Debra A. Cole is an award-winning playwright, director, and theatre/writing/arts educator from Kansas with degrees in journalism, education, and art history. Her one act play THE WRINKLE RANCH took AUDIENCE FAVORITE at Short + Sweet Perth, Australia. Her one act play Cold War can be found with Off The Walls Plays, and one act play SMALL TALK can be found at Heuer Publishing. Debra is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America and an active member of a playwriting group for Kansas City area playwrights as well as The Literary Discourse Society out of Devon, England. Adult One-Acts: Performances/Recent Staged Readings/Conference Selections: Short + Sweet Dubai Endeavour Theatre, Perth, Australia Short + Sweet, Perth, Australia Short + Sweet, Sydney, Australia Short + Sweet, Illawarra, Australia The Talisman Theatre Group, Midlands, United Kingdom Whiskey Theatre Factory, Orlando, Florida The Secret Theatre - Long Island City, NY Potluck Productions, Kansas City, MO Midwest Dramatist Conference, Olathe, KS Herald of the Hope Theatre Company, Washington D.C. The Playground Experiment - Faces of America Monologues, NYC Grand Rapids Civic Theatre - semi finalist and finalist Mad Lab Theatre Roulette, Columbus, OH Crafton Hills College’s New Works Festival for 2022 Gi60: The International One Minute Theatre Festival - UK Live Edition 2022 Theatre Lawrence, Lawrence, KS Gi60: The international One Minute Theatre Festival - Houston, TX 2022 Debra has over 70 Children's One Act Plays Available on www.dramanotebook.com, and 4 full length children's plays, 1 children's musical, 12 monologues, and 10 adult one act plays ready for any interested company/director. She is flexible and willing to work with any company/director.

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Website: https://newplayexchange.org/users/30609/debra-cole

MORE ABOUT ME
I adore telling stories that challenge everyday thought.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
I write daily. THAT is my current project outside of running productions.

KEYWORDS
​Humor, dark comedy, youth audiences, drama, equality, tension, one minute plays, 10 minute plays 

I had a very well spent misspent youth, thanks to my uncle, a poet. He lived on Leonard Cohen’s couch when he wasn’t homeless, and when I saw what writing did to him I vowed to flunk English. But oh, the specificity of words! I went to art school and for a decade was a painter who wrote. I became a writer who painted. Most of my writing has been original content for TV, film and stage. I’ve had TV pilots packaged with 20th Century Fox and others; a feature script was selected for the 2017 Writers Lab, funded by Meryl Streep, Oprah and Nicole Kidman; I’ve been awarded fellowships from Jentel Arts and Stowe Labs; I’ve written for an Oxygen series, LIFE ON THE LINE; I’ve been nominated for the New York Theater Workshop’s Screenwriting Lab; and in 2020 I was nominated, then a finalist for the FilmNation/WGA Fellowship. In 2016 I was a sit-in director for Wynn Handman and wrote my first play, NO LAUGHING MATTER. (In his honor I frequently name a character ‘Wynn.’) In 2017 I directed and co-wrote a short film, EN ROUTE, that played many festivals including Adirondack, Soho International, Big Apple, Lighthouse, and others. As a visual artist I’ve exhibited extensively, and after my first solo show I was interviewed for Oprah’s ‘O’ Magazine for the article, ’Make Your Dreams Come True,’ by Phoebe Kest. 

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Website: https://pamelaharrisart.com/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/pamela.harris.33821/
TW: @PamelaHarris33
IG: @pamelaharris339 

MORE ABOUT ME
A MEANINGFUL MOMENT IN THE THEATER: My mother wanted to be a Broadway star. When I was eight she took me to see Ibsen’s ‘A Doll’s House’ at our local community theater. I didn’t understand what the play was about, but sitting in that dark theater, I knew I was home. I moved to NYC the second I could, and as the decades passed my mother wanted to hear about every play I saw. Her idol was Patti LuPone, but I had yet to see her on stage. When my mother passed I held on to the black mourning ribbon from her funeral. It didn’t feel like something I wanted to keep, but throwing it out felt wrong. A few months later my aunt invited me to ‘Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown’ on Broadway. It starred Patti LuPone, and going to see her made me want to bring my mother in my pocket. That’s when I knew what to do with the mourning ribbon. My aunt gets house seats, so we sat a few rows back from the stage, on the aisle. At the end of the show there was a standing ovation and I stood and flipped my seat up. The underside was hard plastic, but the edges were fabric. When I pushed on the fabric it gave slightly, just enough to pin my mother's funeral ribbon to. My mother always wanted to be on Broadway. Pinning her there was the least I could do. 

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
I'm wrapping up 'Will Life,' a new full length play about a traditional wife who must learn to advocate for herself when her dying husband's Will comes into play and she's about to get cut out of it. (It's about the fall of democracy, but in an intimate setting.) I'm also working on 'Wicked Hot,' a musical about a princess who wakes after a thousand years, and with no prince around to rescue her must learn how to rescue herself. A feature I wrote, 'Joyville,' about a scientist who's devoted her life to saving mankind and now must decide, are we worth it? is bouncing around with production companies. And lastly, art-wise, I'm working on a large-scale art installation, 'We're Very Sorry,' inspired by a proposal Bruce Nauman made for a German Holocaust memorial but chose to not create. 

KEYWORDS
​comedy, drama, Jewish, non-denominational, science-fiction, mythic, musical, political, equality, environmental, class, female-centered, avant-garde, multicultural, nature, art

Jessica is an Assistant Professor of Theater at the University of Miami, where she teaches acting and theater creation. She was the Artistic Director and co-founder of Strange Sun Theater, a company in New York City dedicated to creating magical new theater that ignites in audiences and artists, the power of possibility. In addition, she was the Consulting Artistic Director of the Sheen Center, when it opened in downtown Manhattan, curating a full season for 2 theaters. Before that she served as the Artistic Director of Wingspan Arts, an arts education company in New York City. Jessica works primarily as a freelance theater director specializing in new play and musical development, her favorite credits include; Pride and Prejudice (A new musical), What Kind of Woman (American Theater Northwest),Loving Repeating (NYC Premiere), Life of the Party (NYU-Premiere Production of Larry O’Keefe & Nell Benjamin’s new musical), at NYU Steinhardt Gypsy, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, with Strange Sun Closer Than You Think (World Premiere), The Drowning Girls (NYC Premiere). Jessica began writing plays a few years ago. her plays include: "Wickedest Woman"; The story of Ann Lohman, midwife and abortionist in the 1800’s in NYC. Finalist, Scrap Mettle Arts Playwrights Festival, Production January 2019 NYC, published by Next Stage Press. "Garden of Memories" the story of siblings dealing with the loss of their mother and the acceptance of their past. Runner Up W. Keith Hedrick Award at HRC Showcase Theater and Semi-Finalist, Trustus New Playwrights Festival 2016. "Zoe", a modern retelling of Aeschylus' Oresteia, if Aeschylus cared about women at all. Jessica has a BFA in Acting from Boston University and an MFA from Goddard College, she splits her time between NYC and Miami, with her teenage child, a crazy chihuahua and a cat names Wadsworth. 

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Website: https://www.jessicabashline.com/
IG: @jessbash
FB: @jessicabashline

MORE ABOUT ME
Why do I keep doing theatre? That’s the question I ask myself every time I check my Facebook and see someone I went to high school with retiring from Goldman Sachs and I think, man—I am smarter than that guy—where did I go wrong? And then I show up in rehearsal. And the creation starts, and I cannot stop smiling. I make theater because there is nothing more incredible than being in a room of smart people trying to figure out the best way to tell a story—for a group of people who will eventually be sitting right in front of you. And they will walk away, and head down the block, and talk about that story—and if you did it right something in them has changed. Something in the audience and the actors will never be the same because of that specific story. Then I go back to FB and realize... I am so much damn happier than people who are retiring tomorrow. Because I don’t want to retire tomorrow. I get to tell stories and change lives for a living. That’s why I do it. 

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
As a playwright, I am currently working on a one-woman play about abortion. It is a way for me to make the story I told in WICKEDEST WOMAN more accessible. One person shows are easy to program. As a director, I am working on a few new plays and musicals. 

KEYWORDS
​Historical, feminist, site-specific, biography, family, adaptations

I'm a cultural critic, author, journalist, professor, and dean at Parsons School of Design. I write the "Face Forward" column for the NY Times Style section, on beauty, media, and politics. I have been working as a writing consultant on The New Look, Apple+'s new series on European fashion, Dior and Chanel. I have written books on theater, fashion, modern dance, and literature. My last book was Mademoiselle: Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History (Random House) which has a long section on Chanel's work as a theater and film costumer. I have also been a theater and dance critic, and for 4 years wrote the "Reading the Signs" column for NY Magazine's The Cut. I have been a professor of comparative literature, theater studies and performance, and have a dance background. Also ran my own consulting firm for years--specializing in women's issues, strategy, market research, and crisis intervention. Went to Yale for my PhD and BA. Spent years living, studying, and working in Paris. Born and raised in NYC, alumna of Hunter College High School. I am hoping to do more writing and consulting for film and television. 

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
TW: rkgar
IG: rhondagarelick
FB: rkgarelick
FB Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorRhondaKGarelick/

MORE ABOUT ME
The performance that absolutely changed my life was Ariane Mnouchkine's Twelfth Night in Avignon, at the Palais des Papes. And one more: Teno Sehgal's "This Progress" at the Guggenheim. I feel most like myself when I'm writing or deep in conversation with someone who challenges me. My favorite thing to do when not writing is dancing. Stories need to engage our bodies more.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
A very big book about the untapped power of women's culture in global politics. A very inchoate play called 'The Interview."

KEYWORDS
​Feminist, New Yorker, talker, narrative nonfiction, biography, dance, fashion, France.

For the tenth anniversary of 9/11, "E-Mail: 9-12", now published by Next Stage Press, was produced by theatres in four states. Monologues from this, Guerrera’s response to the 9/11 tragedy, are also published in “Contemporary Monologues for a New Theater,” Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2018. Annarita, was selected for the Samuel French 29th Annual Short Play ‘Festival and revised in 2012. Historic works written and directed by Midge include: "Ruth St. Denis: The Dance Continues," commissioned by Somerset County Cultural and Heritage Commission and Vocational High School; a bi-centennial multi-discipline reenactment, "Turnabout " commissioned by the Millstone Historic Society; "Transitions," commissioned by the Somerset County Bi-Centennial Commission, re-counts the events that occurred in the Watchung Mountains in 1776; "Crane Chronicles", commissioned by the Stephen Crane House and funded in part by the NJ Council on the Humanities; and "Stephen Crane: The Middle Years", developed to be performed through-out the house that was home to author for one third of his life, commissioned and presented by the Stephen Crane Committee at the Stephen Crane House . "Many Snows Ago," explores the tales of Eastern Woodland Indians and has been performed at numerous schools. She has written over fifty plays for children. All were produced by the Laffin’ Stock Company. "Wanda the Girl Who Cried Witch" is published by Next Stage Press. Guerrera splits her time between New Jersey and a small village in Southern Italy. Her blog, www.nonnasmulberrytree.com shares her expat experience with subscribers in Europe, United States, Canada, Australia and South America. Set against the gorgeous roads of Italy, "Cars, Castles, Cows, and Chaos" published by Read Furiously is memoir-meets-tour-guide of errors and triumphs. 

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Website: https://midgeguerrera.com/
FB:https://www.facebook.com/midge.guerrera/
TW: https://twitter.com/midgeg
INST: https://www.instagram.com/expat49/

MORE ABOUT ME
How can one not tell stories in these times! Politics, pandemics, pillage, rape, human rights twisted and pulled - the world has been telling these stories for ions. The locations may change, the characters names altered but the themes remain. That is the tragedy worth talking about. Immersion theater - the street theater of my youth - the flash mobs - bringing theater out of the academic and price gouging closet and into the streets - that is how we can tell the stories in these times. There is much to talk about and to reach today's audiences one must get out of the theater. The pandemic made us more aware of the availability of digital presentations. We have more venues today than yesterday. We just need to fill them with material that inspires dialogue and change.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
Plays about my Aunt Cat (one of first female postmasters), Ruth St Denis (mother of modern dance who I adore), Flagtown Fem-Miltia (a play about women in their third acts keeping the home fires burning and safe). I'm also workin on a travel guide for Pontelandolfo and a cookbook based on traditional fare and never uses a measuring spoon.

KEYWORDS
​Mystery, Thriller, Political, Food, Equality, Historical, Fable/folktales, Immersive/site-specific, biography, young audiences, interactive

Angela Page is a writer, producer and author. Her short films are featured on the Shorts TV channel, FunnyorDie and Indiepix Unlimited. Her recent comedy thriller, "There's a Dead Girl in My Yard" was released in Dec 2021. She was a director at the Copenhagen Theatre Circle and founder of The Crown Players in London. Her social drama "Legal Gringa" will be staged at Powerstories theatre in July 2022.

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Website: https://angelapage.net
FB: https://www.facebook.com/angelapage5127/
TW: https://twitter.com/angelapage1200

MORE ABOUT ME
The best moment in the theatre, was directing and performing in my own one act musical, "Tapioca" about a a rebellion on a fictitious Caribbean island.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
Revising play scheduled for performance July 2022

KEYWORDS
​Latinx, satire, comedy, drama, equality, versatile, worldly, quirky

Bianca Bagatourian is a graduate of The Art Center College of Design and also the Brooklyn College Playwriting MFA Program, under lifetime Obie winning playwright, Mac Wellman. She is an experimental playwright who likes to stretch the boundaries of theater and whose works revolve around human rights themes. Her current play, THE TIME OF OUR LIES, based on the works of noted historian, Howard Zinn, was co-produced by Viggo Mortensen, and support from Eddie Vedder, Tim Robbins, Diane Lane, Tom Shadyac and the Zinn Estate and ran at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival where it was nominated for the Amnesty International "Freedom of Expression" Award is now going to be on at The Park Theatre in London, July, 2019. Her play about the 1976 revolution in Iran focused on the injustice to the children of a revolution and had readings at both the Ohio Theater in NYC and The Pasadena Playhouse in Ca. In 2016, a reading of her new work was presented at The Lark Theatre in NYC as part of the Middle Eastern Convening of Playwrights. She is also working on a play about the Armenian genocide based on 800 hours of survivor stories with permission from the Armenian Library and Museum of America called THE LEFTOVER as well as OPERATION AJAX about the downfall of Mohammad Mossadegh, the first democratically elected prime minister in Iran in 1953. Bianca is the president of the Armenian Dramatic Arts Alliance, a non-profit organization she founded in 2005 which administers the $10,000 Saroyan/Paul Human Rights Playwriting Award (www.armeniandrama.org). She also works in the film world and produced a feature film in 2015 and has another in production now as well as a genocide documentary being filmed in Africa.

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Website: https://www.biancabagatourian.com/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/bianca.bagatourian
TW: @timeofourlies
IG: @bagatourian

MORE ABOUT ME
My play about the life of radical historian, HOWARD ZINN, changed me. I never liked history growing up and didn't see the importance. Then I asked Howard what the most important message was about his life's work and he replied, "Know your history. Because if you don't know your history and your president says, go to war, you won't know the consequences of the last one and you're a blank page. You're a babe in the woods." I then knew theatre had led me down the right path in my life.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
Currently commissioned to write a play about Wikileaks- The Story of Julian Assange. Also have just completed 2 comedy TV pilots.

KEYWORDS
​Human Rights, Social Justice, History, Zoom Plays, Radio Plays,Climate, Biography, Musicals, Adaptations, Middle Eastern, Armenian , UK

Joanne is a playwright, director and filmmaker whose plays have been commissioned, developed and produced by Huntington Theatre Co., Boston Playwrights Theatre, HERE Arts Center, The Tank, The Marsh, Thrown Stone, East River Commedia, SIPA (School of International Public Affairs at Columbia University), Keeler Tavern Museum, Iceland Fulbright, Vestmannaeyjar Iceland Library and others. As a Fulbright Scholar in creative writing, she traveled to Iceland to write a play about a scientist who loses her ethics and finds her humanity, “unbidden,” now included in the literature of the Westmann Islands. She holds an MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University School of the Arts. Joanne founded RIFF in 2015 in order to be around filmmakers and learn the craft of filmmaking, to share the beautiful town of Ridgefield CT and its many arts venues with them, and in the hopes of making the world a more compassionate place through the sharing of stories through cinema.

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Website: https://www.riffct.org/
FB: joannehudson3
IG: joannehudsonplays; @mollusksmovie; book.sandtravel

MORE ABOUT ME
My most gratifying moment in theatre remains the first time I directed my own work. A friend told me, “Cast the best actors,” (as opposed to type) they will make you believe anything.” And it was true. My actors didn’t know I had never directed before (I read On Directing by Harold Clurman) and we rehearsed for 8 weeks for a 25 minute play for a one act festival. I was caretaking a loft space in Vinegar Hill and each day my actors and I would trek out to Brooklyn to rehearse in this giant artists loft where I would have them do mirror exercises to get in sync (they were playing doppelgängers). I knew it worked when I watched from behind as they walked down the street their heads cocked to one side and subconsciously mimicking one another’s movements. The two lead actors fell in love and didn’t tell me until after opening night. We were a smash hit and everyone filled the audience to see our show the second night. It remains one of the two most delightful theatre experience of my career, the other being the production of my play Pop Art at Boston Theatre Marathon, directed by Stephanie LeBolt, where all I had to do was show up and enjoy the show.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
Currently, I produce and direct Ridgefield Independent Film Festival (RIFF) now in its seventh year. I also make short films, and am working on a feature length screenplay.

KEYWORDS
​Film, theatre, micro budget 

Julia Pascal PhD is a London playwright-theatre director and scholar. Her new play 12-37 premieres at The Finborough Theatre, London in autumn 2022. She is currently writing and presenting a BBC World Service radio documentary on The Sin Only Women Commit-Ageing. Julia trained as an actor and worked professionally as a performer before becoming a stage director and playwright. She was the first woman director at the National Theatre on the South Bank with Men Seldom Make Passes her adaptation of Dorothy Parker’s writings. As a journalist she has worked for the London Times, The Guardian, City Limits magazine and The Observer as well as for BBC radio. Her plays have been published and produced in the UK, Europe and the USA. In New York, scenes from her St Joan, about a Black Jewish Londoner, were part of the Lincoln Centre’s Director’s Lab and her Dybbuk was seen at Theatre For the New City. Crossing Jerusalem, her contemporary drama set in the 2002 intifada, has had two London productions and a German adaptation at the Karlsruhe Staatstheater. Prizes include an award from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. Produced and published texts include The Holocaust Trilogy, Crossing Jerusalem, Woman In The Moon, The Dybbuk, The Golem, Nineveh, L’Année Zéro, Honeypot, The Shylock Play and The Yiddish Queen Lear. They mainly focus on women’s histories and reveal stories of exile and trauma which are part of drama’s reluctant and hidden narratives. She is a director of Pascal Theatre Company. In 2021 she produced Dancing, Talking, Taboo! and was dramaturg and director of this community theatre project as a collaboration with students from London Contemporary Dance School. She is a Research Fellow at King’s College, London University and has taught at NYU in New York and London. Represented by United Agents 

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Website: www.juliapascal.org
TW: Ajuliapascal
FB: https://www.facebook.com/julia.pascal

MORE ABOUT ME
I tell stories through theater as this is the language that I know best. Live performance is exciting to me and I feel the dearth of women's stories is something I have a mission to correct. If I could bring one change to theatre it would be parity for women on all levels. I have worked politically to try to change the marginalisation of women as a writer and as a poltiical activist. It is crucial to me and to all women.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
A new play about Hannah Arendt, Charlotte Salomon and Eva Daube when they were imprisoned in Gurs 1940. A new play for a community project on Eleanor Marx. A television adaptation of the Oedipus story from Jocasta's point of view set in London today.

KEYWORDS
Political, Equality, Satire, Jewish, Myth, site-specific, biography.

Gillian Fritzsche is a writer, director, and producer with 15+ years of experience. She has worked in theater, film, and the documentary space, as well as corporate content and awards shows. 

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Website: https://gillianfritzsche.com/
TW: @fritchbeetle
IG: @fritchbeetle

MORE ABOUT ME
A recent memory was standing at the back of the theater and listening to the audience laugh at the jokes and the funny moments I wrote. I love bringing joy to people. 

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
Currently, I have several feature screenplays that I'm working on. I have a slate of short Christmas plays that I would like to make available.

KEYWORDS
​Family, Children, Christian, Holiday, Romance, Adventure