 Gemma Cooper-Novack writes at the vortex where the intimate meets the sociopolitical. She was the resident playwright with The Theater Offensive’s Creative Action Crew (2015-2016), generating new plays (including Reporting Live from Under the Rainbow and Through the Glory Hole and What We Found There) based on the work of a queer youth performance ensemble. Once I Was a Kingdom was presented on Zoom for the Women+ in Theatre Conference. Recent workshops include Break (About Face Theatre, Chicago, IL, 2018), This Not That (The Depot for New Play Readings, Hampton, CT), and You Want Them to Look Away (Breadcrumbs Productions, Syracuse, NY, 2020). The Dating Game was performed in New York and Boston in 2015. Her light opera adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, co-written with Joshua Tyra, has been workshopped at colleges in New York and Chicago. Her play Blindside was produced in Chicago in 2008. Gemma’s poetry book We Might As Well Be Underwater was published by Unsolicited Press in 2016. Currently, Gemma is working on a commission for Breadcrumbs Productions in Syracuse, NY about the early life of Lady Macbeth. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Literacy Education at Hobart & William Smith Colleges and a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA TW: @gemmasupernova MORE ABOUT ME I was raised in a theater, in a very literal sense, and somehow have never deviated from the desire to be, as my mother explained it when I was six, "the one who makes up the story." I remain in theater more than film or TV in large part because I love the possibility of multiple interpretations, of no one definitive take on my text. The choices that emerge from distinct productions of the same script are, and ever have been, my deepest fascination. I grew up on the Marc Blitzstein translation of Threepenny Opera, and the first time I saw the Michael Feingold translation, as a teenager, the rawness and cruelty of the play was revelatory. I've never forgotten that production. WHAT I'M WORKING ON Right now, I'm working on a commission for Breadcrumbs Productions about the early life of Lady Macbeth, but set in 1850; I'm revising my script GREEN INK, which focuses on queer life in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust; I'm working on a series of short plays that explore the shortcomings of approaches to environmental justice. KEYWORDS Lesbian, Queer, Political, Social, Climate, Biography, Period, Verse, Adaptations  Hooked on theatre since age seven when she saw her first Broadway show, playwright, lyricist and composer Andrea Markowitz earned degrees in English, music and psychology, and pursued careers in advertising, human resources, academia, and freelance writing and editing before authoring her first play, FEEDING THE FURIES, a social satire that took third place in the Baltimore Playwrights Festival. Her latest work, FAIR GAME: OR THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING HONEST (a musical satire based on a true story about fake news) was just nominated for the best new script and best new score by the ariZoni Theatre Awards of Excellence committee (winner will be announced October, 2022). Andrea wrote both the script and the score! She’s also thrilled to have been awarded an Honorable Mention in the 2022 Jewish Plays Project contest, for her comedy/drama, APHRAH-CADABRA. Andrea is intrigued by the complexities of human nature and the interrelationships between seemingly discrete fields such as science, spirituality, politics, archaeology, history and fiction, and loves to create characters who are thrust into situations that require them to examine the world and themselves through multiple perspectives. Her recurring theme revolves around creating community through mutual respect and understanding. Andrea is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, ASCAP, Honor Roll, International Centre for Women Playwrights, Alliance for Jewish Theatre, The Playwrights’ Center, and Maestra, and is Playwright in Residence at Desert Foothills Theater.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA Website: http://www.feedingthefuries.com FB: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100010319160490 MORE ABOUT ME My most gratifying moment in the theatre was watching the rapt attention the audience paid to the staged reading I was awarded by the Arizona Women's Theatre Company for my very first play, FEEDING THE FURIES. I wrote FURIES in response to a competition for Arizona women playwrights, after thinking about writing a play for 20 years! (I'd seen tons of shows but never took a playwriting class nor held any theatre-related jobs.) I had four months to write the script before the submission deadline. I figured, if the play's not completed by the deadline, at least I've started to write it. But I "finished" it, and then discovered it was one of only two full-lengths to be selected for a staged reading. This acknowledgement was more exciting to me than anything else I'd accomplished in my life. And when I watched the audience's emotional emersion, heard their enthusiastic applause, and listened to their feedback about how deeply they identified with one of the characters, or knew someone like them, I realized, I can do this. I can write plays, and even more important, I can write plays that mean something to the audience. So I sought professional feedback on the script, learned how to polish the action and dialogue, and after many rewrites over the next two years, FEEDING THE FURIES received Third Prize in the Baltimore Playwrights Festival. WHAT I'M WORKING ON I'm working on a play that's based on the true story of a rising star in the jewelry business who becomes a convicted felon after being found guilty of securities fraud. When the prison medical staff’s indifference to her cellmate’s declining health contributes to the cellmate’s untimely death, the former jewelry entrepreneur has an epiphany and devotes the rest of her life to prison reform advocacy. KEYWORDS Jewish, Family, Mystery, Political, Equality, Historical, Biography, Musical, Period, Mixed Genre  Lisa B. Thompson’s satirical comedies, poignant dramas and engaging scholarship challenges stereotypes about Black life in the US, particularly the experiences of the middle class. The award-winning artist, scholar and teacher is the author of four books: Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American Middle Class (2009), Single Black Female (2012), Underground, Monroe, and The Mamalogues: Three Plays (2020), and The Mamalogues (2021). Thompson’s plays have been produced Off-Broadway, throughout the US, and internationally and has been recognized with an Austin Critics Circle David Mark Cohen New Play Award, a Broadway World Regional Awards Best Writing of an Original Work, a LA Weekly Theatre Award for Best Comedy nomination, and an Irma P. Hall Black Theatre Best Play Award. Her articles and reviews examining performances of race, gender, sexuality in theatre, film and popular culture have appeared in Theatre Journal, Journal of American Drama, Theatre Survey, NPR, Criterion Collection, Clutch, Huffington Post and The Washington Post. Her art and scholarship have received support from a number of institutions including the American Council of Learned Societies, Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, Hedgebrook, MacDowell, Michele R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research, Millay Arts, National Performance Network, and the W. E. B. DuBois Research Institute at the Hutchins Center. The California native is currently the Bobby and Sherri Patton Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies, and the College of Liberal Arts’ Advisor to the Dean for Faculty Mentoring and Support at the University of Texas at Austin. Thompson also co-hosts and co-produces, Black Austin Matters, a podcast and radio segment on KUT: Austin’s NPR station that explores Black life, culture, and politics in Central Texas. She was recently appointed a Presidential Visiting Scholar at The New School for the 2022-2023 academic year.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA FB: https: @drlisabthompson TW: @drlisabthompson IG: @drlisabthompson MORE ABOUT ME: After over 20 years, I keep doing theater because of the ability to “do theater” simply by writing words and inviting others to perform them. It’s beautiful that theater making can happen in your living room, in your backyard, or around your dining room table. I’m fortunate that all of those readings in my living room have gone on to become fully staged plays in theaters across the world. That has brought me great joy because that means people who look like me get to see their stories on stage. It has also been deeply gratifying that artists that look like me also get to be the ones to tell those stories. I’ve begun to realize that being a playwright has incredible power. I get to collaborate with other artists to tell stories that have been hidden in plain sight but deserving of a spotlight. I keep doing theatre because I have artistic homes that support my vision. Those creative partners provide a space for me to tell complex stories about Black people that rarely appear on stage, screen, or on the pages of novels. Theater is a gift to my community and to my soul. I can’t live fully without it. WHAT I'M WORKING ON I'm working on THE BLACK FEMINIST GUIDE TO THE HUMAN BODY, a performance piece about life and death for Black women. I'm also completing two dramas--GOLD and FLOOD-- which are part of my Great Migration trilogy that explores the experience of Black people's movement from the south to the west and the reverse migration back down south. KEYWORDS Black, African American, woman, Queer, comedy, satire, professor, artist/scholar, historical, Afro-futurism, science fiction, political, thriller, southern, performance art, motherhood, sexuality, the Great Migration, Black Lives Matter. |
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