 Marin Gazzaniga’s play The Unbelieving had its world premiere at 59E59th October 2022. Produced by The Civilians, it was a NYT’s Critic’s Pick and is based on interviews of non-believing clergy conducted for Daniel C. Dennett’s and Linda LaScola’s study “Caught in the Pulpit,” as well as her own interviews. Her first play, So Close, was co-produced by Rising Phoenix Rep (Time Out NY Critic’s Pick). It was inspired by interviews she conducted while writing for Victim Services and told the story of a violent relationship. She co-produced and acted in the independent film version (which streamed on iTunes and Amazon). Her plays have been developed by The Civilians, LAByrinth Theater Co. and Primary Stages ESPA in NY, Echo Theatre in Dallas, and Santa Fe Playhouse. In Ways Both Frivolous and Deep was produced by Ashland New Plays Festival’s Play4Keeps podcast (Apple Podcasts and Spotify). Her plays have received support from National Endowment for the Arts, the Pilgrim Project, and Venturous Theater fund of the Tides Foundation and have been finalists for Ashland New Plays Festival and the Heidemann Award, and semi-finalists for the O’Neill Playwrights Festival, and the Relentless Theater Award “Picket Plays.” She received her BA from Columbia, her MA in creative writing from City College and studied playwrighting at Primary Stages’ Einhorn School of Performing Arts.
Gazzaniga started her career in journalism (NBC News, Vogue, MSN.com and Fortune.com) has written and edited several nonfiction books, and produced award-winning digital features for HBO, Turner, Lionsgate and AMC. She co-created and starred in the IFC web series Like So Many Things… and was director of the Filmmakers’ Workshop for New York Stage and Film for five years. She has written comedy pilots for Hulu and Freeform, and is currently an Emmy-winning writer for The Young and the Restless (CBS). WEBSITE/SOCIAL MEDIA Website: https://www.maringazzaniga.com/ IG: @itookthispic MORE ABOUT ME I wrote my first play over twenty years ago and ended up co-producing it with Rising Phoenix Rep and then making and selling the feature film. This past fall I had the world premiere of my second produced play at 59E59, with the Civilians. In the interim, I studied playwriting and have written several plays that have been developed by various companies (see bio), receiving workshops and readings and award recognition. Not having gone to an MFA playwriting program, I've at times felt at a disadvantage being outside the pipeline for produced playwrights. But that hasn't deterred me from persevering to write and find outlets for my plays - all while making a living as a full-time writer in other fields (mostly journalism and TV). In spite of success in other media, it is theater where I feel I can tackle the most complicated questions that haunt me like: What does it mean to mourn a child that never was? Is there love in a violent relationship? What does it feel like to go from clergy member to atheist? I return to theater because it is a place that doesn't demand pat answers - but allows you to explore these questions with an audience. It is where you can begin a dialogue, instead of end one. WHAT I'M WORKING ON The questions I’m circling around now are: Can you avoid the fear of losing someone? If you could, how? At what cost? KEYWORDS Science, faith, atheism, domestic violence, social issues, dark comedy, infertility, documentary theater  Melissa Bell is a published and produced playwright whose work explores women’s agency as they navigate their power and repression. Awards: LADY CAPULET, Nominated Best Adaptation & Modernization in 2020 & 2021 by New York Shakespeare and Henley Rose Playwright Competition Finalist 2017, premiered by Barefoot Shakespeare Company in Central Park in 2019, and has been performed live or virtually at Turn to Flesh (NY), Advice to the Players (NH) Bernie Wohl Center (NYC), Farm Arts Collective (PA), Norwalk Library (CT) CreateTheater (virtual space), Bedford Playhouse, and the Little Shakespeare Festival and featured in Smith & Krause’s Best Men’s Monologues of 2020. Honored Finalist, Collaboration Award, 2019 by Women in Arts & Media Coalition for COURAGE based on Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children produced by NACL Theatre, immersive site-specific journey, featuring Debra Winger, performed on Governor’s Island, NYC, and Apple Pond Farm in the Catskills. Librettist for FINDING MADAME CURIE, musical with composer David Kurkowski. Associate Playwright/ensemble member of Farm Arts Collective based in Damascus, PA, whose decalogue of original eco-plays DREAM ON THE FARM was featured in the New York Times Arts Section in 2021. ZOE COMES HOME premiered at the Tusten Theatre in Narrowsburg, NY, in 2022, revived by popular demand in 2023, and produced in NYC by 29th Street Playwrights Collective, where I am a Resident Playwright. OFF BROADWAY: DEVIL & THE DEEP, music by Graham Russell of Air Supply, produced by Theatre East. LOST IN LOVE, the Air Supply Musical, one-night-only event produced by Triad Theatre benefiting the Actors Fund, featured 2x Tony nominated actor Constantine Maroulis and Tony winning actress Andrea McArdle. GAME BOY, produced by TRU, featuring Tony Awardee Cady Huffman, for TRUSPEAK. ICEBOX PLACENTA/PLAYGROUND PLACENTA, featured in Smith & Krause’s Best Women’s Monologues of 2019, Short Plays on Reproductive Freedom. Columbia University BA.
WEBSITE/SOCIAL MEDIA Website: https://www.themelissabell.com/ IG: @themelissabell TW: @melissabell_wtr FB: melissa.bell.142240 MORE ABOUT ME I don't know why I keep doing theater! It's just that every time I feel like stopping, I remind myself that no one will care whether I stop or not -- except for me. Then something fun and wonderful comes along and I'm in production or arranging a reading or writing songs or a book for a new play or musical. Or I find a submission that is just right for one of my plays and they produce it. Or I stop in the coffee shop and the local arts alliance event director asks me if I have anything new. I say No, but then say, oh wait, I have something that might just relate to your audience. Honestly, I love being an artist and I've been one my entire life. If I'm not writing a play, I'm writing a press release or updating the graphics for my website or the 29th Street Playwrights Collective website, of which I am a founding member and the General Manager. I went to college late in life and I began work as a content creator with an agency creating PowerPoint marketing and corporate decks for Big Pharma. Before that I was a singer, recording dance music, and before that I had a rock band right out of high school. I'm a performer and theatre maker at heart who loves having a band of people around to create with. WHAT I'M WORKING ON TAYLOR'S INFERNO: A Juke-box musical featuring the music of a popular 80's rock band, based on Dante's Inferno. The next installment of DREAM ON THE FARM and the Book to FINDING MADAME CURIE. I am working on a novel version of LADY CAPULET, as well as a version for episodic TV. Keywords period, woman-centered, Immersive/site-specific, reimagining classical themes, heightened speech, dark comedy, depression/anxiety/mental health, Shakespeare adaptation, Shakespearean women, historic women, Madame Curie, Emma Goldman, Climate change, eco-plays, librettist, lyricist, songwriter.  I am a recently retired African-American , Legal-Aid Criminal defense attorney who practiced in the Bronx for 33 years. After retirement, I wanted to pursue acting but after going to many auditions I realized that this dream may never come true, so I decided to write my own plays. My first one, is called the Hall of Justice, based on a true story of one of my clients who was falsely accused of Rape in the First degree, by a woman he did not know. It turns out, I like playwriting more than acting but if something interesting pops up I will take it. Member of SAG-AFTRA, AEA, The Dramatists Guild, and the New York Bar Association.
MORE ABOUT ME: If I could bring one change to the theatre, it would be more diversity, more inclusivity in accepting undiscovered playwrights. Things are changing but it's too slow. The Signature Theatre in New York, does some provocative plays, but always by the same African-American playwrights. Lynn Nottage, (don't get me wrong, she is my idol); Dominique Morriseau, Katori Hall, and Susan Lori Parks. The theatres will not take a chance on new playwrights. Although, Lynn Meadow, Artistic director of the Manhattan Theatre Club, recently said they accept plays from unknown playwrights, when you look on their website, they specifically say they don't accept unsolicited scripts, so their actual diversity statement is a bag of air. This also goes for The Roundabout. WHAT I'M WORKING ON I am reading about an African-American surgeon, medical professor, and the founder of plasma, Dr. Charles Drew. He died in a severe car accident when he was only 45. It is said that he was refused medical treatment because he was a Negro man, even though he looked white. After, I finish my research, then I will choose one aspect of his life that I think will make a "good" play. KEYWORDS Family, Mystery, People of Color, Inequality, Injustice  Patricia Connelly is an award-winning playwright and director, who has worked in the theater for several decades. In addition to playwriting and directing, Patricia has been a producer, stage manager, and teacher. Her most recent play, Heartland was produced by Pipeline Playwrights in 2022 at Joe’s Movement Emporium. Her play, Around the Snake Turn, was selected and presented as part of the Baltimore Playwrights’ Festival in 2023. Her play, Princess Margaret, was produced as part of the Women's Voices Theater Festival in Washington DC in 2015. Other produced plays include: The Penny or the Stone, (Robert Bone Memorial Playwriting Award); What Happens in This Town; All the Sins of My Past Life; Harriet; and, Night Sky. She has had short plays presented and produced in Capital Fringe Festivals, at the Kennedy Center’s Page to Stage festivals, at Metro Stage in Alexandria, VA, by PlayZoomers (online), at Keegan Theatre, and, internationally, as part of Short + Sweet (Australia). Patricia has a MA degree in Theater from the University of New Mexico and an MFA in Creative Writing (Playwriting) from Goddard College. She has participated in the Kennedy Center’s Playwriting Intensive; she is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America; she is a co-founder and Board Member of Pipeline Playwrights; and she is a proud member of Honor Roll Playwrights. When she is not writing plays or working in the theater, Patricia works as an attorney in DC and Maryland.
WEBSITE/SOCIAL MEDIA Website: http://www.pipelineplaywrights.org FB: https://www.facebook.com/patricia.connelly.79 X(TW): @PatriciaConnel7 MORE ABOUT ME: I feel most like myself when I am in rehearsal. It doesn’t matter if I am there as a playwright, director, or producer — there’s nowhere else I’d rather be, but in the room. When my first play was produced years ago, the director told me not to come to rehearsals. I was young and grateful and had never worked in the theater before so I did what he told me. I didn’t go. I didn’t know better. I had always wanted to be a writer, but not a playwright. I wrote that first play, in a class, on a lark. When the play opened, we sold out and the production was a success, never mind that the director had changed my ending and cut whole sections. Friends and family liked it and congratulated me. “Holy cow!” I thought. “I guess I wrote that.” I felt pretty stupid, though, when my teacher came and said, “That’s not your play!” I realized then I had to get smart about the process. I also realized everything happens in rehearsal — the good, the bad, and the magic. As I began working more in the theater, I found I loved the rehearsal process. I lose myself in it; time is suspended and everything falls away but the play in front of me. I’ve hobbled into rehearsals sleepless, sick, and exhausted. I’ve descended into theater basements before the sun rises and emerged in total darkness. I’ve sat through days and days of tech, drank endless cups of coffee. It was late on one of those long tech days when another producer sat down next to me in the dark and said, “How are you doing?” “Good,” I said. I meant it. I had a profound realization at that moment. There was no place I’d rather be than sitting there in rehearsal. WHAT I'M WORKING ON My focus today is working on revisions to my play, Night Sky, which is scheduled to be produced at a theater in Northern VA, in the fall of 2024. KEYWORDS Lesbian, Family, Political, Women, Nature, Equality, Satire, Movement, Music, Collaboration, Comedy, Buddhist, Irish-Catholic, Animals, Dogs, Outdoors  MARIA COMINIS is a first-generation Greek American. She is an actor, author, playwright, producer, and professor. As a playwright, she is the recipient of the National Endowment of the Arts Grant, 2022, a Semi-finalist in the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, 2022 and the Bay Area Playwrights Festival (BAPF), 2020 for her full-length play, WOMEN OF ZALONGO. In 2023, she was a Resident Artist in the HB Studio Rehearsal Space Residency, NYC. HB was her artistic home for a decade as an acting teacher and mentee of Uta Hagen. Television Credits: Hacks, New Girl, Desperate Housewives, All My Children, One Life to Live. Theatre: Bernarda Alba, The Diviners, The Sea Gull, Ivanov, and many musicals including a CAMI National Tour. A full Professor at CSUF since 2005, she teaches acting and the new student coordinator for the BFA Acting Program. She authored 'Rehearsing in the Zone, A Practical Guide to Rehearsing Without a Director,' Kendall Hunt Publishing, 2020, and co-authored, 'Production Collaboration for the Theatre: Guiding Principles,' Routledge 2022. She is a proud member of AEA, SAG-AFTRA, National Alliance of Acting Teachers and the Dramatists Guild, where recently she placed as a semi-finalist in the Dramatists Guild Virtual Residency. Represented by MINC Talent Agency and Literary Manager, Progyny Talent Management.
WEBSITE/SOCIAL MEDIA Website: www.mariacominis.com FB: https://www.facebook.com/MariaCominisGlaudini IG: @mariacominis TW/X: https://twitter.com/comdini MORE ABOUT ME: The most gratifying moment in the theatre was when I wasn't sure if I should stay in the game after graduate school. I was burned out, tired and didn't see where I fit in. Rita Moreno came up to me after a performance of West Side Story (Choreographed by the great Donald MacKayle) and I was in the role of Maria. Her eyes twinkled as she touched my cheek and said that I should never give up. She shared that I had the spark and played a beautiful Maria. The Smiling Madonna was an original musical I did when I was 16 and I played a young nun who was unrequitedly in love with a Monk. I had a great song which stopped the show and afterwards the response was so overwhelming, it took me out of character for a moment. I realized this is where I belong. I feel most like myself when I am in the zone (hyper-focused) whether it be acting, writing or teaching. I overcome disappointment by simply moving on and acknowledging that there is something around the corner that belongs to me. If I could bring one change to theater it would be more inclusivity and more blind submissions so the work stands alone and speaks for itself. I think Artistic Directors should know that I am first and foremost a collaborator and my goals are centered on what works for the story, and the whole, not about serving anyone's ego. The one thing that nobody knows about me that I would like them to know is that I am a bit psychic. My hunches surprise even me. It's one reason I don't get disappointed easily. My favorite thing to do when not writing is cook with my family, eat great food, talk and sing through musical theatre scores with my son and husband who are great pianists, and garden. I keep doing theatre because it moves me and others and it connects humanity to an indescribable depth. I imagine telling stories no matter the times. Brecht said, "In the dark times will there be singing? Yes, there will be singing about the dark times." WHAT I'M WORKING ON I just finished the first draft of my second full length play called OWL PEOPLE which was inspired by the visitation of a Snowy owl in my neighborhood from December 5th, 2022-January 16th 2023. A snowy white owl arrives in a sleepy Southern California suburb during the Christmas season. Some think it’s the Messiah, some are ecstatic to witness the mystical bird out of their element and some want it to leave. Why did this beautiful creature choose them, a community divided about everything? KEYWORDS: Greek American, Myth, Ancestral stories, Women, Equity. |
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