Sikivu Hutchinson, Ph.D. is an educator, author and playwright. She is a recipient of the 2020 Harvard Humanist of the Year award and received her doctorate from New York University. Her books include Humanists in the Hood: Unapologetically Black, Feminist, and Heretical (2020), Imagining Transit: Race, Gender, and Transportation Politics in Los Angeles (2003), Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars (2011), and the novel White Nights, Black Paradise (2015), on Peoples Temple and the 1978 Jonestown massacre. She also wrote, directed and produced a short film and play of White Nights, Black Paradise and was awarded a “Humanities For All” grant from the California Humanities Foundation in 2019. Her short plays Grinning Skull and Narcolepsy, Inc were featured in the Robey Theatre’s 2017 Paul Robeson Festival and the 2018 Hollywood Fringe Festival. Her articles have been published in the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, Religion Dispatches, The Humanist Magazine and the L.A. Times. She is also the founder of Black Skeptics Los Angeles and the Women’s Leadership Project, a Black feminist mentoring program for girls of color in South L.A. Her latest novel, Rock ‘n’ Roll Heretic: The Life and Times of Rory Tharpe, was published in March 2021.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA Website: http://sikivuhutchinson.com Twitter: @sikivuhutch IG: @sikivu MORE ABOUT ME My most gratifying moment in theater was directing my first two plays, Grinning Skull and Narcolepsy, Inc. I had the opportunity to work with outstanding older Black and Latinx actresses and amplify the feminist voices and stories of women of color blue and white collar workers vis-a-vis sexual harassment, wage discrimination, respectability politics, sexist religious power and control, and corporate theocracy. I also produced a short film spinoff and a webseries based on these pieces. Working across disciplines as an independent producer, director, playwright and musician has given me a strong foundation for pursuing my next project -- a "demi-musical" based on my 2021 novel Rock 'n' Roll Heretic: The Life and Times of Rory Tharpe. WHAT I'M WORKING ON 1. White Nights, Black Paradise 2. Rock 'n' Roll Heretic KEYWORDS Queer, Black Feminist, Historical, Speculative fiction, Sci Fi, musical Mary Lynn is an Atlanta writer, actor, and educator. Her play, KNEAD, a solo play in which she also performed, baking four loaves of bread onstage every night, received its world premiere at The Alliance Theater in 2018. Her play, LADY PARTS, selected for the Working Title Playwrights First Light Series, was also featured in Theatrical Outfit’s 2020 Unexpected Play Festival. Recently, her play, TESTING, was selected for the 2021 Threshold Festival at Actor's Express. She is the recipient of the 2019 Gene Gabriel Moore Playwriting Award, The Alliance Theatre’s 2017 Reiser Lab Award, and has twice been named a semi-finalist for the O’Neill National Playwright’s Conference. Commissions include the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Atlanta’s MoJo Festival, and a 2020 Development Grant through Synchronicity Theater and the MAP Fund. Mary Lynn is a member of The Dramatist's Guild, Working Title Playwrights, Actor's Equity Association, and SAG-Aftra. She has studied playwriting with Marsha Norman and Joseph Skibell. Her writing residencies include Cottages at Hedgebrook in Langley, WA, and The Hambidge Center in Rabun Gap, GA. A dedicated teacher, Mary Lynn teaches Introduction to Acting, Teaching as Performance, and Un Taller para Actores en Español at Emory University Department of Theater and Dance.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA Website: http://marylynnowen.com FB: Mary Lynn Owen IG:@marylynnowen MORE ABOUT ME My favorite thing to do when I'm not writing is to dig in the dirt. To settle a new seedling into a pot. To trim the dead branches from the St. John's Wort. To try - once again - to grow flowers from seed. To water my tomatoes. To rake the pine straw from the beds. To curse the damn pine trees - the beautiful Alabama Long Needle Pines - that every year block out more of the sun. To break another dish - or two or five - to make my borders. To fertilize. To show off my Dahlias to my neighbor. To pour a glass of wine in the late afternoon, and to clip and mulch and weed and tend - and sip - until it's dusk. To finish the wine, and wind up the garden hose, and call it a day. And to run out in the morning first thing, with coffee, to do a little inspection, but mostly to sit. And to listen to the birds. WHAT I'M WORKING ON I'm working on the latest draft of my most recent play, TESTING. TESTING is the story of a Mother, Grandfather, and two adult children in the year after Father’s death as Mother announces that she is throwing in the care-taking towel. In a room strewn with the detritus of their lives, their bonds with each other are tested as this interracial family confronts themselves and each other and decides what to keep and what to throw away. KEYWORDS women; older women; mothers; sex; visibility; farce/tragedy; blended families Jenny Magnus is a writer, composer, musician, director, performer and teacher who is a founding co-Artistic Director of the Curious Theater Branch, an all-original theater company, located in Chicago, now in its’ 33th year. She is the author/creator of plays that have been produced at Steppenwolf Theater, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Atheneum Theater, Prop Thtr, with productions in Nashville, New Orleans, Madison, and Berlin. A collection of her plays, Observations of an Orchestrated Catastrophe, was published by JackLeg Press in 2014, and reprinted in 2021. She has an art facilitation practice called Creative Consulting, and is in creativity process with people from all over the world. She has released 14 albums, written 15 plays, and is an all-around hard-working artist trying to make her way in this world.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA Website: https://www.jennymagnus.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jenny.magnus.1 MORE ABOUT ME I am rediscovering what it takes to be a writer and theater artist for my whole life, not just when I was young and full of eros. I want to be making things in groups until I am sure I have nothing more to say, which hasn't happened yet. I think works of the imagination are one of the most important and fragile tools we have to combat the existential threats we face as a world. I believe in changing the world, one imagination at a time. WHAT I'M WORKING ON I am working on a sung film, exploring the vicissitudes of caregiving, called "Teresa". KEYWORDS Composer, opera, middle-aged, imagination, experiment, original, fortitude, small but mighty (Updated 3/7/2023) I have been involved in theatre for over 20 years. It's now a part of me I can't let go! I only started writing plays several years ago and have found a real love for storytelling. All of my plays have strong female characters, and there is always a role I would love lo play as an actor. I write for small to medium theaters and typically have casts of 4-6 characters. I have had numerous staged readings in the Atlanta area and North Carolina, and my comedy, For A Good Time, Mary, has been produced twice. My drama, Trillium, will be produced in North Carolina in 2023 and my TYA drama, Discovering June was a finalist at The Growing Stage in New Jersey. I've also had several productions of short plays in New York, New Jersey and Georgia.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA FB: https://www.facebook.com/karenruetzplaywright TW:@tkgraphicsatl IG:@karenruetz NPX: https://newplayexchange.org/users/28229/karen-ruetz MORE ABOUT ME The first production I had was in 2019, when my comedy, For A Good Time, Mary was first staged. Hearing the audience laugh at the characters and situations I created filled my heart with joy! I knew I was going to conquer the world as a playwright. Since then, I've had many successes, but I have also learned there are many disappointments. For every one hundred submissions you might send out, only a handful are accepted. Sometimes, it can be discouraging, but a fellow writer told me once, "Your work wasn't what they were looking for this time around, but I am proud of you for sending it out!" I have that quote printed and taped to my computer monitor, so I never forget! All my years in theatre have brought me to this point, and I hope I never stop writing! WHAT I'M WORKING ON Submissions and a new drama. KEYWORDS Women's stories, Comedy, Drama, Young Audiences Julie Weinberg’s plays include Bad Daughter, Face it and Cornelia Street. In 2017 Julie received the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for Comic Playwriting for Bad Daughter. In 2019, Face it was part of the Actors Studio Festival of New Plays in NYC. You're Not the Type, based on an Edna Ferber short story was featured in the Five by Ferber Festival at New Jersey Repertory in 2018. In 2019 Is It Cold in here? won the short play division of Bechdel Test 2.0 in Arizona and was part of Short and Sweet Dubai 2020. Pandemic Zoom productions include Buttercup’s Lament, produced by Open Eye Theater, and also by the Quarantine Theater and is being adapted into an animated short, produced by Tamra Pica. Her play, Bad Daughter, received an all-star Zoom reading at Create Theater in 2020, starring Tony Award nominees/winner, Mary Testa and Frank Wood. Trailer and/or full Zoom recording available upon request. She Persisted, 30 Ten Minute plays by Women over Forty was released by Applause 2021 and contains her award-winning play, Is It Cold in Here? Three monologues from her plays are also included in Applause’s She Persisted Collection of Monologues by Women over Forty. Julie is a graduate of Lesley University’s MFA program in Writing for Stage and Screen, a Kennedy Center Guest Artist and a proud member of Dramatists Guild of America.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA Website: https://www.julieweinbergplaywright.com FB:Julie Weinberg IG:Jwildplay1 MORE ABOUT ME My zoomed reading of BAD DAUGHTER this past year was enormously gratifying. I had a superb cast, I got to work on developing it with a wonderfully smart director, Shelley Butler, and although I didn't have an audience in the room with me I got the most wonderful feedback afterwards telling me that the play had truly impacted people. I had a reading of FACE IT just prior to the Pandemic at the Actors Studio's Annual Festival and I was blown away by the uproarious laughter in the audience. I don't think anything makes me happier than laughter - the laughter of self-recognition and identification. How can you ever beat that? WHAT I'M WORKING ON I am working on CORNELIA STREET. It's set in 1979 NYC and it's about 3 20-something's trying to create a new family and come of age together. KEYWORDS Queer, comedy, coming-of-age RUTH MARGRAFF has been called a leader in the avant garde for her “audaciously original" (Moscow Times) poetics that provide “layer after layer of richly textured emotion...and imminent danger” (Dallas Morning News). Critically acclaimed for her 6 martial arts operas with Fred Ho for the Apollo, Guggenheim Museum, LaMama, Brooklyn Academy of Music, CAMI, Ruth’s work on SEVEN, began touring the world in 2008 introduced by Diane von Furstenberg, and in 2010 by Hillary Clinton with Meryl Streep at the Broadway Hudson Theater. Ruth has received awards from Rockefeller, McKnight, Jerome, NEA, TCG, TMUNY, NYSCA, IAC, Fulbright foundations; published by Innova Records, Dramatists Play Service, American Theatre, Theater Forum, Performing Arts Journal, Playscripts, Inc., Backstage Books, Autonomedia, New Village Press, NoPassport Press, Lexington Books/Roman & Littlefield. Theater Without Borders, New Dramatist and Playwrights’ Center alumna, Chicago Dramatist emeritus, and is a tenured Professor at the Art Institute of Chicago.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA: Website: www.ruthmargraff.com Additional website: https://www.innova.mu/composers/ruth-margraff Additional website: https://bakerartist.org/portfolios/ruth-margraff FB: https://www.facebook.com/ruth.margraff IG: https://www.instagram.com/ruthmargraff IG: https://www.instagram.com/opreglasso MORE ABOUT ME I grew up the daughter of a fundamentalist preacher in a closed circuit of churches in the American heartland. So my first plays were otherworldly to pop culture, yet held a privacy of limelight and faith. My muses include punk/metal hysteria, rock opera, cubism, hong kong cinema, Sufi poetry, Rromani and Greek blues, barroom brawls, Evel Knievel and wild flowers. I think of my writing as art. It is growing more stealthy--larger than life--and much more “wild by nature”—hidden in plain sight. To resist complacence is to transcend cultures of fear, intolerance and greed and to ride free and far ahead of the curve. I want to rise above the madness of loving disaster. To inspire turns and returns of denouement "from the world and all its ways." WHAT I'M WORKING ON: I am writing a pilot for TV and co-writing a screenplay with martial aritst Jose Figueroa. I was recently commissioned to write for Burning Coal/North Carolina Opera Co a suffrage aria for 19th Ammendment Project "Lost Music from the Heart of Everything" composed by Kamala Sankaram Aug 2020 (Raleigh). I'm also working on some short digital self-portrait poems related to my first solo album TEMPTATION: Chora (Serbia, Iowa forthcoming ESS): "deepfake: disaster's lover" (1:51) covideo #1 and #6 for Here Arts Center; "temptation: chora" (3:54), "temptation: trees" (2:56) shown at SETC 2021. Operas in development: MIRROR BUTTERFLY: MIGRATION LIBERATION SUITE with Afro Yaqui Music Collective (Pittsburgh/DC/Innova Records); PASSION OF LEYLA AnchorFM Jazz Ready Ep117; FLIGHT: TORN LIKE A ROSE Peggy Choy Dance Co AnchorFM Jazz Ready Ep116; and an EP digital framing of my LOCKET ARIAS KEYWORDS: opera, art, cinematic, martial arts, fantasy, avant garde Rachel Rubin Ladutke is a playwright living in New Jersey. Her works include 8 full-length plays, 3 musicals, and numerous shorter pieces. Excerpts from several of her plays appear in monologue and scene anthologies. Rachel attended Wheaton College and spent a semester at the National Theater Institute. She holds an M.A. in Theater from Hunter College/C.U.N.Y. She served as Editor of InSight For Playwrights, a monthly marketing newsletter, from 2003 to 2014. She facilitates two online playwrights' groups, Writing Sprints and Opp Swap. She is a member of the Dramatists' Guild, the National Play Exchange, the Playwrights' Center, and the International Centre for Women Playwrights (and a former ICWP Board Member). In 2022, Rachel is spearheading States of Play, a weekly cold-reading series featuring works by female+ playwrights set in each of the 50 United States.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA Website: http://www.RachelWrites67.wixsite.com/website FB: Rachel Rubin Ladutke TW: pwtchrmom IG: rladutke MORE ABOUT ME: Recently, when I was talking to a "civilian" (non-theatre person) about my work, I said, "I'm a playwright." Afterwards, I realized that I had never said that to another person outside of my immediate circle. Whenever it came up, I said, "I do playwriting" or "I write plays." This subconscious adjustment was a momentous one. I used to have this quote hanging over my desk: "Nobody asked you to become a playwright." I need to put that up again. Every time I looked at this, it reminded me that I write because I MUST write. Being a playwright is one of my primary reasons for being here. I write with the hope of reaching people...eliciting emotion, eliciting thought, eliciting laughter, eliciting tears. The (all-too-rare) opportunity to see and hear an audience reacting to my plays is certainly a powerful experience...but if I spent all of my writing time in search of that "high" it would never balance out. I write because there are people inside my head and my heart demanding that I tell their stories. My job is to get out of their way and transcribe what they tell me. When I am "channeling" them and I know they trust me enough to open up with me, it's indescribably exciting and gratifying. I write because it makes me feel whole. For years, I didn't give myself the space to do this. It made me angry, frustrated, and embittered. I regret the years I spent in that headspace, but it has made me all the more appreciative of what I am doing now. I write because I don't know how NOT to write...and that is one thing I hope I will never learn. WHAT I'M WORKING ON Currently I am promoting my work (with the emphasis on 3 of my full-length plays and one TYA musical). I am going to revisit my full-length musical with my composer to tighten up the dialogue and rework some of the songs. In 2022, I expect to do some directing and continue to seek out opportunities for my works. I will do some directing; I have a tentative production scheduled for the summer; and I am coordinating a year-long reading series for female+ playwrights. KEYWORDS Adoption, Queer, Political, Historical, Fable/Folk-Tales, Biography, Young Audiences, Musical, Plays with Music, Period, Equality, Family, Children, Immigrants, People of Color, Romance, Comedy, Generations, Naturalistic, Women-Centered Stories (Updated 1/12/2024) I am a playwright living in NYC, a member of the Actor’s Studio Playwrights/Directors Unit (PDU), a Writer-in-Resident of Theater East, and a facilitator for Eden Theater Company’s (ETC) PlayLab. My plays have been developed or produced at the New Ohio Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, Primary Stages, Howl Playwrights, AMIOS, Barrow Group, HB Studios, Goddard College, and Columbia University. My full-length play Complicity received an HB Studio Residency Award, and I received an Honor Roll Intensive Residency at Workshop Theater for my play Broken Arpeggio. My most recent one-act plays include Night Becomes Morning (Chain), The Memorial Tree (Columbia), INSTA and In-Between (Collab Workshop), and On the Line, and Dueling Technicians (AMIOS Shotz). I produced The Room Series (ETC), Scrambled Porn (Flea Theater) and FlipSide (Flea Theater). I studied acting at Neighborhood Playhouse with Sanford Meisner, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. I earned a BA in Theater at Bennington College, an MA in history at CUNY, and an MFA in Playwriting at Columbia University (2025 cohort). I have served on the Board of Directors for the Amoralists Theater Company and the League of Professional Theatre Women (LPTW). I am currently the Artistic Director for Eden Theater Company (www.edentheater.og).
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA: Website: https://d-davis.com Blog: https://d-davis.org IG: @dianedavis_writer FB: www.facebook.com/dianedavis.writer MORE ABOUT ME: All my skills as a performer, mother, and academic come cohere to shape the way I write plays. Groomed to play classical piano, I rebelled in my undergraduate years to study acting and everything I could about theater. While acting, I continued playing music (jazz piano and bass guitar) in rock bands. I eventually wrote my first play while teaching theater at an NYC public high school, about a man who believed Marylyn Monroe faked her death, so he faked his death to meet her. While the musicality of language shapes the dialogue in my plays, motherhood shapes the questions I explore. The theme of wanting to be seen and heard runs like a red thread through my stories, but also how women wear many masks to survive the binary culture of American society. Rooted in a feminine aesthetic, my plays consider how gender influences relationships, implicitly or explicitly, motivating social behaviors and norms between people and groups. WHAT I'M WORKING ON: Broken Arpeggio is a family drama about a mother, her four daughters, and the impact of one child's trauma on a family’s development. Daughter 3 is jazz to her mother’s classical music family. After an assault by a music teacher in fourth grade, she finds healing in the love of music and playing the piano. As she is unable to talk about what happened, Daughter 3 falls down the rabbit hole of addiction. As the family starts to realize that all is not right with her, they commit Daughter 3 into a psychiatric institution. When she comes out the other side, the family then begins a healing journey by coming together for a family portrait. This story, of a single daughter’s descent into shame and confusion, becomes a family’s story of learning to understand that looking good does not mean being good. Broken Arpeggio is the family’s story of grappling with choices made, and discovering home is not always what it appears to be. Born in Cleveland; raised in NYC ; artist ; playwright , published poet , documentary filmmaker , award finalist international film festivals , producer.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA: Website:http://www.catherinegropper.com Twitter: @cgropper3 MORE ABOUT ME: It isn’t easy telling stories in these time but I suppose there is truth in that in all times . One dares to shed political or personal insights learned and interpreted and it seems more repression in the arts and in our democracy is occurring . Therefore it is more compelling to dig deep and reveal transformational truths within action and carefully chosen characters. WHAT I'M WORKING ON: I'm working on a historical and political play I began during Covid . It reveals how none of us must ever allow anyone interpret our lives for us but ourselves . The Meeting ( the interpreter ) a personal story of truth politics fears and validations as told to the playwright from the interpreter from the Trump Tower Meeting of June 9,2016. KEYWORDS: Political , nature, Biography ,fantasy , radio plays |
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