy like a heartworm pill in a slice of cheese. It goes down easier, and sometimes folks don't even realize they're being preached to. (And even if they do, it's hard to shut your mind when you're laughing.) WHAT I'M WORKING ON I'm currently doing rewrites on my comedy about reproductive rights, "Abort: The Mission," and a gun control comedy is germinating in my head slowly. KEYWORDS Comedy, political, historical, farce, faith-based  Malini Singh McDonald is a native New Yorker who has been involved in the arts for her entire life. She has an MFA from the Actors Studio Drama School; an MPA and BA in Theatre Arts and English Literature at Baruch. Select theatre credits include the revival of Godspell (Producer, Broadway Revival); The Colored Museum; The Year of Living Dangerously (Publicist, 54 Below); Whiskey Pants: The Mayor of Williamsburg (Publicist, HERE Arts Center); From Ship to Shape (Publicist, Winner of Two United Solo Awards); The Eternal Space (Associate Producer & Marketing Director, Theatre Row); The Wiz (Director, Matsiko World Orphan Choir, Liberia); Torch Song Trilogy (Director, ATA). Malini is also the founder of Theatre Beyond Broadway which provides a platform to promote and support independent artists beyond the bright lights of Broadway. TBB represents a broad range of artists through producing, publicity, education, an online community and a podcast. She is the Executive Director of Black Henna Productions, a boutique theatre company producing original and classic works throughout the five boroughs. Productions include Deserters (Altered Stages), Naughty Prep School Stories (2006 New York International Fringe Festival), Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, and Hamlet: The Viking Prince of Denmark (NYC Parks). Malini is a member of the League of Professional Theatre Women and a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. She has collaborated with The Anthropologists, Broadway Artists Connection, Non-Disposable Productions, New Perspectives Theatre Company and Mind the Art Entertainment. Malini has been recognized for her role in the community with the Woman of Distinction Award for her contribution to Media, Arts and Culture from the City of New York. She is also the Deputy Chief Diversity Officer of a NYS agency where she was recently recognized for her dedication to Diversity and Inclusion.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA Website: https://malinism.com/ and https://theatrebeyondbroadway.com/ FB: Malini S. McDonald TW: @malinism IG: @malini_sm MORE ABOUT ME Here are two things about me: I believe that everyone has a voice and I advocate for those who have not found theirs yet. Pondering and expressing innovative ways to connect with others has given me the opportunity to advocate for artists through producing and directing. My writing includes my personal narratives on genealogy, epigenetics, a woman’s right to choose, and the intersectionality of being a woman and a woman of color. It also includes the many interviews I have had with artists in the independent, regional, and commercial arenas. This has allowed me to connect with other people on their own journeys. It is also the only reason that I am still doing theatre. When I am not doing theatre or writing, I am of service to my community as needed and wanted. WHAT I'M WORKING ON During the summer of 2020, amidst the trifecta of social injustice, economic distress and a global health crisis, four friends and artists came together to connect and create. We were already on a personal journey of ancestry but had either paused or hit the proverbial brick wall. However, together we were able to support each other in the exploration of our history through DNA and genealogical research. The four of us identified at that time as Caucasian, African-American, and Indo-Caribbean. During the process, other identifying markers were presented defying these labels. We learned through using the basic principles of genetics and the social structures that our families encountered based upon their DNA that we were not our labels. We were actually more complex people through epigenetics and generational trauma. The themes of the piece are conflict, identity and culture. The overall storyline is about wanting to know where one comes from and from whom one descends. KEYWORDS New Yorker, Indo-Caribbean, Trini-American, Woman of Color, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Interfaith, Gender Parity, International Women Artist, Biographical  Dorie Clark is a librettist, as well as a lyricist in the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Advanced Workshop.
Along with composer Marie Incontrera, her collaborator on the lesbian spy thriller musical Absolute Zero, Clark has been a participant in the Apples and Oranges Arts THEatre Accelerator program, an intensive show development program. Absolute Zero, which received a staged reading in Dallas in August 2022 as the winner of the MusicalWriters.com pitch night, has received media coverage in Forbes and the Harvard Business Review. Clark and Incontrera also developed a 10-minute musical, 23 and You and You and Me, through the Prospect Theater Company’s Musical Theater Lab, which premiered at Symphony Space in New York City in November 2021. One of their songs, “On the Town Tonight,” was showcased at Joe’s Pub in March 2022 as part of a Kander and Ebb tribute showcase organized by Ring of Keys, the nonprofit group for queer women in musical theater. Clark was a participant in the 2019 New York Musical Festival (NYMF) Songwriting Workshop and served as an assistant producer on the multiple Grammy Award-winning album Presidential Suite: Eight Variations on Freedom, by The Ted Nash Big Band (winner for Best Large Jazz Ensemble and Best Instrumental Composition). She is a graduate of Smith College and Harvard Divinity School, and has been hailed by the New York Times as an “expert in reinvention and helping others make changes in their lives.” WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA: Website: https://www.dorieclark.com Twitter: @dorieclark LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doriec/ Facebook: @dorieclarkauthor Instagram: @dorieclark YouTube: @dorieclark Clubhouse: @dorieclark MORE ABOUT ME After seeing Fun Home in January 2016, I awoke the next morning and bolted out of bed with the certainty that I needed to learn to write musical theater. I'd never done anything like that before, and had to train from scratch. In the intervening years, I've been accepted into and completed the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop as a lyricist and am now part of the Advanced Workshop, and have had staged readings and performances of shows I've written. Since that moment, I've been working to fulfill my original vision that arose from seeing that transformative show. WHAT I'M WORKING ON Absolute Zero - sexy lesbian spy thriller musical 23 and You and You and Me - a paternity comedy musical The Philosopher of Love - contemporary musical adaptation of Plato's Symposium KEYWORDS: lesbian, musicals, lyricist, librettist  Nora is a first generation Norwegian-American writer and a teacher of literature, theatre arts and music which has allowed her to travel, write and produce plays and, above all, learn from her students the world over. She is a member of the SACD (Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques) and the Dramatists Guild. She studied under poet Brigit Pegeen Kelly at the University of Illinois.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA Website: https://www.noralouisesyran.com/ FB: syrscripts TW: NoraLouiseSyran IG: noralouisesyran MORE ABOUT ME What play or production changed your life? Seeing Beckett's Happy Days at the Goodman decades ago...as a teenager. It was my first real serious, professional piece of theater. I marveled at it all: the set, the acting, the lighting, the absurdity. It all felt right. Not absurd at all. I feel most like myself when I .. I feel most like myself when I am creating; from designing and building a set, to writing a play, to cooking dinner... If you could bring one change to theater, what would it be? That audiences could afford to see any play they like, in the same way the cinema is accessible. And if the audience were there, theatres would produce more...and more...and more... What is your favorite thing to do when you’re not writing? I love to walk/hike and I adore listening to stories read aloud. Prefer it to reading. Always have. Why do you keep doing theater? I have no choice. I've finally worked out what I want to be when I grow up: a playwright. WHAT I'M WORKING ON I'm finishing up 20+ years of projects I've written and produced and never sent out into the world.... and I am currently working on a play about the Impressionists from the perspective of the female artists: Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot and Suzanne Valadon. It will be an adult departure from my play for all audiences: IMPRESSIONS OF PARIS KEYWORDS Family, Children, Mystery, Thriller, Equality, Pandemic, Climate, Environmental, Historical, Adaptations, Fable/folktales, Immersive/site- specific, satire, biography, fantasy, science fiction, radio plays, verse, musical, period, Young Audiences, holida  Ann Timmons started in theatre as an actor (MFA, University of Illinois), and went to NYC to seek her fortune. Realizing there weren’t enough juicy roles for all the talented women who deserved them, she decided to create her own. She honed her writing skills at Playwrights’ Horizons Theatre School, produced her one-woman show, "Off the Wall: The Life and Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman” Off-Broadway, and toured with it nationally for 16 years. Other productions (including “Becoming Calvin,” Washington, D.C.; “Beyond Shadowlands,” national tour; “The Jamestown Adventure Express,” Virginia tour) continue her exploration of accepted history, featuring protagonists, mostly women who upend the status quo. The 2021 professional premiere production at Dallas’ Echo Theatre of “It’s My Party!” celebrated the suffragists who fought for the 19th Amendment. As a founding member of Pipeline Playwrights, Ann co-wrote and helped produced, “How’s That Workin’ Out for Ya?” and “How’s That Workin’ Out For Ya? 2.0” for the Capital Fringe Festival in Washington, D.C. She continues to produce with Pipeline Playwrights, as well as for First Acts at the First Presbyterian Church in New York City. Ann is a proud member of Actors' Equity Association, SAG-AFTRA, the Dramatists Guild, and Honor Roll!
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA Website: http://www.anntimmons.com FB: ann.timmons TW:@annspeaks IG: @anncommsarts MORE ABOUT ME If I could bring one change? Well, it’s a BIG one: I would like theatre to be more accessible, for theatre artists as well as theatregoers. Not just in terms of physical--or even thematic--access. In my perfect world, theatre would not be divided between elitist, special-interest, and popular. There would be plays and shows for everyone, all the time, whatever their taste and current preoccupations. Going to the theatre wouldn’t necessarily be an “event” the way it is now. It would be more integral to everyday life. But how to do this? We live in a world where theatre professionals generally don’t get paid commensurate with other workers at the same level of experience, education, and training. So we’re talking about a different funding model. American theatre has largely operated as a capitalist venture, even from the beginning. So it would take a massive paradigm shift for this to happen. But I do dream of it: the day when the art will be judged on its own, not according to the marketability of the playwright. In the meantime, I have banded together with four other “older” women playwrights to form our own production collective, Pipeline Playwrights (www.pipelineplaywrights.org). We’re all writing and producing each other’s original shows. It is hard work, doing it all. And, we are constantly chasing individual donors as well as those elusive grants. But we are doing it – getting our work out there! And maybe one day, the funding gods will smile on us and we’ll reach a level of modest success, so we can produce more plays by an ever-expanding circle of women playwrights. And break the cycle of the making artistic choices based on the profit motive. WHAT I'M WORKING ON A new play about Ida B. Wells and other women who were engines of societal change in early 20th century America. KEYWORDS Political, historical, religious, biographical, period, societal, women, comedy of manners, family drama  Phyllis Gordon is an actress and comedienne who writes her own work. A mimic, impressionist, singer, dancer and parodist, she showcases all these skills in her solo shows: “Phyllis Diller Believes in Me”, “Faye and Me”, “Painfully Funny” and “Em-Pathetic” (Best Short Solo at Marsh International Solo Festival). A stand up comic adept at characters, she has performed at Standup New York, Comic Strip, Caroline's, Don't Tell Mama's, Gotham, Improv Boston, and The Comedy Studio. A Meisner and Method trained actress, Phyllis performs on stage and screen. Recent credits include comedy film “Beth and Don” (opposite Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and “Ziwe” (Showtime). She was nominated for Broadway World’s Best Actress Award for her work in Agatha Christie’s “The Hollow”. She is also a Voiceover Artist (FRONTLINE, Audible, Library of Congress).
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA FB: facebook.com/PhyllisGordonActor IG: @phyllisgordon.soloshow.net MORE ABOUT ME My life is the grist for my mill. I overcome disappointment, pain, and life's unfairness by turning it into comedy. This comes naturally to me. When I was a child my Dad was bi-polar and my mom taught me "It's better to laugh than to cry." I was a gifted comedienne from the start and honed my standup skills entertaining my school friends. I used impressions to fend off bullies by making them laugh. In 2020 I was diagnosed with breast cancer. When the hospital staff was rude to me, I thought, "This is my next show." For the last two years, I've been writing it. "Em-Pathetic" is a solo show about the lack of empathy in healthcare. It has traveled from page to stage, from director to editor, from Zoom to live performance. My greatest gift is turning pain into comedy, lemons into lemonade. WHAT I'M WORKING ON Next week, I'm performing my solo show "Em-Pathetic" at the Emerging Artists New Works Series at TaDa! in NYC. KEYWORDS Comedy, Characters, Impressions, Mimic, Solo Show, Vegan, Piano, Parody, Musical, Puppets, Standup  I grew up in the remote woods of the PNW (but, you know, we had a house). As an actor, I’ve lived in LA and NYC but finally gave up my gypsy days calling Portland my home since 2007. I’m an actor, a writer, a producer, a storytelling for the stage teacher and I’m on the boards of the 21ten theater. One time I auditioned to play Mark Wahlberg's wife in a big movie but the night before I got a budget haircut and ended up with a not-cool mullet. Suffice to say, an Italian model got the part, not me. I welcome any inquires about my storytelling teaching series and whether or not you should get bangs -- I'm an expert in both!
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA FB:https://www.facebook.com/genevieve.sage.3/ IG: https://www.instagram.com/genevievesage/ MORE ABOUT ME Most gratifying moment in theater? Playing Ben Affleck last Summer in Matt & Ben. Play/production that changed my life? Adrienne Truscott's "Asking For It": look it up (it's too ribald to talk about here) but it was gutsy, mind-blowingly brave and performed expertly. I want Artistic Directors to stop casting the same people, to take a chance on the unassuming, un-pedigreed women who've been quietly working for years without a big splashy graphic designer or PR team behind their name. WHAT I'M WORKING ON Warner Brothers had exclusivity last year on my TV Pilot but I'm still shopping it around; a play starring two famous female poets; I'm producing and acting in shows at The 21ten Theater and I'm trying not to have personal meltdowns every time I hear a leaf blower. KEYWORDS Feminist, Satire, Comedy, Mid-life-Glow-Ups, Women-over-40, Bad-Ass, Equality, Food, Wine  Gemma Cooper-Novack writes at the vortex where the intimate meets the sociopolitical. She was the resident playwright with The Theater Offensive’s Creative Action Crew (2015-2016), generating new plays (including Reporting Live from Under the Rainbow and Through the Glory Hole and What We Found There) based on the work of a queer youth performance ensemble. Once I Was a Kingdom was presented on Zoom for the Women+ in Theatre Conference. Recent workshops include Break (About Face Theatre, Chicago, IL, 2018), This Not That (The Depot for New Play Readings, Hampton, CT), and You Want Them to Look Away (Breadcrumbs Productions, Syracuse, NY, 2020). The Dating Game was performed in New York and Boston in 2015. Her light opera adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, co-written with Joshua Tyra, has been workshopped at colleges in New York and Chicago. Her play Blindside was produced in Chicago in 2008. Gemma’s poetry book We Might As Well Be Underwater was published by Unsolicited Press in 2016. Currently, Gemma is working on a commission for Breadcrumbs Productions in Syracuse, NY about the early life of Lady Macbeth. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Literacy Education at Hobart & William Smith Colleges and a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA TW: @gemmasupernova MORE ABOUT ME I was raised in a theater, in a very literal sense, and somehow have never deviated from the desire to be, as my mother explained it when I was six, "the one who makes up the story." I remain in theater more than film or TV in large part because I love the possibility of multiple interpretations, of no one definitive take on my text. The choices that emerge from distinct productions of the same script are, and ever have been, my deepest fascination. I grew up on the Marc Blitzstein translation of Threepenny Opera, and the first time I saw the Michael Feingold translation, as a teenager, the rawness and cruelty of the play was revelatory. I've never forgotten that production. WHAT I'M WORKING ON Right now, I'm working on a commission for Breadcrumbs Productions about the early life of Lady Macbeth, but set in 1850; I'm revising my script GREEN INK, which focuses on queer life in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust; I'm working on a series of short plays that explore the shortcomings of approaches to environmental justice. KEYWORDS Lesbian, Queer, Political, Social, Climate, Biography, Period, Verse, Adaptations  Hooked on theatre since age seven when she saw her first Broadway show, playwright, lyricist and composer Andrea Markowitz earned degrees in English, music and psychology, and pursued careers in advertising, human resources, academia, and freelance writing and editing before authoring her first play, FEEDING THE FURIES, a social satire that took third place in the Baltimore Playwrights Festival. Her latest work, FAIR GAME: OR THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING HONEST (a musical satire based on a true story about fake news) was just nominated for the best new script and best new score by the ariZoni Theatre Awards of Excellence committee (winner will be announced October, 2022). Andrea wrote both the script and the score! She’s also thrilled to have been awarded an Honorable Mention in the 2022 Jewish Plays Project contest, for her comedy/drama, APHRAH-CADABRA. Andrea is intrigued by the complexities of human nature and the interrelationships between seemingly discrete fields such as science, spirituality, politics, archaeology, history and fiction, and loves to create characters who are thrust into situations that require them to examine the world and themselves through multiple perspectives. Her recurring theme revolves around creating community through mutual respect and understanding. Andrea is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, ASCAP, Honor Roll, International Centre for Women Playwrights, Alliance for Jewish Theatre, The Playwrights’ Center, and Maestra, and is Playwright in Residence at Desert Foothills Theater.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA Website: http://www.feedingthefuries.com FB: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100010319160490 MORE ABOUT ME My most gratifying moment in the theatre was watching the rapt attention the audience paid to the staged reading I was awarded by the Arizona Women's Theatre Company for my very first play, FEEDING THE FURIES. I wrote FURIES in response to a competition for Arizona women playwrights, after thinking about writing a play for 20 years! (I'd seen tons of shows but never took a playwriting class nor held any theatre-related jobs.) I had four months to write the script before the submission deadline. I figured, if the play's not completed by the deadline, at least I've started to write it. But I "finished" it, and then discovered it was one of only two full-lengths to be selected for a staged reading. This acknowledgement was more exciting to me than anything else I'd accomplished in my life. And when I watched the audience's emotional emersion, heard their enthusiastic applause, and listened to their feedback about how deeply they identified with one of the characters, or knew someone like them, I realized, I can do this. I can write plays, and even more important, I can write plays that mean something to the audience. So I sought professional feedback on the script, learned how to polish the action and dialogue, and after many rewrites over the next two years, FEEDING THE FURIES received Third Prize in the Baltimore Playwrights Festival. WHAT I'M WORKING ON I'm working on a play that's based on the true story of a rising star in the jewelry business who becomes a convicted felon after being found guilty of securities fraud. When the prison medical staff’s indifference to her cellmate’s declining health contributes to the cellmate’s untimely death, the former jewelry entrepreneur has an epiphany and devotes the rest of her life to prison reform advocacy. KEYWORDS Jewish, Family, Mystery, Political, Equality, Historical, Biography, Musical, Period, Mixed Genre |
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