Lauren Yarger is a producer and playwright. She has written several dinner theaters and revues as well as the book for an award-winning musical version of A Christmas Carol. She produced a one-woman musical about Mary Magdalene which toured nationally for three years before closing in New York and is Owner/Producer at Gracewell Productions where she has several works, including two play-reading series in the works. She is Co-Founder of the Connecticut Chapter of the League of Professional Theatre Women and member of its Board of Directors in New York. She has been a critic covering New York and Connecticut theater with the Outer Critics Circle (producer of the annual awards) and the Drama Desk (former vice president). And stay tuned for news about a new nonprofit being developed!

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
https://www.thewritepros.com/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/lauren.yarger

MORE ABOUT ME
The King & I changed my life. When I was in second grade, my class was selected to be the king's children in a school production done by the 8th grade. It was my first exposure to live, musical theater and I could not believe it when I discovered people actually had careers doing this. I went home and memorized "Getting to Know You" and sang it for the class the next day. Appreciating my enthusiasm, my teacher assigned me a line: "Please do not go away," when Mrs. Anna is threatening to go back to England. I immediately decided I would be a Broadway musical actress star. Thankfully, I am as smart as I am passionate and quickly realized that other people could sing and act far better than I. So I started organizing backyard productions, and writing scripts. And the rest, they say, is theater history. Those first notes of the orchestra striking up “March of the Siamese Children” still bring goosebumps after all these years.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
Creating a non profit that will focus on works for and by people 40 and up. Also a couple of reading series and a couple of productions for different regions with a producing partner.

KEYWORDS
Theater woman, 40+, Playwright, Producer, Christian

CAROL WEISS is an author, composer, conductor, pianist and teacher, who has written 11 musical plays for children which are performed by schools and theatres throughout the country.  She is the recipient of a Drama-Logue award, and a presidential citation for excellence in teaching.

She has conducted at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, the Sacramento Music Circus, and other California venues.  In 1984, when the Olympics were staged in Los Angeles, Carol wrote the American Express “Official” Olympic entertainment.  She wrote songs for the PBS series, “Square One TV,” for two cable TV series’- “Slapstick Studio” starring Dick Shawn and “The Good Book” starring Bobby Morse, and for the CBS TV pilot “Completely Off The Wall.”  She was musical director for the General Hospital’s annual “Nurses' Ball” (ABC TV) and vocal director for the Gershwin Trust's “Lady Be Good” cast album.  
Ms. Weiss has been the staff accompanist at thousands of auditions, including the original companies of Beauty and the Beast, Ragtime, Miss Saigon and The Lion King.  Carol was commissioned by the Goodman School of Drama, the Long Beach CLO, and the Assistance League of Southern California, to create musical adaptations of classic stories. Songs from her musical “The Emperor’s Birthday Suit,” were featured in the Stephen Schwartz’s ASCAP Workshop, and her “Teddy & Harry - The Tortoise and the Hare” won the National Jackie White Playwriting contest in 2019. For 26 years (until the pandemic) Ms. Weiss taught a widely known workshop in how to audition for musicals.

Her show about immigrants, “The Door to America” was one of 5 pieces selected to be produced in workshop at the “She L.A.” theatre festival.

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
https://carolweissmusic.com
FB: Carol Weiss
TW: @carolwmusic

MORE ABOUT ME
I feel most like myself when I am playing the piano. I have been playing for over 60 years and it still is a "zen" experience for me.  

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
"The Door to America," a warm and funny musical about Jewish immigrants coming to America in 1910.

KEYWORDS
Jewish, Historical, musical, comedy, warm, entertaining, hardships

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