JAMIE PACHINO is an award winning playwright, screenwriter and TV writer. Her plays have been seen in four countries, published and named the winner of the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays production grant, the Laurie Foundation Theatre Visionary Award, Chicago’s Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Work, the John Gassner Memorial Playwrighting Award, and the Francesca Primus Prize by the American Theatre Critics Association, among many others. Jamie’s plays have been produced and developed at Steppenwolf, Long Wharf, Hartford Stage, LCT3 (Lincoln Center), American Conservatory Theatre, Roundabout, Geva, San Jose Rep, Pasadena Playhouse, Northlight, Florida Stage, A Contemporary Theatre, the Women’s Playwright Conference in Athens, Greece, and many more. 

Jamie has written on the staffs of TV series for Amazon (SNEAKY PETE), AMC (HALT AND CATCH FIRE), NBC (CHICAGO PD, THE BRAVE), TNT (FRANKLIN & BASH) and USA (FAIRLY LEGAL). She has written features for DreamWorks, Disney, Lionsgate, Walden Media, Vanguard Films and teleplays for Amazon, Hallmark Hall of Fame, Lifetime, Up, and the Hallmark Channel. She is currently writing a pilot for Bad Robot Productions, and her most current screenplay MASTERPIECE has been optioned. 

Jamie has served on the faculties of Northwestern University (her alma mater), University of California Irvine, National Louis University, Columbia College and The Chicago Academy of the Arts. She is a proud member of the WGA, The Playwrights Center, Honor Roll, and the International Center for Women Playwrights, and is represented by Kaplan Stahler Agency, APA (theatre), Harden Curtis in London, and Cartel Entertainment. More at www.jamiepachino.com.

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
http://www.jamiepachino.com
TW: @jpachino

MORE ABOUT ME
I originally started out as a dancer and actress, doing musicals, and my college degree is in acting. (I’ve never taken a writing course. Maybe that’s not the thing to confess here. But.) My senior year of high school I went to New York to audition for colleges and my mom came with me. The night before the auditions, we scored last minute seats to Dreamgirls in the third row. At the end of the first act Jennifer Holiday literally stopped the show with “And I Am Telling You”. The audience was shouting and stomping so hard, the conductor raised his baton and stopped the orchestra— and the crowd went insane. What seemed like an eternity went by before the conductor brought his baton back down and the act finished—and I WEPT straight through intermission. Partly, it was because of the song (right?). Partly, it was because of the performance (unparalleled). Partly, it was because the music so exquisitely met the dramatic moment. But what I really metabolized in that moment was how badly I wanted to make someone in an audience feel as deeply as I did in that moment. To understand someone’s life, even one as different from mine as Effie’s. I wanted so much to be part of something onstage that made someone in the audience cry through intermission—or laugh out loud, or jump up and down— to feel, and understand someone else’s experience. As an artist—whether during my time as an actress or dancer, or now as a writer— that’s my goal. Finding the perfect turn of phrase, the breathtaking visual, or the innovative structure is the great fun of writing, but if I can’t make you feel, I haven’t finished the work. 

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
I've got a new play I'm percolating while I write a TV pilot for Bad Robot Productions.

KEYWORDS
​Jewish, Political, Satire, Race, Romance, Black Comedy, Female lead, Adaptation 

Emily Rainbow Davis writes for Messenger Theatre Company, which she co-founded and runs. Her plays include: SEEING INSIDE (St. Ann’s Warehouse,) PERSEPHONE, THE GREAT GOD MONEY, THE ENEMY, LITTLE GIRL STEW, DAPHNE (Carnegie Mellon’s radio series,) FIG. A: THE HEART, THE LAST AMERICAN COWBOY, MYTHELLANEOUS, THE KITCHEN PLAY, THE GOLDEN APPLE: FOR THE FAIREST, THE DIVINE BOVINE TREE, THE WAITING ROOM and DAUGHTERS OF MEMORY. Emily completed her MFA in Dramatic Art at University of California, Davis. Her play for young people, THE DOOR WAS OPEN, was developed through a space grant at Flushing Town Hall. Additionally, Emily blogs at Songs for the Struggling Artist (over 58,000 views), The Hamlet Project (over 115,000 views) and has had articles published in The Feldenkrais Journal, SenseAbility and Voices. Emily’s play, MEDUSA SLAIN BY PERSEUS was a semi-finalist for the 2018 Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center National Playwrights Conference, semi-finalist for OCHRE PARK and a finalist with ERRORS BEFORE ERRORS for Shakespeare’s New Contemporaries. Emily produces and hosts two solo podcasts, Songs for the Struggling Artist (the blogcast) and Leandra’s Lost Library and is currently producing an audio drama podcast for Messenger Theatre Company called THE DRAGONING.

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
https://www.emilyrainbowdavis.com/
FB: emilyrdavis
TW: @erainbowd
IG: @messengertheatre, @songsforthestrugglingartist

MORE ABOUT ME
There are so many moments in my theatre life that make me want to give up, that make me question whether I’ve dedicated my life to the wrong art. Over the years, I’ve seen so much crap, so much compromise, so much ego, so much selling out, so much shady dealing, so much sexism, so much racism, so much shouting, so much soullessness.  There have been so many times that I’ve wondered why I continue to let theatre break my heart. Because theatre breaks my heart pretty much every time I put on another show and each time I do, I ask myself again, “Why do I do this? Why do I put myself through this agony? Why do I think I love theatre when it clearly doesn’t love me?” 

But seeing some extraordinary work by women artists much older than me made me realize that it’s possible that I could make the best work of my life over twenty years from now. That even though I have often felt that my prime has passed (I have, to my regret, internalized that only young women are valuable) my prime is much more likely to be in the future. I learned that time might distill this cluster of longings and ideas and furies and hopes into something transformative – not just for me but for an audience.

I am learning to take the long view in an ever-alarming, ever-panicked present moment. 

Though we very well might be forgotten when we are gone (or even forgotten while we are here) someone somewhere in the future, might resurrect us for their transformative art. We keep creating in the darkest hours. We make because we must, because something captivates us, even if it breaks our hearts.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
The final episode of my podcast about women who turn into dragons (The Dragoning) will come out shortly and I just printed out the first draft of Season Two. I'm not sure if there will be a season two but I'm going to start editing it, just in case.  

KEYWORDS
Mythic, dramedy, comedy, tragedy, Feminist​

Kira Obolensky’s plays have been produced Off Broadway, in Los Angeles, in Prague and Terezin, and in such locations as homeless shelters, prisons, and immigrant centers. She has received the Kesselring Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship and most recently a Mellon Playwright Fellowship, which put her in residence with the award-winning theater Ten Thousand Things for six years.   She co-wrote a national bestseller about architecture; her novella, The Anarchists Float to St. Louis, won Quarterly West’s Novella prize.  She attended Juilliard’s Playwriting Program, Williams College and is a core writer at the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis.

WEBSITE and SOCIAL MEDIA
http://www.kobolensky.com
IG:kiraobolensky

MORE ABOUT ME

I love hearing an audience laugh. When I wrote for Ten Thousand Things' audiences  I would wait with bated breath for the moment in which I could hear the people in the audience, often with things on their mind far more important than a play, laugh together. I then knew that they were in it; that they'd come anywhere with us. I think we tell stories to imagine new worlds together--there's something so essential, so hopeful, so moving to me about gathering imaginations in service to summoning a world that a playwright creates with actors, directors and other theater artists.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
A musical with David Darrow about the doctor who tried to measure human souls during the consumption epidemic. (Susan Sontag makes an appearance in it!)  Also, some television pilots, a detective novel and a film about my father's caregivers.

KEYWORDS
Feminist, Adaptations, Historical, Fables/Fairytales, Puppets, Comedy

Leigh Curran is the author of four full-length plays - The Lunch Girls, Alterations (both published by Samuel French), Walking the Blonde and Body Beautiful (both on newplayexchange.org) Leigh’s one-acts have been produced nationally and internationally. The Lunch Girls had its world premiere at The Long Wharf Theatre under the direction of Arvin Brown and was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award before being directed off-Broadway by Stuart Ross. Alterations was also produced Off-Broadway under the direction of Austin Pendleton, and Walking the Blonde was produced at Circle Rep under the direction of Paul Benedict; at La Mama under the direction of Leonard Foglia and at Theatre Geo in Hollywood under the direction of Linda Carlson. Body Beautiful was developed through a series of readings and a workshop in 2019 at the Fountain Theatre in Hollywood.  Ms. Curran is a member of the LA Poets and Writers Collective and the author of four chapbooks. Her poetry has been published in Slant, Rattle and Onthebus. Her first novel, Going Nowhere Sideways, was published by Fithian Press – it is an underground favorite and is available in on-line bookstores. As an actress Ms. Curran has appeared on, off, and way off Broadway and was an original member of the Los Angeles Women's Shakespeare Company. For 22 years Ms. Curran was the Founder/Artistic Director of the Virginia Avenue Project - a non-profit using the Arts and long-term, one-on-one mentoring to give underserved children the skills to think creatively, critically, and courageously about life goals and choices.  Leigh’s solo show, Why Water Falls, was produced at the Hollywood Fringe Festival where it received the Producers Encore Award and subsequently ran Off-Off Broadway in 2016.  Why Water Falls is available on newplayexchange.org – it can be performed by one or more actors. Website: www.leighcurran.net

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
https://leighcurran.net/
FB: Leigh Curran

MORE ABOUT ME
I feel most complete as an artist when I'm performing in something I've written.  A few years ago I wrote myself a solo show but my real thrill comes from working off really good actors who are excited to join me in bringing my stories to life.  My hope is the stigma surrounding writer/performers can be undone along with the stigma surrounding plays about older people - often written by older writers - many of them women.  In a perfect world, the life journey would be explored and celebrated from all vantage points.  My first play, The Lunch Girls, made a big splash when it was first produced - I was in my mid 30s and didn't really know what I was doing.  Now I I like to think I do ... in any event, I have a whole lot more to write about!  And I plan to keep writing about it because one day, when we can finally throw our masks to the wind, theatre will return and people will once again come together to share deep, funny, sad, complex, surprising, thought provoking, live experiences.  

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
Another play and another novel.

KEYWORDS
Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, Buddhist, People of Color, Equality, Love, Aging, Loyalty, Mothers and Daughters, Sexual Identity, Transformation, Dogs, New York City, Abortion, Comedy, Drama, Therapy, Waitresses, Spirituality

Donna Kaz aka Aphra Behn is a multi-genre writer and activist and for the past 20 years she has led the theatre troupe, Guerrilla Girls On Tour, around the world with performances and talks focused on how to create humorous works which address social issues and prove feminists are funny at the same time. Kaz’s memoir, “UN/MASKED, Memoirs of a Guerrilla Girl On Tour,” (Skyhorse 2016) was named best nonfiction prose of 2017 by the Devil’s Kitchen Literary Festival. Her awards include a 2020 Jerry Kaufman Playwriting Award, Venus Theatre Lifetime Achievement Award, Ian MacMillan Writing Award, Boundary Stone Screenwriting Award, Skowhegan Medal and the Yoko Ono Courage Award for the Arts. She was named a “Notable Woman in American Theatre” by CUNY-TV and has been the Thomas P. Johnson Distinguished Visiting Artist at Rollins College. She has held residencies at Yaddo, Ucross, Blue Mountain, Djerassi, Wurlitzer, Mesa Refuge and Marble House. She has taught and directed at Bloomsburg University, Ursinus College and led workshops on campuses in 48 US States. “PUSH/PUSHBACK 9 Steps to make a Difference with Activism and Art (because the world’s gone bananas)” was published in 2019.

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
http://donnakaz.com
FB: https://www.facebook.com/kazdonna
TW: @donnakaz @guerrillagsot
IG: @donna_kaz

MORE ABOUT ME
What play or production changed your life?  
I grew up on Long Island and when I was in the 8th grade a close family friend, who was a theatre lover, took me, my sister and my mom to see the original production of "HAIR" on Broadway. I will never forget the show, especially the end where they invite the audience to come up  and dance to "Let the Sunshine In." My mom shoved my sister and me into the aisle and we ran up on stage just as the show was ending. That was the moment I knew theatre would be a part of my life forever.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
I am directing and choreographing "Songs for a New World" and "Carousel."  I am writing a play about the joys of being an older woman artist.  I teach ongoing playwriting and memoir classes at the Kaz Conference Writing Workshop.

KEYWORDS
feminist, women, comedy, musicals, librettist, lyricist, director, choreographer, parody, movement, physical theatre, guerrilla girl

Saviana Stanescu is a cutting-edge award-winning Romanian playwright, poet, and ARTivist based in New York and Ithaca, NY. She writes in English and Romanian.

Recent productions include "Don't / Dream" at the National Black Theatre, American Slavery Project and Royal National Theatre in London, "What Happens Next" at The Cherry,  "Ants" at NJ Rep, “For a Barbarian Woman” (a co-production Fordham/EST), “Aliens with extraordinary skills” at Women’s Project (published by Samuel French), “Useless" at IRT, "Bechnya” at Hudson Theatre in LA, "Waxing West" (2007 New York Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Full-length Script) at La MaMa Theatre, "Suspendida" and “Vicious Dogs on Premises” (with Witness Relocation) at Ontological Theatre, “Polanski Polanski” and “Aurolac Blues” at HERE Arts Center, “The E-Dating Project” at Strasberg Institute for Theatre & Film, and the site-specific "I want what you have" at the World Financial Center.

“Aliens with extraordinary skills” (Inmigrantes con Habilidades Extraordinarias) and “Final Countdown” (Cuenta Regresiva) have been produced in Spanish in Mexico City at Teatro La Capilla and Teatro El Milagro. “Bucharest Underground” won the Marulic Prize for Best European Radio-Drama.  In Stockholm, Sweden, Saviana’s play “White Embers” produced by Dramalabbet made it in the TOP 3 of Best Plays in 2008, and is published by Samuel French as one of OOB festival winners.
Saviana holds an MA in Performance Studies and an MFA in Dramatic Writing from New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, and a PhD in Theatre from the National University of Theatre&Film, Bucharest, Romania. Currently she works as a tenured Associate Professor of Playwriting and Theatre Studies at Ithaca College. She is the founder of “Immigrant/International Artists and Scholars in New York” (IASNY) and curates/hosts the showcases “Liberty’s Daughters – Immigrant Women’s Monologues” and “New York with an Accent” at the Nuyorican Poets Café in NYC.

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
http://www.saviana.com

MORE ABOUT ME
I arrived in New York in 2001, two weeks before 9/11, and started to write in English as a graduate student in Performance Studies and Dramatic Writing at NYU. It hasn’t been easy to start again from scratch, as a published and produced Romanian writer with Roma and Balkan roots who had achieved a certain notoriety in Romania and Europe in the 90s.
Starting with my first play in English, "Waxing West", I have centered my American stories on the immigrant experience, while dramatizing the inner conflicts of the main heroine.

In "Aliens with Extraordinary Skills", I tried to capture that strenuous inbetween space where migrants dwell, the balancing act on the “hyphen” between cultures and the non-stop negotiation between the American Dream and the small (and big) daily “nightmares”...

I wrote and developed "Aliens with Extraordinary Skills" as a writer-in-residence for Women’s Project, and it was produced there first. It was then published by Samuel French and presented by other theatres in the US, as well as Teatro la Capilla in Mexico City, under the title "Inmigrantes con habilidades extraordinaries", and in Bucharest, at Odeon Theatre, as "Viza de Clown" (Clown Visa).

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
I am working on ZEBRA 2.0, a play about an Artificial Intelligence who falls in love with an undocumented immigrant woman. It was commissioned by a "Science in Theatre" Festival that got postponed because the pandemic...

KEYWORDS
Immigration, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Romanian, Multi-Racial, Global Foreigners, Stylized Realism, Interdisciplinary, Science Fiction, American Dream, Undocumented Immigrants, Liberty's Daughters

Ali MacLean is an award-winning playwright, director, and actor. A graduate of Miami University and the LaJolla Playhouse Conservatory, her play She’s Not There won the 2018 John Gassner Award, amongst others, and was named 2019 Best Production by She NYC Arts. She was nominated for a Broadway World Directing Award for the same play. Her play Wolves At The Door won the Julie Harris playwriting award, was a finalist for the O’Neill National Playwright’s Conference, and was presented at the Road Theatre’s series The Word. Her play This Will Be Our Year was performed at the virtual 2020 SHE NYC Arts Festival and is nominated for a Broadway World Best Virtual Performance award. Ali is a member of the Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Playwrights Unit, Antaeus Theatre’s Playwrights Lab, and the Dramatists Guild. Her new work, Sullen Girl, is being workshopped by the Sundance Collective Kitchen. You can find her monologues published in an anthology by Applause books due out in 2021.

Ali’s screenplays have been a Chesterfield Writer’s Project semi-finalist, a Scriptapalooza semi-finalist, and WeScreenplay finalist. Ali won the 2018 Writers For Writers fellowship and the 2015 Women In Film Mentorship. Her dark comedy pilot Lady Killer was an Orchard Project Episodic Lab finalist and a WeScreenplay Diverse Voices finalist. This year Ali won the 2020 David Sedaris Humor Writing Prize. She is a member of the Imagine Entertainment Creative Network.

As an actor, Ali was nominated for a Method Fest Best Actress award and has worked on comedies including The Jimmy Kimmel Show, HBO’s Mr. Show, and the Green Room. She also created and starred in the popular web series Law Of The Land for the David Cross and Syd Butler company FKR TV.

Ali writes for the POP TV series Hollywood Darlings and teaches playwriting in Los Angeles.

WEBSITE and SOCIAL MEDIA
https://alimaclean.com/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/alimaclean
TW/IG: @aliontheair

MORE ABOUT ME
My most gratifying moment was after a reading of my play She's Not There at the New England Theater Conference. I had several people come up to me and tell me that I accurately captured what it was like inside their head when they were going through a bout of depression. They felt that I articulated the feelings they couldn't put into words, and said it made them feel less alone. After a performance of the same play in LA, I had a talkback with a representative from Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services and NAMI who spoke on how to help those with mental illnesses and suicidal ideation. The group therapy session that happened in the theater that night was beautiful.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
I am workshopping my new play called Sullen Girl, about the ramifications of child abuse. I'm also working on a ten-minute play.

KEYWORDS
Drama, Comedy, Dramedy, political, period, violence, toxic love, relationships, mass shooting, misogyny, horror, thriller, family dynamic, romance, suicide, substance abuse, sexual assault, mental illness.

Jacquelyn Reingold writes for theatre and television. Her plays, which include "String Fever," (starring Cynthia Nixon and Evan Handler), "I Know," "They Float Up,"  "Girl Gone," "A Very Very Short Play," "2B (or not 2B)," "A Story About a Girl," and "Acapulco," have been seen in New York at Ensemble Studio Theatre, Naked Angels, Theatre for One, MCC Theatre; at the Actors Theatre in Louisville; Portland Center Stage in Oregon; PlayLabs in Minneapolis; and in London, Dublin, Belgrade, Berlin, and Hong Kong.

Honors and awards include: the Kennedy Center‘s Fund for New American Plays, New York Foundation of the Arts playwriting grant, two Sloan Foundation commissions, Oscar Ruebhausen Greenwall Foundation commission, a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn prize, and MacDowell and Hermitage Artists Retreat Fellowships. She has been published in two "Women Playwrights: The Best Plays," several "Best American Short Plays," by Samuel French, Vintage Books, DPS, Smith & Kraus. A collection of her one-acts "Things Between Us" is published by DPS. Several of her short plays have been recorded for radio/podcast by Playing-on-Air.

Her newest play, "Kiss Me Somewhere Else," had its first reading, 2020, via Zoom with actors: Maria Dizzia, Kathryn Kates, Richard Kind, Hamish Linklater, and Evan Handler on stage directions. She is currently writing her second Sloan Foundation/Ensemble Studio Theater commissioned play.

In television, she is a Writer/Executive Producer for CBS All Access’ critically acclaimed "The Good Fight." She has also written for Netflix’s "Grace and Frankie," NBC’s "Smash," and all the "Mia" episodes for Emmy nominated Gabriel Byrne and Hope Davis in HBO’s "In Treatment."

Jackie has taught dramatic writing at NYU, Columbia, Fordham, and Ohio University, where she got a Playwriting MFA. She's a member of Ensemble Studio Theater, an alum of New Dramatists, and a founding member of Honor Roll!

WEBSITE and SOCIAL MEDIA
https://www.jacquelynreingold.com

MORE ABOUT ME
What was your most gratifying moment in the theater?
When my first play was produced and people laughed. It somehow made everything make sense.

What play or production changed your life?
Maybe “Mad Forest” by Caryl Churchill at NYTW. Or maybe the production of “The Importance of Being Earnest” my mother was in when I was four.  She wore a helluva wig.

I feel most like myself when I...
Am in rehearsal.

How do you overcome disappointment?
I reach out to my Honor Roll! friends!!

If you could bring one change to theater what would it be?
Free theater tickets for everyone who can’t afford to pay.

What do you want artistic directors to know?
Fresh voices doesn’t mean young voices. Emerging writers doesn’t mean young writers. Provocative playwrights doesn’t mean young playwrights.

What’s the one thing nobody knows about you that you’d like them to know?
I auditioned for the Jodie Foster role in “Taxi Driver.”

Why do you keep doing theater?
I keep doing theater because I love to be punished. No that can’t be it. I keep doing theater because I love to be rejected. No that can’t be it, either. I keep doing theater because I love being passed over for younger writers. No, of course that can’t be it. I keep doing theater because of love. Pure love.

What is your favorite thing to do when you’re not writing?
Playing Skee-ball! Ok, that isn’t really true, but it matches the photo.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON?
I’m writing a Sloan Foundation/Ensemble Studio Theatre commissioned play. Two women characters, over decades, out of chronological order. One is a Neuroscientist, who is Black, the other, white, is her human subject, loosely inspired by the real “SM 46,” who experiences little, if any, fear. It tracks their volatile relationship, and how fear, race, class, science, feminism, and sexism propels them together and apart, over thirty years. And in mid-November I go back to writing for TV’s “The Good Fight.”

Sarah’s play, MARVEL-OUS MONICA; IN WHICH MONICA LEWINSKY IS A SUPERHERO HELL-BENT ON REVENGE, was developed at the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Valdez Last Frontier Conference, Antaeus and IAMA Theatre Companies. Her new play, ABIGAIL, is currently an Athena Project PIP semi-finalist (finalists pending), an Ashland New Plays finalist, and was workshopped at Inkwell Theater and San Antonio’s Public Theatre. Her docu-play, Sarah’s 110 STORIES has been developed/read at Geffen Playhouse, Public Theater, Vineyard Theatre, and Toledo Rep with actors including Billy Crudup, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Edie Falco, James Gandolfini, Neil Patrick Harris, Samuel L. Jackson, Jay O. Sanders, Cynthia Nixon, Susan Sarandon, Tony Shalhoub, and Kathleen Turner. Published by Playscripts, the play is produced in regional and academic theaters across the U.S. and abroad. Sarah’s short plays and one-acts have been read/produced at Carlow Little Theatre, EST’s Lexington Center, Monster Box Theatre, Naked Angels’ Tuesdays@9, Sundog Theatre, and 24Hour Plays. Awards include the Max K. Lerner Fellowship, Humanitas PlayLA Workshop finalist, and a NYFA fellowship. Sarah is a NYFA fellow, member of Dramatists Guild, Playwrights’ Center, and Antaeus Playwrights Lab, and an Executive Committee member of Honor Roll!, an action and advocacy group for womxn playwrights over 40. Sarah is based in LA and NYC and teaches at SF Creative Writing Institute. For more, go to sarahtuft.com or newplayexchange.org/users/17049/sarah-tuft

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
http://www.sarahtuft.com

MORE ABOUT ME
My most gratifying moment in the theater was watching actors bring my first play to life. When James Gandolfini channeled the real person upon whom his character was based in a deeply moving performance, I was blown away. Later, Jay O. Sanders played the same role in a completely different but equally powerful way. This was a masterclass in what actors bring to the text and what they require to do their best work. It was also gratifying going to the O'Neill with my play, MARVEL-OUS MONICA; IN WHICH MONICA LEWINSKY IS A SUPERHERO HELL-BENT ON REVENGE. Of the eight playwrights in the National Playwrights Conference, four were womxn over 40. I had no idea how extraordinary this was. Having come later to playwriting from a background in painting/photography, I was not yet aware of theater’s engrained ageism—which combines with sexism—to overlook the voices of older womxn, especially if we're emerging and even more so in intersection with racism, ableism, transphobia and other biases. The O’Neill provided me with a powerhouse team to develop my play to its full potential. It also provided me with a perspective on our industry to which I’d not previously had access. I began to see how the theater awards opportunities to those who already enjoy opportunity, exposing the American theatre’s participation in a capitalistic system with its roots in imperialism, colonization, and the patriarchy. If I could bring one change to theater, it would be for “emerging playwright” programs to recognize that “emerging” can happen at any age, that womxn playwrights over 40 are often “early career” because of the inherent disincentives and social responsibilities that frequently fall to womxn, that our lived experience has value, that our voices are worthy of development, and that our careers deserve support.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
I'm developing a pilot which might take me out of my comfort zone but which is very much in my voice and wheelhouse. I’m also "warming up" by writing short plays about family.

KEYWORDS
Strong female leads, Womxn over 40, Sex, Gender, Power, #MeToo, Sexual Harassment, New Historicism, Diverse characters

OLGA has written for film, theater, and television. Her plays have been performed internationally and are published by Dramatic Publishing Company. Her comedy play MAGNIFICENT HUBBA HUBBA was named the winner and audience favorite of the 2017 Dayton FutureFest, the 27th year of the competition and will be produced by the Dayton Playhouse in May 2021, via Zoom. MAGNIFICENT HUBBA HUBBA was also a semi-finalist for the O’Neill, and was presented at EST, the Actors Studio with John Patrick Shanley moderating the reading, and in a table read at the Cherry Lane. Inspired by the 2016 election, a draft of her new play LITTLE. BLACK. WOMAN. about Shirley Chisholm’s run for president was a semi-finalist for the O’Neill in 2019. Olga is a staff writer for the new television animated series THE DOG & PONY SHOW, an international co-production, which is currently airing in Canada, before coming to the U.S. via the Discovery Channel. She did a page-one rewrite for the animated film A HARD LIFE, working with TOY STORY producer and Pixar founder Ralph Guggenheim on the story beats. Her true-crime screenplay MAMA’S BOY was adapted from the book by Pulitzer-nominated journalist Richard Pienciak, the National Investigative Editor of Associated Press. IFP selected her as a Project Involve fellow, and her mentors were Nora Ephron and Mary Harron. Olga’s play F-STOP was produced by New Directions Theater in New York, and the B-Street Theater in Sacramento. The “Chop Susie” monologue from the play has become a favorite for students applying to acting programs. Her one-act plays SVETLANA’S NEW FLAME and HYPERACTIVE won the Perishable Theater’s Women’s Playwriting Festival two consecutive years in a row, and were published in a collection of her comedic one-acts called “Fire Works.” Twentieth Century Fox optioned her comedy series proposal THE THREE R’s. 
​
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
http://www.olgahumphrey.com

MORE ABOUT ME
One of the best moments I have had was when my comedy Magnificent Hubba Hubba (which features roles for "older" actresses) won the Dayton FutureFest in 2017 along with the Audience Favorite Award. They bring the finalists to Dayton for a wonderful three days and you see all the six finalist plays. The other five were very intense dramas, while mine was a comedy about two old-time women wrestlers brought back together for a rematch by a teenage boy. It was gratifying to see a comedy get recognition, because they rarely do. The production of my play F-STOP was another gratifying moment, because we actually ran on "Broadway" for several weeks and I was called "a writer to watch" by the Village Voice (remember them?), as well as getting a nice small write-up in the New Yorker. That production led to a bigger production in Sacramento at the B Street Theater.

​WHAT I'M WORKING ON
I am procrastinating putting the very final touches on my play about the misogyny faced by Shirley Chisholm when she ran in 1972. It was inspired by Hillary's run in 2016, and is a very different type of project for me. It was shocking to learn that Chisholm faced incredible misogyny as well. If you're a woman, look out -- it will always be there. I planned the play for a few years, and it seems timely now, so I need to get it done.

KEYWORDS
Political, adaptations, farce, satire, historical, equality, biography​