Deborah Brevoort is an award-winning author of plays, musicals and operas. She is best known for her play The Women of Lockerbie, which is produced all over the world. Her latest play, My Lord, What a Night, will re-open Ford’s Theatre in 2021 after the pandemic. It had a rolling world premiere at CATF, Orlando Shakes and Florida Studio Theatre. Her other plays include: The Poetry of Pizza (Purple Rose Theatre, Mixed Blood, Cal Rep, Virginia Stage and others), The Blue-Sky Boys (Capital Rep, Barter), The Comfort Team (Virginia Stage), The Velvet Weapon, Into the Fire, and Signs of Life. During the pandemic, she was commissioned by Florida Studio Theatre to write The Drolls, and was invited to join their Playwright’s Collective. Blue Moon Over Memphis, her Noh Drama about Elvis is touring in a traditional Noh production by Theatre Nohgaku. She’s a two-time winner of the Frederick Loewe award in musical theatre for King Island Christmas with composer David Friedman and Coyote Goes Salmon Fishing with Scott Richards. She wrote Crossing Over, an Amish hip hop musical with Stephanie Salzman. Deborah has written nine opera librettos; three have won the Frontier’s competition at Ft. Worth Opera: Embedded and Albert Nobbs with Patrick Soluri and Steal a Pencil for Me with Gerald Cohen. Murasaki’s Moon, with Michi Wiancko, was commissioned and produced by On-Site Opera, NYC’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and ALT. In 2020 she was commissioned by Glimmerglass Opera to write The Knock with Aleksandra Vrebalov and Dinner 4 3 with Michael Ching for the Decameron Opera Coalition. Her plays are published by Applause Books, Samuel French, DPS and No Passport Press. She teaches at Columbia University and NYU’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program and serves as a mentor to the NBO Musical Theatre workshop in Nairobi, Kenya.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA https://www.deborahbrevoort.com FB: https://www.facebook.com/deborah.brevoort/ MORE ABOUT ME My one piece of advice for the American theatre is to follow the example being set by the opera world where they are "walking the talk" on gender parity. Opera America funds -- substantially -- 20 new operas written by women every year. The funding is tied to production. They have just started a new program for BIPOC composers and librettists where they are funding 10 projects a year, again substantially. This has had a radical impact on the field. Operas by women are now being regularly produced on American opera stages. It is one of the reasons why I am now working in the opera more than the theatre. WHAT I'M WORKING ON Deborah is currently working on several musicals projects: Bone Fire, a full length opera with composer Errollyn Wallen, commissioned by the Chicago Opera Theatre (2022 premiere); Loving, a musical about the Loving vs. State of Virginia story, with composer Diedre Murray; Tiffany Girls, a musical about Clara Driscoll, the uncredited creator of the famed Tiffany Lamp, with composer Julianne Wick Davis; and The Art of Being Remmy, a family musical, based on the book by Mary Zisk, with Rona Siddiqui. KEYWORDS Comedy, Farce, Historical, Tragedy, Musical, Opera Lisa A. Mammel is a published and produced writer, attorney, and former diplomat. She is the author of three full-length plays: Martha; Refuge; and (W)Hole (Finalist, Ashland New Plays Festival, 2020); as well as short plays that explore the themes of community, justice, and paths toward reconciliation. Her plays have been produced in California, Texas, and Maryland.
In addition to stage plays, Lisa’s background in writing includes two full-length screenplays and a novel. Her screenplay, Melting Point, was a Finalist in the World-Fest Houston Screenwriting Contest (Original Drama), and a Semi-Finalist in the Phoenix Film Festival Screenwriting Contest. Meticulous research supports the truths woven into Lisa’s writing. To write her play (W)Hole, Lisa observed proceedings at Veterans Treatment Courts, interviewed U.S. veterans, and collected oral histories of survivors of the 1970s boat exodus out of Vietnam. She fished with a family practicing subsistence living in the Alaskan bush as research for her screenplay, Melting Point, and milked sheep with shepherds in Sardinia, Italy to write her screenplay, The Innocent. At the invitation of the lead historian at Mount Vernon, Lisa drafted her play Martha while perched in the hallway outside of Martha Washington’s bedroom. Prior to embarking on her writing career, Lisa served as an Africa Analyst for the U.S. Department of State; a United Nations observer of South Africa’s first multi-racial elections; and an attorney-monitor to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Lisa is a member of the Dramatists’ Guild. WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA https://www.lisaamammelplaywright.com/ MORE ABOUT ME I am a playwright for many of the reasons why I am an attorney -- among them, the pursuit of justice. Theater challenges beliefs and knowns, cracks open rigid "truths" and debates possibilities, and offers empathy and solace. I attempt to write plays that do all of the above -- plays that will hopefully engage the lives who breathe, gasp, rant, laugh, cry, and discuss at the edges of the stage. WHAT I'M WORKING ON I am trying my hand at writing a musical with a strong female protagonist. KEYWORDS Social justice, Political, Historical, Women, Biographic, Forgiveness, Unity (Updated 3/19/24) Internationally produced and recognized playwright Elana Gartner has written Jagged Journey (2022 Finalist: Gulfshore Playhouse New Works Festival, Reading: Media Arts), Runtime Error (2021 Semi-Finalist: Eugene O’Neill; Virtual reading: Transformation Theatre), Before Lesbians (2020 Dayton FutureFest Finalist; 2nd Place Recipient of the 2018 Henley Rose Playwriting Competition for Women. Readings: Oberlin College, Yellow Rose Productions. Virtual readings: Dayton Futurefest; Good Luck Macbeth), Because of Beth (Productions: Howick Little Theatre; The Workshop Theater), Daughter (Reading: UpTheater Company; PlayLab Selection, Great Plains Theatre Conference), Pilar’s Brother (Reading: Repertorio Español), Cortex Kin (Reading: Dixon Place), Spinning (Production: Fabrefaction Theater Company), and Ernie Evan (Productions: Genesis Repertory Theater; Heights Players, 6x10 Festival). Elana participated in the Kennedy Center Playwriting Initiative. She has had monologues published from Because of Beth (Audition Monologues for Young Women #2: More Contemporary Auditions for Aspiring Actresses", by Gerald Ratliff, 2013) and Runtime Error in Smith & Kraus' Best Monologues for Men 2022. During the pandemic, Elana founded Four Walls Theater which produced socially responsible theatre virtually. She is the founding member of EMG Playwriting Workshop and Ghost Light Dramatists. She holds memberships with the Dramatists Guild, the League of Professional Theatre Women, Honor Roll!, Manhattan Oracles, and the International Centre for Women Playwrights (ICWP), where she was a board member for five years. She was the co-founding chair of the ICWP 50/50 Applause Awards, recognizing those theaters who were producing women in at least 50% of a given season. She was co-founder of the League of Professional Theatre Women’s Book Reading Club of Plays, reading, analyzing and attending plays. Elana received her MFA in Playwriting from Spalding University and her BA from Oberlin College.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA Website: http://www.elanagartner.com FB: @elanagartner, https://www.facebook.com/elanagartnerplaywright IG: @elanamgartner NPX: https://newplayexchange.org/users/817/elana-gartner MORE ABOUT ME I have had two truly stunning moments that stick out to me from my career. The first was when I attended the Great Plains Theater Conference many years ago. It was such a deep immersion in the culture of playwriting. We ate together, made playwright jokes together, worked together, thought together, problem solved our plays together; it was the first time that I felt my tribe at the most visceral level. There are people from that experience that I am still in touch with, some that are even Honor Roll! members. But that was how I knew what I was shooting for when it came to a theater community that I wanted to be a part of. The second moment was in 2020. It was after George Floyd's murder. I was the Artistic Director of Four Walls Theater. My associate artistic director and I realized that we needed to have our next play be about Black Lives Matter. We read many plays and finally came up with one that was fantastic. : a very topical play on a white cop shooting a Black teen but there were many gray areas within the play. Our artists who came from around the country also brought their own experiences to the play, some of them directly from Minneapolis or Louisville where Breonna Taylor had been murdered. Sometimes we heard protests while we were rehearsing. The play was virtual and we had a talkback afterwards. It was the longest, most engaged talkback that we had had. The audience was so passionate, so eager to discuss the things that were pressing on them from the protests, from the murders, from the injustice. I was so grateful to see that theater still would have a place in the world, that it was still so desperately needed, to have such important conversations at critical times. WHAT I'M WORKING ON I am working on two plays: one that is inspired by the play on the streets during my childhood and one about the aftermath of a tornado. KEYWORDS Women, lesbian, sexual abuse, #MeToo, disability, epilepsy, drama, alternate time structure, historical, magical realism, surrealism, family. Marj O’Neill-Butler, a resident of Miami Beach, Florida, is the Regional Rep for the Dramatists Guild – Florida Region. She is also a member of the New Play Exchange, Honor Roll and the International Center for Women Playwrights. Her work has been seen in 29 states, the District of Columbia, Canada, Great Britain, Scotland, Hong Kong and Seoul, S. Korea. She has had 51 different plays produced in multiple theatres, numerous readings and of course, many rejections. A published playwright and mother of two grown sons, Marj is a proud member of Actors Equity and SAG-AFTRA.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA FB: Marj O'Neill-Butler TW: dramamarj IG: Marjorieob MORE ABOUT ME The thing I like to do when not writing is to keep a journal of ideas. Of course, it’s still about writing, but I don’t take it seriously. Whatever pops into my head I jot down. Sometimes I don’t remember what the note was in reference to, so there’s that. I now do it on my computer in my Notes app. Saves having little bits of paper everywhere. I tried writing in an actual journal, but the book was never near where I was. But I’m rarely without my phone and the trusty app, so it works well for me. There have been times I’ve read one of my notes and sat down and written a short play. WHAT I'M WORKING ON Re-working my full-length play UNEVEN SIDES OF A TRIANGLE and writing a lot of short plays. KEYWORDS Comedy, Farce, Family, Romance, Equality, Pandemic, Biography, Holiday Mildred Inez Lewis writes and directs for theater, film and the digital space. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild and the playwriting units of Antaeus, Company of Angels, Ensemble Studio Theatre-Los Angeles, and PlaygroundLA. After graduating from Oberlin College, she began as a director in the Actors Studio and trained at EST and HB Studios. She earned in MFA from UCLA’s film school where she won a Samuel Goldwyn screenplay award.
Mildred is a 2021 finalist for the New Circle Theatre's L.B. Williams Award. Upcoming theater productions include THE ANNEX for Central Works main stage (Berkeley, CA) and SUITCASES for EST-LA. ECHO PARK will be produced as a radio play by Antaeus Theater. Recent publications include ROOST FIRST, THEN FLY for Applause Books’ 2020 10 Minute Plays collection and COWGIRLS for Breathe Fire literary magazine. 2020 productions include SUBMERGED (Actors Circle Ensemble, Goodly Frame); ACKNOWLEDGE (PlaygroundLA); MY BODY, AN OFFERING (Black and Brown Theater (Detroit), Digital Dramatists). She was a 2018 PLAY LA Humanitas award winner for which she wrote the dark comedy SONS OF FOX, DAUGHTERS of CNN. Her produced scripts have screened in festivals including the American Indian, Palm Springs International, San Francisco Black, Santa Barbara Black, Outfest and Outfest Fusion. The Etiquette Show, a web series she co-wrote, produced and directed with Adam Fox was selected for the Hollyweb Festival. She also wrote a Virtual Reality piece to celebrate the World War I centennial. WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA https://newplayexchange.org/users/3320/mildred-lewis FB: https://www.facebook.com/mildred.lewis.338/ TW: @TheMil10 IG: @themil10 MORE ABOUT ME When I'm not writing or panicking about deadlines, I do comedy. My writing is provocative and tends to the dark and political. Sketch writing and improv have literally lightened my spirits and, hopefully, leavened my work. Performing virtually has been rewarding in ways that I would never have expected after working behind the scenes for so long. It has given me a new appreciation for how life giving and flat out joyful our work can be. WHAT I'M WORKING ON Echo Park, a commissioned radio play for Antaeus Theater. A screenplay about Bessie Stringfield. KEYWORDS African American, plays, screenplays, radio plays, virtual reality, web series. |
AuthorHonor Roll ! Members Profiles Project Archives
March 2024
Categories |