Deb Victoroff started her writing career producing humor essays and articles for this medium called “print” (which, like vinyl records, used to be cool, but now is sort of rare and ironic) including The Village Voice, Penthouse, and Cosmopolitan magazines. Deb  contributes a monthly horoscope parody to the online humor magazine: www.happywomanmagazine.com.

She has written several short plays that have appeared in off-Broadway venues and regional theatres around the country. Her drama “Et Tu Kelly” was a finalist in the annual Samuel French one act competition, the New York City-based
Strawberry One-Act Festival, and The First Stage Festival in Los Angeles, CA. Her comedy “Table for Two” was performed at the Producer’s Club and the Theatre Studios in Manhattan. Her one act drama “Letter From A Soldier” was performed in Vancouver, British Columbia at the “Walking Fish Play Festival” and garnered glowing reviews, one of which can be read here:www.straight.com/article-148353/walking-fish-festival

Her one-act comedy “But Siriously” a comedy about man’s relationship with Siri was recently produced online via the theatrical podcast: Amy’s Horse (amyshorse.com) and starred the actress who voiced the original Siri: Susan Bennett. This year, Deb’s short play “The Cruise” was selected for the Susan Glaspell “Trifles” festival in New York City and her Elizabethan dialogue “The Tragedy of the Election of the Citrus King” was performed at the New York Winterfest of New Plays.

Her paranormal short story “House and Garden” is available as a Kindle download at Amazon.com (https://amzn.to/2TNwL4j). If you buy it, she’ll earn about 9 cents.

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
https://idontunderstandanythinganymore.blogspot.com

MORE ABOUT ME
"Death of a Salesman" changed my life.  It broke me.  I loved this salesman and was almost unable to get up from my seat at the end.  I think I was 15.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
An Elizabethan language Covid play.

KEYWORDS
Thriller, Political, humorous, human, humane, satire, radio plays, verse, horror, touching, moral, gripping, shocking, subversive, conflict, dilemma, impossible choices, love

MINDI DICKSTEIN is an award-winning lyricist, librettist, and playwright. She is perhaps best known as the lyricist for the Broadway musical LITTLE WOMEN (MTI, Ghostlight Records), which has been performed worldwide, most recently in Japan, the UK, and across the USA and Canada. She is currently writing lyrics for BENNY & JOON, based on the MGM film (World Premiere, Old Globe San Diego; East Coast premiere, The Paper Mill Playhouse). New works in development include MAIDEN VOYAGE, commissioned by New Works Provincetown, and THE LITTLE PRINCE, a multimedia musical which will premiere internationally in 2022.  Recent projects include book and lyrics for TRIP, commissioned by Playwrights Horizons, book for TOY STORY-THE MUSICAL for Disney, and two short plays written for Climate Change Theater Action, a biannual event in support of heightening awareness of the worldwide climate change crisis. Her short story THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO HAPPINESS was written for the collection HELLO WINTER, now available on Amazon.com. Her short play HELENA ZENGEL GETS HER PERIOD was written for Rootbeer Occasion Theatre Company.  Plays include THE EXISTENTIAL GOURMET (Jane Chambers Awards) and GUADELOUPE (Westbeth). Mindi’s work has been developed at NAMT, Theatreworks Silicon Valley, Second Stage, The Women’s Project, Playwrights Horizons, Rhinebeck Writer’s Retreat, and The Goodspeed Johnny Mercer Colony. Her songs have been performed widely, including at The Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center’s American Songbook, The Dramatists Guild’s Great Writers Thank Their Lucky Stars, The Lilly Awards, and 54 Below. She has received a Larson Foundation Award, Massachusetts Artists and New York Foundation for the Arts Playwriting Fellowships, a Second Stage Klinsky Award, and a PEN International New Playwright Award (selected by Wendy Wasserstein). She was an Oscar Hammerstein Fellow at the NYU Graduate Musical Theater Writing program, where she received her MFA and now serves on the faculty.

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Facebook: Mindi Lilah Dickstein
Twitter: @mindidickstein
IG:@mindidickstein

MORE ABOUT ME
Why do I keep doing theater?*
A very good question.  I always quote Samuel Beckett when I say my relationship to theater is: "I can't go on, I'll go on."  I write a lot. I love-hate being in rehearsal. Opening nights pain me.  But writing is solving mathematical problems and discovering moments and endlessly fascinating.  And when I'm not writing I adore teaching.  I love talking with students about why a lyric or a moment is wonderful or how it might be better.  It's all connected, this passion for the moments that become indelible, this need to write things down that I observe or imagine. 

How do you imagine telling stories now?* 
It feels the same as ever: focusing on the specific characters, moments, journeys, and tales that haunt me.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
I'm writing two new musicals (see my bio), revising one that has had two full productions (small nips and tucks now), and writing short plays and short stories in between (like cups of sherbet between courses or, perhaps, a martini).  I think a lot about Camus' The Plague and the man in it who spends his time shifting peas from one pan to another and back again as a way to endure.  Hopefully I'm doing more than shifting peas.

Playwright, director, producer Lisa Rafferty creates documentary plays which celebrate the strength and resiliency of heroic women and men, including an unforgettable and courageous First Lady,  a 9/11 hero and survivors of domestic violence. In January 2021, her show about the fearless and outspoken Betty Ford  - SHE DID ALL THAT - will travel to Michigan to perform at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum. Coming up in Spring 2021 is ONWARD –Votes for Women, a documentary play which honors the fight for women’s suffrage, commissioned by the Associates of the Boston Public Library.  With Joey Frangieh, she created Boston Theater Company’s FINISH LINE, about the 2013 Boston Marathon, which had its world premiere at the Shubert Theatre  in Spring 2017. Her comedies – The MOMologues (1, 2 and 3), published by Concord Theatricals -  have appeared in 26 states and six countries. She is the recipient of the Massachusetts General Hospital’s the one hundred award for writing a comedy about breast cancer with other survivors, titled Pink Ribbon Overdose.  Lisa is the producing director of the Elliot Norton Awards and teaches theater at Bridgewater State University.  She is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. Her newest documentary play focuses on the powerful Congressional leaders known as The SQUAD.

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
https://www.birchtreeproductions.company/
@lisajrafferty

MORE ABOUT ME
Interviewing those who were impacted by the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing had a deep and profound affect on my life.  The courage and compassion of  so many, whose voices were shared in the documentary play I created with Joey Frangieh, FINISH LINE, left an indelible mark on everyone who help create the production, and who saw it.  That work in documentary theater led me to create five more productions in three years, all of which celebrate the strength and resiliency of heroic women and men. 

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
The SQUAD - A Documentary Play on Women in Power

KEYWORDS
Documentary theater, survivors, sheroes, heroes, 9/11, suicide prevention, Betty Ford, suffrage, 19th Amendment, motherhood, comedy, breast cancer, Boston Marathon

Deborah Zoe Laufer’s plays have been produced at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Cleveland Playhouse, Geva, The Humana Festival, Everyman, Primary Stages, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and hundreds of other theaters around the world. Plays include Be Here Now, End Days, Rooted, Informed Consent, Leveling Up, Out of Sterno, The Last Schwartz, Sirens, Meta, The Three Sisters of Weehawken, Fortune, Miniatures, Random Acts, dozens of short plays, and the musicals -- Window Treatment, and By Any Other Name, written with composer, Daniel Green.

Deb is a recipient of the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award, the Lilly Award, The ATCA Steinberg citation, and grants and commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, The Edgerton Foundation, The National New Play Network, and the Lincoln Center Foundation. Her plays are published or recorded by Samuel French, Smith and Kraus, Playscripts, LA Theatreworks, and Premieres. She is a graduate of Juilliard, an alumna of the BMI Lehman Engel Advanced Musical Theatre Workshop, and a Dramatists Guild council member.
DEBORAHZOELAUFER.com

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
http://www.deborahzoelaufer.com
FB: DeborahZoeLaufer
TW: @DeborahZLaufer,
IG: @DeborahZoeLaufer.playwright

MORE ABOUT ME
I'll come back to this when I'm not writing!

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
A movie, a musical, rewriting a new play, a children's book, a series of drawings

KEYWORDS
comedy, dramady, satire, family, science, Jewish, atheism

Jessica Chipman (she, her) is a playwright, director, and educator whose plays have been produced across the United States and Canada. A proud Heideman finalist, Ms. Chipman's retelling of the myth of Icarus received the top award at the Minnesota State High School League State One Act Play Festival in 2017, as well as the Wells Fargo Award of Excellence. Most recently, Ms. Chipman's feminist one-act adaptation of Federico Garcia Lorca's Yerma earned accolades at the MSHSL One Act Play Festival. Ms. Chipman is the proud co-founder of Dynamo Creative, a female-led theatre company dedicated to amplifying the stories of women, and Chip and Jack's Theatre School, an educational comedy podcast.

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
http://www.jessicachipman.info
@jesschipman

MORE ABOUT ME
My favorite thing to do when I'm not writing is to be with my husband and daughters--preferably outdoors.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
My current project is a play about a whale.

KEYWORDS
Magical realism, adaptations, Zoom plays, drama

Multiple award-winning playwright, Jeanette W. Hill, is a creative activist whose unique voice and delivery make it difficult, if not impossible to categorize her or her work.  Her courage in approaching the taboo subjects of African American community head on causes her to stand out. As the artistic director and founder of JWHill Productions LLC, her mission is to tell stories about the African American experience with ‘their’ voice.

The recipient of numerous national awards and recognitions from coveted organizations including the Atlanta Black Theatre Festival, DC Black Theatre Festival, the Kingdomwood Christian Film Festival, Ntozake Shange Reading Series/Woodie King Jr.,  and New Federal Theatre, Black Pearls Magazine, and Urban Playwrights United. Her work has been included in three anthologies, When Women Become Business Owners, When Women Connect, and her fictional work When Love Comes Calling. She was featured in the documentary, Black and Write.  Jeanette continues to share and encourage others to pursue their talent and calling through her presentations and workshops.

For over fifteen years she has been awarded financial support from the City of Austin Economic Development Division, and other Arts organizations such as the Mid-America Arts Alliance and fiscal sponsorships.

Jeanette is a sought-after panelist, peer reviewer and consultant for various groups and organizations including the City of Austin Cultural Arts Program, Mid-America Arts Association, Atlanta Black Theatre Festival and the American Association of Community Theatre. She is  a  committee member of Austin’s Black Art Matters Curatorial committee as well as an advisory board member for the Atlanta Black Theatre Festival and Urban Playwrights United; she’s an Artist INC fellow and former facilitator, a member of The Dramatists Guild, and the New Play Exchange.

Contact her via social media or her website.

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
http://jwhillproductions.com
FB:  jwhillproductions
TW: jeanettewhill
IG: jeanettewhill

MORE ABOUT ME
Why do you keep doing theater?*
Because as an African American and a woman, our stories are often overlooked, devalued or told from a perspective that does not accurately portray my race or my gender. One of my favorite affirmations/inspirations is: "As long as only the hunter records history, the lion's story will never be told." I choose to be that lion!

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
I am in pre-production for an audio drama series titled The Front Porch Divas.Fictional stories  highlighting the trials and triumphs of several women of color who are over forty in a gentrified community.

KEYWORDS
People of Color, social justice, radio plays, social issues, life

Jennie Webb is an LA-based playwright and dramaturg (she created the new play development program, Seedlings, at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum) with works including “Reach,” “Currency," “Yard Sale Signs,” “Smiling Cat Candy Heart,” "Remodeling Plans,” "Unclaimed Assets," "On Tuesday," "It's Not About Race," “Rebecca on the Bus,” “Brand New Script” and "Buying a House" produced locally by Inkwell Theater, Rogue Machine Theatre, EST/LA, Santa Monica Rep, Virginia Avenue Project, Road Theatre, Theatre of NOTE and La Jolla Playhouse’s WOW Festival as well as in Canada, the UK, India and Iceland. Her plays have been developed and presented by Great Plains Theatre Conferences, The Playwrights’ Center, Moving Arts MADlab, Blank Theatre, Playground-LA, National Winter Playwrights Retreat, Little Black Dress INK Festivals, Protest Plays Project, PlagueWrites, Climate Change Theatre Action, Rogue Artist Ensemble’s Rogue Lab, and Road Theatre’s Summer Playwrights Festivals and “Under Construction” Playwrights Group. National recognition includes Finalist (O’Neill Playwrights Conference, City Theatre Short Play Festival) and Semi-Finalist (O’Neill, PlayPenn, Athena Project, Trustus Theatre Festival) nods; she is the recipient of Max K. Lerner Playwriting Fellowships and a Women in Theatre Red Carpet Award. Member: the Playwrights Union, EST/LA, Honor Roll!, Dramatists Guild; co-founder: LA Female Playwrights Initiative (LAFPI). 

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
http://jenniewebbsite.com
FB facebook.com/jenniewebbsite
TW: @jenniewebbsite
​IG: @jenniewebbsite

MORE ABOUT ME
Yeah. Why we keep doing theater? When people ask me - but to be honest, it's usually me asking me - "Why are you a playwright?" I turn to two words: Identity and Truth. (The last from playwright Alice Tuan, when we were having this sort of conversation.) I write plays because I am a playwright; that's part of what makes me who I am. And I think that I can tell a truth in my work that's unique to me, that needs to be told onstage. That's my job. 

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
I recently started a new full length called "Dead People's Dishes," a play about what we hang onto and what we let go of, how we get through surreal events set in different time periods in Los Angeles. I also hope to pick back up my recently completed full length, "adaptation.resilience" soon; it's a play about sustaining love and navigating grief in times of extreme disruptions, and I'm anxious to dig into re-writes in the right development situation. 

KEYWORDS
Domestic Absurdism, Women, Dark Comedy, Los Angeles

Bonnie Milne Gardner is an award-winning playwright whose 30+ plays have been featured around the country, including Cleveland Play House, New School for Drama, San Diego Human Rights Festival, and Edward Albee Last Frontier Conference. Her scripts garnered honors from Actors Theatre of Louisville Ten Minute Play Contest, McLaren Comedy Competition, Writers Digest, Eileen Heckart Drama Competition, and the Columbus Dispatch. Most recently, her full-length comedy WEDDING BLISTERS was selected as a Finalist in the AACT NewPlayFest 2022. But she is particularly proud of winning the limerick contest at the 2003 Southern Writers Project Festival of New Plays.

Her plays have appeared in numerous publications, including Clockhouse Literary Magazine and The Best Ten Minute Plays of 2019 by Smith and Kraus. Her historical drama, THE SECRET WAR OF EMMA EDMONDS was selected for 365 Women A Year Playwriting Project. An adaptation of Jane Austen’s LADY SUSAN is published by the UK’s Scripts for Stage. Her book, THE EMERGENCE OF THE PLAYWRIGHT-DIRECTOR IN AMERICAN THEATRE, with a forward by Megan Terry, was published in 2001 by Edwin Mellon Press.

Bonnie earned a PhD in theatre from Kent State University, and has worked as an educator, writer, dramaturg, and director for theatres and universities for over 25 years. A two-time winner for Excellence in Playwriting by the Ohio Arts Council, she recently “ran away from home” to focus solely on her writing. She is a member of Dramatists Guild and New Play Exchange, currently living in Asheville, NC, where she co-runs the Stage Brews Workshop.

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
http://bmgardner.weebly.com
FB: Bonnie Milne Gardner

MORE ABOUT ME
My best experiences in theatre over the years have grown out of truly collaborative opportunities where writer, performer, and director work in tandem to shape a vibrant work of art. Unfortunately, these opportunities are rare in this country. My wish is to help nurture and celebrate organizations and people that promote this kind of work.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
"Condo Condo," a dark comedy where new home owners are surprised when strangers appear to take over their condo. It exposes how technology and materialism literally run our lives, and how we are losing our connections with nature and people.

KEYWORDS
women, family, adaptations, period, ten-minute plays, monologues

I write plays to change the stories we believe in because it’s the best way I know to change the world we live in. I made my professional playwriting debut at the age of twenty-four with the 1981 production of my one-act play “The Story,” a reimagining of the Book of Genesis, at the Magic Theatre of San Francisco. Since then, my plays have been broadcast on BET (“Gap,” dir. Ryan Coogler, then a graduate student) and NPR (“The Story,” dir. Martin Esslin); staged on five continents; and widely anthologized. I’ve also taught college for thirty years, raised two daughters, and co-founded a feminist theatre company in Berkeley, California.  Notable publications include “Medusa’s Tale” in Plays in One Act (Ecco Press); Persephone Underground and The Minotaur, available for licensing from YouthPLAYS; and selections from Gap in the Applause Books anthologies One on One and Duo. My recent full-length plays include The Melting Pot (Everyday Inferno, NYC, 2018) and Witch Hunt (Those Women Productions, Berkeley, 2019), which was recognized by the San Francisco Chronicle as one of the “defining moments” of the year in Bay Area theater. I’m a member of the Dramatists Guild, the International Centre for Women Playwrights, and Honor Roll! an advocacy group for women+ playwrights over 40.

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
https://carolslashof.wordpress.com/about/
FB: CarolSLashofPlaywright
TW: @CarolLashof

MORE ABOUT ME
In the winter of 2007, I was invited to spend 10 days in residence at Peking University in Beijing. The students in the English Drama Society were staging a double bill of my one-act plays "Medusa's Tale" and "Persephone Underground," performing in English with Mandarin subtitles. It was wonderful to see how these plays - inspired by Ancient Greek mythology and written by me, an American woman born in 1956 - captured the imaginations of young Chinese men and women in the 21st century. Some elements did not cross cultures well. For example, in "Persephone Underground," the teenaged Persephone yearns to break away from the influence of her powerful mother; the PKU students did not particularly relate to that desire. But they connected very powerfully to my portrait of the young Medusa and her discovery that she cannot trust the goddess of justice to protect her. After each performance, there was a talkback and the students became intensely engaged in discussing the issues raised by the plays - questions of justice and authority, love and betrayal, gender and power. It seemed that they were freed by these mythic stories to talk about matters (for example, rape) that were ordinarily cloaked in silence. That was my most gratifying experience as a playwright.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
My most recent full-length play in progress is Doing School:

Spring 2019 at a high school near you: the students are stressed and chugging Dayquil. Or they’ve withdrawn in the face of stereotypes and prejudices. The teachers? Pretty much the same. DOING SCHOOL (formerly titled GAP) tells the stories of four high school juniors and their teachers, affected in different ways by their class, race, and gender. They are going through the motions at a diverse public high school in a progressive American city, a microcosm of the speeded-up world beyond the school bounds. Interrupted by bells and buffeted by competing demands on their time, they strive to live up to – or sometimes down to – the expectations of others. As they navigate an uneven playing field, they risk losing themselves. What will save them? Better “Time Management”! … Or maybe not. Maybe there’s another way to close the gap between who they wish they were and who they have time to be. Maybe there's a way to rescue each other?
Cast: 4W, 3M. Run time: about 90 mins.

KEYWORDS
Mythology, Justice, Equality, Gender and Power, Jewish, American History, Teen Performers

Playwright Deb Hiett’s most recent play, "90024 Westwood: The Information Herein is Classified" was commissioned by Antaeus Theatre Company, Los Angeles, as an audio play, and has had over 40,000 downloads after being released in November 2020. Some of Deb’s other full-length plays include “The Super Variety Match Bonus Round!” (premiered at Rogue Machine Theater, Los Angeles), “Miss Keller Has No Second Book” (premiered at Gulfshore Playhouse, Naples, FL), “The Escape Thingy” and “The Clearing in the Jacoby,” (both Finalists for the Reva Shiner Comedy Award).  Her short play “The Presentation” was in the 2017 Samuel French Off-Off-Broadway Short Play Festival, and was a Finalist for 2017 Heideman Award.

“Gratitude Jar Time Capsule” – a short comedy film co-written by and co-starring Deb – won “Best Comedy Television Pilot” in the 2020 Atlanta Comedy Film Festival.  Deb’s short film “Open House” won Los Angeles Film Festival/FunnyorDie’s “Make ‘Em LAFF” Showcase, Best Comedy Short at the Women in Comedy Festival Film Night, and Best Video Short at iOWest’s Funny Women LA Festival. Her short film “A Bit of Counseling” (co-written with Richard Kuhlman) won the Audience Awards at the Palm Springs International Film Festival and the L.A. Comedy Shorts Film Festival.

In addition to being a proud member of Playwrights Union, Dramatists Guild, and Antaeus Playwrights Lab, she’s also an actress, musician, and regular panelist on the NPR comedy/quiz show “Says You!”  More at DebHiett.com.

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
http://www.debhiett.com
FB: debhiett
TW: @DebHiett
IG: @debhiett

MORE ABOUT ME
I keep doing theater because storytelling is important and fun and weird. It's both temporary and permanent. It's uplifting but it can grind you to dust along the way. Doing it almost kills me, but I have tried not doing it, and that almost killed me, too, with a lot less to show for the struggle. I like the surprises along its predictable path. Ultimately it connects me to both the earth and to the universe, and what's better than that?

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
My newest play "Circle Forward" as part of the Playwrights Union New Play Challenge, an adaptation of my play "Call Time" into a pilot, and a new screenplay. I'm also working on beating Resistance, aging joyfully, and re-interpreting a post-Covid wardrobe (spoiler alert: it's loose-fitting).

KEYWORDS
Comedy, women-centered, older actresses, coming-of-age, family, love, breakthrough