I’m an LA based, New York transplant playwright, lyricist, screenwriter and actor. A graduate of The University of Vermont, I’m a lover of cheese, cross country and downhill skiing, and Ben & Jerry’s. In my non-linear career as a playwright/lyricist, I’ve earned support from the York Theatre, Samuel French’s Off Off Broadway New Play Festival, Ensemble Studio Theatre LA, City Theatre Miami, The Road Theatre Company, and INKfest, (upcoming), to name a few. I was a finalist for the City Theatre National Short Play Award and am a member of EST/LA, the Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative (LAFPI), The Ensemble Studio Theatre LA Playwrights Unit, Honor Roll!, ASCAP, WGA, and SAG-AFTRA. Produced work: CLUB MOM (Hudson Backstage Theatre, Musical Theatre Guild, York Theatre) written with composer Gerald Sternbach is licensed by Stage Rights. THE BELLS OF WEST 87th ST. (reading at The Road Theatre, later produced at the Greenway Arts Center) THE CANDIDATE (Red Eye 10’s International Play Festival, Open Eye Theatre), A LITTLE CULTURE, (Eden Prairie Players, Santa Paula Theatre, ACME New Works Festival, Greenhouse Ensemble), STELLA!! for EST/LA’s Digital Theatre Festival, THE SYNDROME (Theatre of Light, North Park Vaudeville & Candy Shoppe, EST-LA. THINGS THAT MATTERED (a short musical written) Four Quarter Theatre in NYC, EST/LA’s One Act Play Festival. Published: “Applause Theatre Book’s: Contemporary Monologues for Kids 7-15,” “The Collective Ten Play Anthology” and “Smith and Kraus’s Best Ten Minute Plays of 2015.” Film: Casey229 circuited film festivals 2019-20 (nominated in various categories, including “Best Comedy”). Television writer/producer: Mad About You, Baby Bob, Dream On, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Jackie Thomas Show, Rugrats, The Wild Thornberries, The Gregory Hines Show, Life’s Work, John Leguizamo’s House of Buggin’, Pinky and the Brain. I also developed the pilot Pond Life for Four Boys Entertainment (Patricia Heaton’s company).
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA Website: http://ElinHampton.com IG: @elinhampton TW:@El_hampton FB: https://www.facebook.com/elin.hampton MORE ABOUT ME When I'm not writing, I'm performing... and that includes singing in the car. (A benefit to living in Los Angeles). My younger self performed at NY’s The Duplex many times and I was in the resident company of the Manhattan Punch Line. I studied with NY’s First Amendment (and later, The Groundlings in LA). I sang in the chorus of “Broadway Salutes” at Lincoln Center, acted with The Champlain Shakespeare Festival, Florida Studio Theatre, Keene Summer Theatre, and The Gilbert and Sullivan Players. Recently, during a lull in the pandemic, I was in an (international cast) production of “The Serpent” at Los Angeles’s Odyssey Theatre. I've acted in the LA Fringe Festival, have played princesses in musicals w/the Nine O’Clock Players (I'm petite, wear a wig, and the kids are really far away), and many sketch shows and plays. My love of words have led me to be on a few game shows on television and have even won some money! WHAT I'M WORKING ON I have two projects in development. Most recently, I’ve been hungrily researching and filling blank pages with an early draft about three young girls who worked for the Dutch resistance. It’s my first attempt at an historical play and I’m really excited about it. My composer collaborator (Gerald Sternbach) and I have written a family friendly Christmas musical (I wrote the book and lyrics) entitled A VERY CHERRY CHRISTMAS. In it, (Ms.) Cherry Claus is the real brains and backbone of the holiday, and until now has been okay being the silent partner, but not anymore! Jerry and I are looking to attach a director who will be a good fit for the project, moving forward. In the meantime, we are sending our demo and script out to musical development programs. Open to any and all suggestions! KEYWORDS Theatricality, laughter, inanimate objects, animals, marriage, aging, family musicals, adult musicals, historical plays, holiday musical, lesbian, colorblind casting, entertainment Velina Hasu Houston’s literary career began Off-Broadway at Manhattan Theatre Club, expanding globally. A playwright and musical theatre/opera librettist, she also is an essayist, published poet, screenwriter, novelist, and journalist with over 30 writing commissions. Honored by several organizations such as the Kennedy Center, Rockefeller Foundation, Japan Foundation, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Theatre Communications Group, and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, she founded graduate playwriting studies at the School of Dramatic Arts, University of Southern California, and directed dramatic writing studies there for 31 years. At USC, she is a presidentially appointed Distinguished Professor of Theatre, USC Resident Playwright and USC Iovine Young Academy faculty. For six years, she served on the U.S. Department of State's U.S.-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange and the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission. A Fulbright Scholar, her archives are at the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California. She has lectured or participated in research symposia at key universities in Japan: Aoyama Gakuin University, Osaka University, Kyoto University, Doshisha University and Keio University. She is a member of the Dramatists’ Guild, Writers’ Guild of America-West, Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights, League of Professional Theatre Women, and the International Centre for Women Playwrights. She is Writers’ Odyssey Associate Artist at the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, Los Angeles, and affiliated with New Circle Theatre Company, New York.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA Website: https://www.velinahasuhouston.com/ IG: @gyokurogirl MORE ABOUT ME If you could bring one change to theater, what would it be? If I could bring one change to theatre, I would summon a greater breadth for it with regards to the inclusion of female voices, female voices of color, and voices of writers over the age of fifty. WHAT I'M WORKING ON Several film and theatre projects. KEYWORDS Immigrant, migrant, polycultural, mixed race, polytheism, sociopolitical, equality, queer, historical, musical Joyce Van Dyke’s plays include Daybreak (Off-Broadway world premiere, Pan Asian Repertory Theatre), The Women Who Mapped the Stars (commissioned and produced by Central Square Theater), A Girl’s War (Golden Thread Productions, New Repertory Theatre, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre), and The Oil Thief (commissioned by Ensemble Studio Theatre / Sloan Project, produced by Boston Playwrights’ Theatre). In 2021, two new plays had readings: American Othello (staged reading, Gloucester Stage Company), and The Prize (commissioned by Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse, zoom reading); and her new solo show about Julia Ward Howe, Representation And How To Get It, had a first production at Hardwick Town House in Central Mass. Her adaptation of her play, The Women Who Mapped the Stars, commissioned for touring to schools, will begin touring in 2022 in Maine. Joyce is a MacDowell Fellow and Huntington Playwriting Fellow whose work has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Massachusetts Cultural Council, AGBU, and United States Artists Projects. Other playwriting awards include the Gassner Award, the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding New Script, and The Boston Globe’s “Top Ten” plays of the year, and her plays have been anthologized in Contemporary Armenian American Drama and Laugh Lines: Short Comic Plays. Trained originally as a Shakespearean, she later completed the Boston University playwriting program under Derek Walcott and Kate Snodgrass. She has taught Shakespeare for many years at Harvard Extension School where she won the Shattuck Teaching Prize and where she currently teaches playwriting.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA Website: http://www.joycevandyke.com FB: Joyce Van Dyke TW: @JoyceVanDyke MORE ABOUT ME Reading all of Shakespeare's plays from the beginning to the end of his career in their (probable) order of composition changed my life. To watch his unceasing development – to see that he wasn't always "Shakespeare"! – but that he evolved, and you could watch that evolution over two decades as he experimented in every play with language and form and genre. I was fascinated by how he worked and reworked certain situations and characters in successive plays: e.g., the woman accused of adultery whose passionately outspoken friend comes to her defense (Beatrice, Emilia, Paulina); how he invented monologues/direct address to leverage character and audience into a free-fall into the unknown depths of the self (Hamlet, Angelo); how he began to give more and more to his minor characters; how brilliantly he revised even tiny details, single words; how deeply he researched his subjects – reading everything he could get his hands on, to judge from the source studies. And throughout, his fascination and empathy with strangers / the other / the "foreigner" – including, as I see it, women; and his bone-deep understanding that any human being, any person/persona, is an actor . . . and I would never have had that reading experience if I hadn’t been in an English graduate program that required me to choose a "major figure" to study. It turned out to be the wrong path for my life, but it put me on the right path. WHAT I'M WORKING ON I want to write about the climate crisis and am trying to figure out how. KEYWORDS Lyrical, climate, dream play, eros, women scientists, time-bending, social justice, civil rights, political, Armenian, Middle Eastern Erin Osgood (she/her) is a playwright, actress, and Dramatists Guild member living in Michigan. She has a Master’s in Social Work from the University of Michigan and is an active volunteer with the Make-a-Wish Foundation of Michigan. Erin’s work has been produced throughout the country and abroad. Her plays include: THE AFTER (2021 Semi-Finalist Garry Marshall Theatre’s New Works Festival, 2021 Semi-Finalist Wild Imaginings’ New Works Festival), FAMILY PAINS (2018 Concert Reading at Purple Rose Theatre, 2017 CTAM winner, 2017 Finalist Todd McNerney Playwriting Award, 2016 Finalist Henley Rose Playwright Competition for Women), MINOR DEVIATIONS (2020 Barrington Stage Company’s 10x10 Festival, 2018 Best Play Sandbox Festival, 2019 Estrogenius Festival NYC, 2019 MadLab), and PASSING THE BUCK (2015 Sandbox Festival).
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA Website:https://www.erinosgood.com IG:@osgooderin TW: @erinosgood FB: Erin Osgood NPX: https://newplayexchange.org/users/13416/erin-osgood MORE ABOUT ME Disappointment is a constant in a creative's life. More specifically, rejection can feel like your heart has been ripped out of your chest, kicked around, and thrown in a dumpster. Starting out as an actor, I have not been cast in many roles that I really wanted. I never knew rejection until I began to write. Putting your soul into a script, sending it out in the world and letting complete strangers decide its value and worthiness is a tortuous endeavor. Why in the world would I subject myself to this? Why do I open the emails that most likely have bad news? Because I have to. I have stories in me that just have to come out. I write for myself, and I do love when others like my stories, but creating the story is my reward. Now, I may be disappointed I missed out on an opportunity, but I keep my eyes to the future. WHAT I'M WORKING ON I have a few projects I am working on. Three full length plays: The After, My Mother, the Serial Killer, and Emergency Protocol Camouflage. I am also working on a script written specifically for Covid times that will be filmed using Zoom and other formats. Its title is Eyes to the Stars. KEYWORDS Environmental, climate, science fiction, apocalyptic, mystery, equality, people of color, badass women roles DANA SCHWARTZ is a Los Angeles writer, director, producer and actress. Her play "@Playaz" was a 2019 O'Neill Finalist and had its World Premiere in November 2021 at the Atwater Playhouse produced by Moving Arts. Her award winning play "Early Birds" had its World Premiere in 2019, and is published by Next Stage Press . "Perspective" enjoyed its World Premiere at Theater at the Museum at LACMA. "The PTA" and "That Time She Proposed" were in several productions of the internationally renowned Car Plays, notably at REDcat LA, Disney Hall, Segerstrom Arts and Costa Mesa. "Undead" was produced at Theater Roulette in Cleveland in 2021, “Magical Roots $20” will be part of the Women in the Arts and Media Collection in 2021, and "O My Days" is published by Montag Press. She is co-creator, writer and stars in the 9 episode Zoom series "Isolation Inn", currently airing online. As an actress she has performed all around the world. She is the co-creator and Producer of Theater at the Museum at LACMA, and is currently the Producer of the MADlab New Play Development Program at Moving Arts, where she is a company member.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA Website: http://www.danawritesplays.com IG: danaschwartz24 TW: danaschwartz29 MORE ABOUT ME I keep doing theater because I love it. I started as an actress, moved to directing after I had kids, and started writing in a fit of pique after a particularly evil PTA meeting. I keep doing theater so that I have a creative outlet. So that I can continue to meet incredible people and learn amazing things. So that I can provide some fun things to do for creative types. I keep doing theater because I'd like to believe that I can give a voice to those may not always have one. I keep doing theater because without it, the world would be a little duller. WHAT I'M WORKING ON Typically I have at least three pieces I'm working on (right now there are five I think!), plus I produce the MADlab New Play Development program at Moving Arts, so I also get to work with writers on their new plays. Plus a little acting and directing. And I have two teen aged boys, so I'm also working on raising nice men. Yay! KEYWORDS Los Angeles, Jewish, comedy, immersive/site-specific, dark comedy, video games, game shows, magic, cruise ship, one location, parenting, dancers, menopause Julia Lee Barclay-Morton, PhD, is an award-winning writer and theater director, produced and published internationally; her newest play Respairation or You Have to Unmute Yourself—written while recovering from long-haul COVID and in the midst of an autism diagnostic process—will be performed as part of IATI's Women's Festival in March 2022; a 22-hour radio broadcast of two decades of Julia's experimental stage texts in collaboration with sound artist Viv Corringham commissioned by Radio Art Zone for Esch2022 European Capital of Culture in Luxembourg will be broadcast in September 2022; recent stories and essays published in [PANK], Prairie Schooner and Heavy Feather Review; winner of Nomadic Press Bindle Prize for story published as chapbook, and play On the edge of/a cure was produced by Rogue Players at The Playroom in 2019. Her play Shit was given a staged reading at IATI as part of the Cimientos play development program in 2018, and her plays have been performed in NYC at such venues as HERE, The Brick, Red Room, and St. Mark's. A Best of the Net nominee, she was also included in the Indie Theater Hall of Fame in 2014. She has been in residence at Vermont Studio Center and the Wesleyan Writers Conference. Other publications include Ohio Edit, Prentice-Hall, Stockholm Review, Gertrude, The Other Stories, Burning House Press, and TL;DR. Stage texts have been anthologized by NYTE and Level4 Press. She founded Apocryphal Theatre when in London (2003-11), and was awarded a practice-as-research PhD by Northampton, UK in performance as philosophy; her BA is from Wesleyan University. Now living in NYC, she is writing a memoir about being diagnosed on the autism spectrum in her late 50s and how an intensive yoga teacher training led her there. Julia also paints, coaches, teaches writing and yoga.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA Website: https://www.theunadaptedones.com FB: julialeebarclaymorton TW: @wilhelminapitfa IG: @julialeebarclayauthor MORE ABOUT ME: My most gratifying moments in theater have happened when I have thrown out all the rules and gone into a room with a text or an idea open to what might happen. My first stage text Word To Your Mama emerged when I realized watching a Mabou Mines workshop: oh there Are No Rules! I realize now in light of a recent autism diagnosis that my stage texts probably look the way they do (collage texts with no line assignments, more musical than narrative, philosophical than emotive) because of how I am wired. I am looking forward to being back in a real rehearsal room with actual humans to see what I create now knowing consciously that I am neuroqueer. My dearest recent memory is having Jean-Claude van Itallie show up to my last show On the edge of/a cure at the Playroom in May 2019. My most life-changing theater experience was directing The Serpent at Wesleyan, which he had written the text in collaboration with Joseph Chaikin and The Open Theater decades earlier. Especially since he died a few months ago, I am grateful to have been able to tell him how important he was to me and to see how happy the play made him. What I want artistic directors to know is that my stage texts can be taken by any adventurous director (or me) and made into something beautiful in collaboration with brave performers who can be of any gender, ethnicity, neurotype, dis/ability, race, sexuality, age, or body-type. These texts speak to that which is unheard, unseen, and unloved within and without. They get underneath the meaning making machinery to show how it works, so we can imagine new realities. Right here. Right now. Take a risk, bring me aboard. You won't regret it. WHAT I'M WORKING ON A new play and memoir about being diagnosed on autism spectrum at age 57 and how an intensive yoga teacher training led me there. I am polishing up Respairation or Your Have to Unmute Yourself. I also paint. As a writer who directs, I want desperately to be back in an actual theater and look forward to when that is possible again. As someone who was hit with COVID and long haul COVID for well over a year, which landed me in hospital, I cannot work in actual theater spaces until it is truly safe. This is painful but necessary, because I want to live. However, happily, I am now finally recovering. My main focus since March 2020 has been healing. Only since this past summer have I been able to truly focus on creating again. KEYWORDS Experimental, Autistic, Political, Philosophical, Feminist, Collaborative, Dance, Live Art, Time-based Art, Performance, Neuroqueer Judy is an actress and playwright whose frustration with the lack of stories by and about women, especially over 50, led her to writing them. She creates alternative structures reflecting the voices she has lived and heard. Her current focus is the destruction and reconstruction of patriarchal, canonical stories, recreating them from a woman's point of view. Driven by aural and visual senses, she explores methods of using those tools as text. Her recent play, Gerutha and Margaret, was a semi-finalist in the 2021 New Works Festival at the Garry Marshall Theatre in Los Angeles and received both a table read and online staged reading via Chicago Dramatists’. As an actress she has extensive experience on stage, film, commercials and VO. She is a founding member of Telling Humans playwright studio and Burnished Collective, a grassroots salon for women artists and arts lovers over 40. Currently pursuing an interdisciplinary MFAW at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, she is deepening her lifelong storytelling love to include playwriting, performance studies, and a digital solo voice layering writing, performance, music, photography and video. An alumna of Northwestern University, she has a BS Speech/Theatre.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA: Website: http://www.judyleasteele.com TW:@JudyLeaSteele IG: @judyleasteele_off_book NPX: https://newplayexchange.org/users/19492/judy-lea-steele MORE ABOUT ME I feel most like myself when I . . . . . .am making art. The literal process of making art itself. The research, discovery, conceptualization, drafting, workshopping, editing, rehearsal, collaboration, community, all of it. It’s invigorating. The process that makes my blood run. How do you overcome disappointment? I take a moment to wallow, then examine the source of the disappointment for truths I might not have realized, seen or wanted to see previously. It’s important for me to chew on it and sort it out verbally. For that I turn to a few close friends and colleagues who are generous, constructive, direct and on occasion patient in the nth degree. And then I go to the nearest body of water/sky/trees and walk, walk, walk, think, think, think, listen, listen, listen. The enormity of the world clears my head and rights any remaining skewed priorities in a way not many things can. And back to work! It's a lifelong journey. If you could bring one change to theatre, what would it be? Creation of accessible vehicles for self production that would eliminate or bypass some of the gate keeping hurdles so entrenched in this industry. What do you want ADs to know? Women in our demographic are among the most consistent consumers of theatre, perhaps in the highest numbers. (The current situation has affected all stats of course.) We want to see complex, fully dimensional female characters over 40! The potential is woefully unexplored and untapped. Make the choice to prioritize it. What is your favorite thing to do when not writing? Go outside and take photos, images with off kilter perspectives that inspire me and often end up in the development process for my work. Make music, listening, singing or playing instruments. Read, read, read, soak in as much art as possible from a variety of mediums and continue to be curious about the crazy animals we humans are. WHAT I'M WORKING ON I am a in the midst of graduate study at the School of the Art Institute, deepening my practice by weaving photography, video, performance studies and playwriting. Additionally I am developing a solo voice that uses the previous disciplines plus music to create personal performance works. Some are designed to be live, some to be delivered via digital platforms as video poems, lyric essays or direct address. At present, in both plays and solo work, I am exploring concepts of duality as lived and seen in my own life. KEYWORDS experimental, alternative, feminist, political, equality, historical, adaptations, fable/folktales I was born in Florida, moved to Manhattan at age 9-1/2, and after a year of misery, missing the independence I'd previously enjoyed, warm weather and sunshine, fell in love with New York. I wanted to be a film director out of high school, but instead studied history and Russian at Cornell (did make a film after my freshman year, which was shown at the Whitney, as part of a larger film). Then I went to law school at Stanford. I'd started writing fiction, including plays, in childhood, but stopped creative writing during law school and for the next 11 years. Had a baby! Changed my working life as an attorney to part time. Started writing again. Have had 10 plays, mostly short, produced in the Los Angeles area. Long time member of Fierce Backbone, a developmental theater company. Currently president of the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights, a volunteer service and support organization for playwrights. I really enjoy the rehearsal process. I learn so much from the actors. After 40 plus years of practicing law, this is now my full time career.
MORE ABOUT ME I'm interested in people's relationships. I love classical music. I think about the space on the stage. When I write, I see my characters moving in space. WHAT I'M WORKING ON I'm editing my 21st century new take on "Hedda Gabler." KEYWORDS Family, children, Jewish, equality, science fiction, farce, black comedy, historical, political. Mimi Ayers, born in Chicago, raised in St. Petersburg, Florida, gypsied across the country and now calls New Orleans “home.” She is an MFA Playwriting graduate of the University of New Orleans Creative Writing Workshop (CWW). Mimi writes stories based on family, history and fantasy. Her plays are as eclectic as her stories and poems. Two new plays written and workshopped with the CWW have had staged readings in New Orleans: "Man 2 Man" at the Valiant Theatre and "Circus Tails" at the Always Lounge and The Theatre at St. Claude. "Man 2 Man" was a semifinalist at the 2019 Austin Film Festival and Writers Conference. One of Mimi's short plays "Man Down" can be seen streaming as part of the 2020 Columbus Black Theatre Festival. Mimi’s film script “Eulalie Mandeville, F.W.C.” was published in 2021 in The ARTemis Arts Wisdom Anthology , a collection of plays and screenplays written by women over 50.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA N/A MORE ABOUT ME Telling stories on the page allows me to embody a total experience. WHAT I'M WORKING ON Editing a rewrite of a play. KEYWORDS Family, Children, Mixed, Historical, People of Color, musical, Cultural diversity, Justice Dr. Julie Rae Mollenkamp is an award-winning teacher/director/actor/playwright/producer and Professor Emerita from the University of Central Missouri. She currently serves as the Representation, Equity, and Diversity (RED) Member-At-Large on the National Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival Committee. Past leadership roles include: National Member-At-Large for the National Playwriting Program (NPP); and NPP Chair, Directing Coordinator, and Irene Ryan Preliminary Judge in Region 5. Her latest one-woman performance piece, Another Woman’s Baby, premiered at the Ryan Repertory Theatre in New York, is slated to be published by Original Works in 2022, and is included in the Rutgers’ 30 Year Feminist Artists Archives. Mollenkamp is the proud recipient of the 2020 Kennedy Center Gold Medallion in Region 5. In Conclusive Woman also premiered at the Ryan Rep, is included in the Rutgers' Archive, and is published in several anthologies. Other work includes group developed texts: GUST - a response to the Joplin, MO, tornado; STEP FORWARD - a call to action for social justice in American and ZOOOM! - a theatre for young audiences' play that celebrates human connection across diverse borders. (Premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival) Proud member of NPX. She and her husband, Daniel, own Smashing Frames, a film and theatre production company that focuses on new voices and the synergy of talented artists working in a variety of media. Her favorite characters in the world are her sons, Charles and James.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA FB: Julie Rae Mollenkamp TW: @thejul IG: @julieraemollenkamp MORE ABOUT ME JEDI work excites me. WHAT I'M WORKING ON Act II KEYWORDS Equity, Justice, Family, Children, Adaptations, Immersive, Biography, Young Audiences |
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