Nayna Agrawal is a dramedy/comedy writer who has worked on Netflix (Starbeam), Disney+ (Mira) and ABC (The Baker and The Beauty). She is a former international aid director, financial analyst, touring dancer and DC policy advocate. She was a Sesame Street Writer Program fellow (2018) and a Disney Writers Program fellow (2019). Currently, she has three plays in development, is freelancing on a Netflix animation show, and is writing the narrative for a video game. She’d love to work on shows like “Dead To Me”, “Better Things”, “Shrill” and “Fargo”.

Samantha Cooper is a New York based playwright and theatre maker, originally from Cheney, Washington. She has been affiliated with organizations such as: Bay Area Playwrights Festival (2017 Semifinalist), Blood Ensemble, Columbia@Roundabout (2018 Finalist), Book-It Repertory Theatre, Crashbox Theatre Company, HERON Ensemble, Last Frontier Theatre Conference (2015 Play Lab), Macha Theatre Works, New Light Theatre Project Radio Dramas (Invincible Ones), NorthNorthwest Short Play Literary Journal (Editor), Northwest Playwrights Alliance, O'Neill National Playwrights Festival (2017 Semifinalist), Princess Grace Awards (2017 Semifinalist), Project Y Writer's Group, Samuel French OOB Festival (2016 Final 30), Seattle Repertory Theatre, Unicorn Theatre (2017-18 New Play Series Semifinalist), and Western Washington University (WWU). Her poetry has been published with WWU’s Labyrinth Literary Journal and The Seattle Star. BA: WWU MFA: Columbia University. Read her work on NPX or find her online at: http://www.samanthajcooper.com/.

Tommy Crawford is an actor, singer, musician, and songwriter/composer. Recent acting: Feste in Twelfth Night (Two River Theater), Paul McCartney in Only Yesterday (59e59, Northern Stage), Million Dollar Quartet (Weston Playhouse), One Man Two Guvnors (Florida Studio Theater), Veil’d (WP Theater), Heresy (The Flea), Metro Cards (Youngblood/EST), SeaWife (White Heron Theater; Naked Angels/South Street Seaport). Recent composing/lyrics: SeaWife (Drama Desk Nom, Outstanding Music in a Musical, with The Lobbyists), Cry Eden (workshop production at Access Black Box), The Burial at Thebes (UCSD MFA/La Jolla Playhouse), From Cold Lake (The PIT). As arranger/music director: One Man Two Guvnors (Chautauqua), The Tempest (Saratoga Shakespeare), The Grapes of Wrath (Ubuntu / UCSD/La Jolla Playhouse), The Seagull (Case Western / Cleveland Play House). Music director, co-founder of The Lobbyists; lifetime member artist of Ensemble Studio. Love to S, M, D. BA: Yale. www.tommycrawford.com

​

Julia (she/her) is a playwright and screenwriter. Her plays include Tell Them I'm Still Young, The Absentee (Winner Woodward/Newman Drama Award, upcoming Bloomington Playwrights Project, Know Theatre), and Love and Contracts (Upcoming Writers Theatre, South Coast Rep Pacific Playwrights Festival). Her work has been seen most recently at Williamstown Theatre Festival, Know Theatre, American Theatre Group, Second Stage, South Coast Repertory, Portland Stage, Victory Gardens Theatre, the Sam French Off-Off Broadway Festival, Rattlestick Playwright's Theatre, The Tank, Tiny Rhino, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Urban Stages, and Rogue Machine Theatre. She is a semi-finalist for The 2018 Relentless Award, the winner of the Woodward-Newman 2019 Drama Award, recipient of the Elizabeth George Commission from South Coast Rep, a semi-finalist for the O'Neill Summer Conference, and a finalist for the 2017 Heidemann Award at the Human Festival. She is a member of EST's Youngblood Playwrights group.  

Shairi Engle (she/her) is a playwright based out of San Diego. She’s a founding member of the Veteran’s Playwriting Workshop at La Jolla Playhouse and a writing and performance coach for So Say We All, a literary non-profit helping people tell their true stories. Tony Kushner selected Shairi as the 2019 Arts in the Armed Forces Bridge Award recipient. Most recently, Shairi was commissioned by The Old Globe in collaboration with Diversionary Theatre to write short plays for San Diego’s Virtual 2020 Pride Festival. Having discovered her own voice through the arts, Shairi’s writing is driven by her deep personal understanding that storytelling can save lives.   

​

Tampons, Dead Dogs, and Other Disposable Things is the story of Jen, a nervous woman and mother with a deep sense of humor and deep wounds. After years of therapy that failed to help Jen move on from trauma, she sets off on a backpacking trip in the mountains to give her the space and quiet she needs to silence her demons. But Joe, Jen's travel companion with whom she shares a loaded history, keeps getting in the way, and as their path moves further and further away from safety, we learn that everything is not what it seems. Shairi’s play is a funny, searing, shocking story about the journey to self-discovery and strength in the wake of sexual violence -- presented in a small, little package. The package in this case being a tampon.

Morgan Green (she/her) is a director of theater, film, and radio plays. She is currently a Co-Artistic Director of the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia and a co-founder of New Saloon. Morgan received the 2016 New York Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Director for her work on New Saloon’s MINOR CHARACTER: Six Translations of Uncle Vanya at the Same Time, which was most recently seen at the Public Theater’s 2019 Under the Radar festival. A selection of recent work includes: The Danube by María Irene Fornés (Harvard University), The Wolves by Sarah DeLappe (Marin Theatre Company), Cute Activist by Milo Cramer (The Bushwick Starr), and The Music Man by Meredith Wilson (The Sharon Playhouse). Morgan is a New Georges Affiliated Artist, former artist in residence at Bric, Mabou Mines, and Baryshnikov Arts Center, an alumna of the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab and a proud member of SDC. MorganClaireGreen.com

Alex Grubbs is a member of acclaimed New York Folk Band “The Lobbyists” who were nominated for a 2016 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music for SeaWife produced by Naked Angels. Other credits include Spill, Kentucky (Ensemble Studio Theatre) Utility (Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre) SeaWife (Naked Angels) Mary Kate Olsen is in Love, a cautionary tail, These Seven Sicknesses (The Flea Theater) Regional: Miss Keller Has No Second Book (Gulfshore Playhouse) SeaWife (White Heron) The 39 Steps,Barefoot in the Park (Heritage Theater Festival), lifetime member of Ensemble Studio Theater, NYC.  M.F.A in Acting UVa. www.alexgrubbs.com.

Khiyon Hursey (he/him) is a writer and composer based in Los Angeles and New York. He was a staff writer for Netflix’s romantic musical drama, Soundtrack and is currently co-writing Love in America, a movie musical to be produced by Issa Rae at Universal. He is the recipient of the ASCAP Foundation’s Irving Burgie Scholarship, Bart Howard Songwriting Scholarship, and the Lucille and Jack Yellen award, a 2016 NAMT Writers Grant, a 2016 - 2017 Dramatists Guild Musical Theater Fellow, 2017 Space on Ryder Farm Residency, 2018 Johnny Mercer Songwriters Project residency, 2019 ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop with Stephen Schwartz, 2019 Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, the 2020 Johnny Mercer Writers Colony at Goodspeed Musicals and the 2020 Stephen Schwartz Award. Khiyon got his start as the music assistant on the off-Broadway and Broadway productions and the Grammy Award Winning Cast Album of Hamilton. He is a graduate of Berklee College of Music with a degree in Songwriting.

Monet Hurst-Mendoza (she/her) is an NYC-based playwright from Los Angeles, CA. Her plays have been developed with Rising Circle Theater Collective, Astoria Performing Arts Center, American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Amios, |the claque|, Magic Time @ Judson, Atlantic Acting School/NYU Tisch, The Flea Theater, WP Theater, The Public Theater, Classical Theatre of Harlem, and the ICA Boston, among others. Monet is an alum of the Emerging Writers Group at The Public Theater, R&D Group at The Civilians, WP Theater Playwrights Lab, Fresh Ground Pepper's Playground Playgroup, and the Van Lier Fellowship at New Dramatists. She has held residencies with The Other Mirror, The MITTEN Lab, and SPACE on Ryder Farm. She is currently a Story Editor on "Law and Order: SVU." Proud member of The Kilroys, The Dramatist Guild, and WGAE. BA: Marymount Manhattan College.

Jian Jung (she/her) is a New York based set designer. Jung’s design has been acclaimed as 'innovative', 'inventive', 'genius' and 'spectacular' by major press such as The New York Times, LA Times, Time Out, and many others. Her theater work has been in numerous downtown NYC theaters including Classic Stage Company, ART/NY, The Kitchen, The Bushwick Starr, The Flea, Abrons Arts Center, Theater Row, and Soho Rep, as well as outside of NYC, in Venezuela, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Korea, and Los Angeles. Her opera work has been in Long Beach Opera (CA), Lincoln Center Juilliard School, Huntington Theatre (Boston), among many venues. Jung received Edith Lutyens & Norman Bel Geddes Design Enhancement Award for Ludic Proxy by Aya Ogawa, and was nominated for 2019 Henry Hewes Design Award for Suicides Forest by Haruna Lee. Her design was exhibited in Prague Quadrennial, the world’s largest scenography exhibition. Jung received an MFA in Theater Design from NYU and an MFA in Environmental Design from Ewha Women’s University in Korea.  www.jianjung.com

Kay Kemp (they/them) is a playwright based out of New York City, currently attending Columbia University as an undergraduate majoring in Theatre. They were the 2020 recipient of the Joseph Milton Fee, Jr. Award in Playwriting for their play Linguistic Features of AAVE, and are currently the Co-President and Playwright-in-Residence of Columbia University’s Black Theatre Ensemble. Their work focuses primarily on Black families, and the difficulties befalling them, but also the beauty, passion, and love which flows through every interaction, with a legitimate drive to put Black joy centerstage. Their play, Dream a Little Dream of Me, an exploration of the fraught relationship between an ailing mother and her adult daughter, will be premiered in March 2021 by the Black Theatre Ensemble. They can be reached at kak2237@columbia.edu.

Ilya Khodosh (he/him) holds a D.F.A. from the Yale School of Drama. He recently taught playwriting at Williams College, where he created Our Time, a production celebrating Stephen Sondheim’s ninetieth birthday, and had the honor of interviewing Sondheim about his time at Williams. Ilya is an accomplished Russian translator currently working on an adaptation of Chekhov’s Three Sisters. An occasional monologist, he wrote and performed two solo storytelling shows at the United Solo Theatre Festival. He lives in New York City.

​

Frank McCourt is known to the world as the beloved author of Angela’s Ashes, a poignant and hilarious Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir of his impoverished childhood in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. But before he published his masterpiece at age 66, he spent thirty years as a devoted teacher in New York City public high schools. A whimsical iconoclast and a virtuosic storyteller, McCourt found humor in autobiographical tales of deprivation and resilience. He taught generations of burnt-out, overwhelmed students to overcome their fear and doubt, and to tell their own stories. McCOURT, adapted from his memoirs ‘Tis and Teacher Man, picks up the narrative where Angela’s Ashes left off. We meet him as a young immigrant who arrives in New York with bad eyes and teeth, penniless and desperate to put his traumatic past behind him. He is a hotel janitor and longshoreman, hauling crates on the docks, and cleaning up after wealthy guests whose privilege feels otherworldly to him.  After being drafted in the Korean War, without so much as a high school diploma, he used the GI Bill to enroll in NYU, where he felt like an impostor – until he came to understand that his miserable past held the key to his unique and wonderful contribution to the world, and to his happiness.

Sandra Tsing Loh (she/her) is a writer, performer, and radio commentator. Her work has been heard on NPR’s Morning Edition and This American Life. She is a contributing editor to the Atlantic and host of the syndicated daily radio “minute,” The Loh Down on Science. She lives in Pasadena, California.

​

The MadWoman and the Roomba, the follow up to her New York Times bestselling book The Madwoman and the Volvo, is a chronicle of the indignities, hilarities, and unexpected joys of life in the so-called golden years. Having been promised crystal clear seas and sandy beaches on the shores of retirement by glossy advertisements and in-flight magazines, best-selling author Sandra Tsing Loh finds the reality of being fifty-five-years-old looks more like a dilapidated craftsman house with a dead lawn and a mouse problem. With deadpan wit and fearless honesty, Loh navigates the realities of what it means to be a middle-aged, “downwardly-mobile,” woman in America, living what feels like a “disorganized twenty-five-year-old’s life in a malfunctioning eighty-five-year-old’s body.” Among the chaos of life with teenage daughters, sporadic employment, an underemployed bohemian partner, and near-constant low-level anxiety, Loh revels in the restorative joy of laughter. And the blessed redemption of a Costco membership: personal massage chair! Roombas on sale! Delicious $4 wines! Massive tins of mixed nuts! While balancing the various demands of midlife work, motherhood, friendship, and romance (while also embracing her inner goddess) Loh finds herself repeatedly marveling at the often ludicrous realities of modern American life and its #SecondWorldProblems. The Madwoman and the Roomba is a welcome respite from the tumultuous, almost apocalyptic-feeling of contemporary life; Loh manages to capture the side-splitting humor and unexpected joys of a life that might be falling-short of youthful, starry-eyed expectations but is still rich in love, gratitude, and serendipity.

Molly Beach Murphy (she/her) is a playwright from Galveston, Texas. Plays include: The Air Got Thick (Alley at Ucross); IKE (2019 Drama League Beatrice Terry Resident); Molly Murphy & Neil deGrasse Tyson On Our Last Day On Earth; Big Bend in the Red Dirt Desert. With core collaborators Annie Tippe and Jeanna Phillips, Molly co-creates experimental musicals such as Cowboy Bob as well as two new pieces in early development. Molly’s work has been developed with New York Theater Workshop, New York Stage & Film, Williamstown Theater Festival, Ars Nova, the Alley Theatre, Page 73 Productions, The Civilians’ R&D Group, The Orchard Project, the Ucross Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers’ Fund, Yale Institute for Music Theater, Village Theater Festival of New Musicals, NYMF, Pipeline Theater Company. Molly was a Semi-finalist for the Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship and is a New Georges Affiliated Artist. Published works appear in Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Hairpin, Santa Ana River Review & American Theatre Magazine.

​

In the days after a storm devastates the Texas Gulf Coast in 2008, Ike follows a myriad of storm survivors as they try to make sense of a town reduced to rubble, a collapsing US economy and the surreal truths of who we prove to be in the midst of complete upheaval.

Carey Perloff is a director, playwright, producer and educator who recently completed a 25-year tenure as the Artistic Director of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, where she staged dozens of classical and contemporary plays, nurtured a three-decade collaboration with Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard, taught and directed in A.C.T.’s MFA program and created a second stage, The Strand. As a playwright, Perloff has a long history with New York Stage and Film, where she has developed Higher (Winner of the 2011 Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation Theater Visions Award), Luminescence Dating (a Sloane Foundation Commission, Winner of the Bay Area Theater Critics Best Original Script), Kinship (which premiered in Paris starring Isabelle Adjani and then at Williamstown starring Cynthia Nixon) and The Fit (SF Playhouse 2019). Recent work includes Bastiano or the Art of Rivalry, written at a Writers’ Residency at the Bogliasco Foundation, and Edgardo, commissioned by Williamstown Theater Festival. Perloff is the author of Beautiful Chaos: A Life in the Theater (City Lights Press 2015) and the upcoming In the Room: Pinter and Stoppard in Rehearsal (Bloomsbury Methuen 2022). Her next directing project is Ibsen’s Ghosts at Seattle Repertory Theater, starring Uma Thurman.

​

In the gorgeous and nasty world of Renaissance Rome, three powerhouse painters compete to design a new altarpiece, sponsored by an increasingly defensive and coercive Vatican. How is it possible to make art that matters in an atmosphere of intense rivalry and conflicting beliefs? Can you dare to break the rules and still manage to pay your rent? Does what you believe in ultimately shape what you paint? And most importantly of all, what happens when your Muse rebels and takes on a brilliant creative life of her own? Art, money, faith and power collide in BASTIANO OR THE ART OF RIVALRY, a wildly theatrical play about the complicated relationship between making “good art” and leading a good life.

Phanésia Pharel (she/her) is a Haitian-American playwright who addresses the divine metaphysical dilemma of  Black and Latinx girlhood. Her plays span revolutions, islands, and Afro-Futurism. Her play, Penelope, was selected as one of four in the nation to be workshopped at the International Thespian Festival and was subsequently published in Dramatics magazine and by Samuel French. Her play, Shovel Me Away, was produced at Micro Theater Miami and received the Best Of The Best 2016 award. Her monologue, My Kid, My Life, appears in the 2015 City Theatre anthology. She attends Barnard College of Columbia University where she recently won the Brandt Playwriting award and the Helen Prince Memorial Prize for excellence in dramatic composition. She is currently a National Playwright in Residence for the Echo Theater Company in Los Angeles.

​

On the Caribbean island of Quisqueya (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), where war has erupted, vulnerable bodies are under the reign of soldiers and fire. A Waitress escapes onto a resort in the midst of writing her novel; telling the story of a beautiful young woman named Lucky. As she writes the novel comes to life, shifting between the resort and Lucky’s world. As the waitress weaves Lucky’s path to womanhood, Lucky is forced to sacrifice her home and body. What does triumph look like in a world numb to Black girls suffering?” The women of Lucky refuse to burn. Special thanks to Maddy Cohen, Magaly Colimon Christopher, Yvette Ganier, Onyekachi Iwu, Lexis Rangell-Onwuegbuzia, Sandra A Daley-Sharif, and PrinceTy for their support and contributions to Lucky’s development.

Eliana Pipes is a playwright, actor, and filmmaker. She’s the 2019 recipient of the Academy Gold Fellowship for Women and the Leah Ryan Fund Prize for Emerging Women Writers, and a member of the 20/21 Dramatist Guild Foundation Fellowship cohort. Her work has been developed or presented at the Playwright’s Realm Scratchpad Series, NNPN/Kennedy Center MFA Playwright’s Workshop, Ars Nova ANT Fest, San Diego Rep New Latinx Plays Festival, Two River Theater Crossing Borders Festival, Kitchen Dog Theater New Works Festival, The Fire This Time Festival, and the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival. She’s the recipient of the National Latinx Playwriting Award, the KCACTF Ken Ludwig Scholarship, the WAVE Grant through Wavelength Productions, and a two-time Finalist for the O’Neill National Playwright’s Conference. She received a BA in English from Columbia University, and has just completed the coursework on an MFA in Playwriting from Boston University.

Brian Quijada (he/him) is an actor, playwright, and composer who’s original work has been developed and produced all across the country. His hip hop solo show Where Did We Sit on the Bus? has been produced at Victory Gardens, Teatro Vista (Jeff Award), Ensemble Studio Theatre (Drama Desk Nomination), Boise Contemporary, 1st Stage, and City Theatre Pittsburgh. His plays have been developed at The Millennium Stage at The Kennedy Center, Pittsburgh CLO’s Spark Festival, Victory Gardens’ Ignition Festival, New Stage and Film’s Powerhouse Theater, and The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Musical Theatre Conference. Commissioning institutions include Seattle Repertory Theater, A.R.T., and The Kennedy Center. He is a proud member of The Ensemble Studio Theatre.

​

Mexodus is a concept album inspired by the estimated 4,000-10,000 enslaved people in the Southern part of the United States who pursued a journey into Mexico instead of looking north. This under told chapter of the Underground Railroad is an exploration of Black and brown bodies standing together against oppression. Initially conceived in 2018, Brain and Nygel put pen to paper in March 2020 and intend to release one track a month for one year as of June 2020. Listen to Mexodus tracks here.

Christina Quintana (CQ; she/her/any) is a writer with Cuban and Louisiana roots. Her plays and musicals, including Azul (Southern Rep), Citizen Scientist (Second Prize, Barrington Stage Company's Burman New Play Award), Scissoring (INTAR, and available via Dramatists Play Service), and Evensong (Astoria Performing Arts Center), among others, have been produced across and the country, and she is the recipient of fellowships and residencies from WP Theater, MacDowell, Queer/Art, Playwrights Realm, and Lambda Literary, among others. She served as staff writer on the ABC series The Baker and the Beauty and is at work on a new musical commissioned by Black Cap Productions based on Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America by Roberto G. Gonzales. For more, visit www.cquintana.com.

​

M is a devoted Latinx sanitation worker, grappling with the decision to transition and facing the end of their relationship with their live-in girlfriend. All the while, the “epitome of trans* masculinity” provides comfort and chaos in dream and song. Mr. San Man is an exploration of gender and love, at home and in the workplace. What roles do we play in the lives of our friends, colleagues, and loved ones, and how and when do they surprise us—for better and worse?

Andrew Rincón is a Queer Colombian-American playwright based in NYC. His plays have been developed with Rising Circle Theatre Collective, INTAR, Amios, the Austin Latino New Play Festival, The Amoralists Theatre Company, Pork Filled Productions (Seattle), Out Front Productions (Atlanta) and The 24 Hour Plays. He was one of six playwrights in Wright Club, The Amoralist's Theatre Company's yearlong playwright development program ('15-'16) He was a member of INKtank Lab for Playwrights of Color (2017) and the 2017 Fornés Playwriting Workshop (Chicago). He is winner of the 2018 Chesley/Bumbalo Grant for writers of Gay and Lesbian Theatre. He is a company member of Unit 52 at INTAR, a Dramatist Guild Foundation Fellow (19-20) and a MacDowell Fellow (Winter 2020).

Plays include, The Lonely, That Rhythm in the Blood and I Wanna Fuck like Romeo and Juliet. In development; a play that fuses telenovela and mythological storytelling The Myth of my Pain

Nygel D Robinson (he/him) is a singer, actor, writer, and multi-instrumentalist based in New York City. Nygel has been consistently working in New York and regionally as an actor/singer/musician. Past credits include Larry in the workshop and Lincoln center concert version of Beau, Jesus in Godspell (St. Michael’s Playhouse), Actor/Musician in The All Night Strut (Milwaukee Rep), and Actor/Musician in Blue Suede Shoes and That’s Amore (Florida Studio Theatre). Nygel has a new kids song “I Wanna Dance” that will be released later this year with Jam With Jamie. Nygel counts it a true blessing to be involved with New York Stage and Film and looks forward to the amazing work that will come from this collaboration!

​

Mexodus is a concept album inspired by the estimated 4,000-10,000 enslaved people in the Southern part of the United States who pursued a journey into Mexico instead of looking north. This under told chapter of the Underground Railroad is an exploration of Black and brown bodies standing together against oppression. Initially conceived in 2018, Brain and Nygel put pen to paper in March 2020 and intend to release one track a month for one year as of June 2020. Listen to Mexodus tracks here.

Keenan Scott II (he/him) is an actor, playwright, director, and producer of original work.  His work has been produced at Howard University, Gala Hispanic Theatre, National Black Theater, and the NYC Fringe Festival.  Keenan’s critically acclaimed piece Thoughts of a Colored Man has been workshopped and developed at The Arena Stage and the historic New York Theatre Workshop for private readings. The play had its World Premiere at Syracuse Stage for their 2019-2020 season and transferred to Baltimore Center Stage to finish its regional run. He has also been commissioned for several pieces including being a part of the PLAY AT HOME series curated by Baltimore Center Stage, Long Wharf Theatre, The Public Theater, The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company.

​

During The Great Migration of the 1920s, a father’s decision to move up north to better his family’s livelihood doesn’t go as planned. This decision forever changes the course of his lineage as they grow through several decades in American History; from post Great Depression of the 1940s to the Black Power Movement of the 1970s to the sampled sounds of the 1990s Hip Hop until now. Through family, love and sacrifice you see the evolution of a family through the society and the systemic oppression they had to endure. But in the face of it all, they did one thing…survive.

Kristin Slaney is a Brooklyn-based playwright and screenwriter, originally from Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia. Selected full-length works include Hockey Messiah (Manhattan Theatre Club’s 2019 Ted Snowdon Reading Series, 2019 Kilroys List Honorable Mention, Winner of the 2018 Columbia@Roundabout Reading Series), Un-Utero (Finalist for the Columbia@Roundbabout Reading Series, Semifinalist for the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference), King of Berlin (Doppler Effect Productions, the 2017 Queer Acts Festival), After Eepersip Disappeared (Ship’s Company Theatre), and COULD THIS MEETING HAVE BEEN AN EMAIL (Spicy Witch Productions). Her play Hockey Messiah will be produced in Canada at Neptune Theatre in September 2020. Kristin is an alum of EST’s Youngblood playwriting group and Pipeline Theatre’s PlayLab. MFA: Columbia University. 

​

In the mid-19th century, the island of Nantucket revolved around the whaling industry. The island's men spend years off at sea, and their absence fostered an environment unlike anywhere else in America, with women as leaders in business, religion, and astronomy. This is the backdrop for the upbringing of Maria, an amateur astronomer who has lived her whole life on the island-- but when she discovers a comet, she will be forced to confront the world off the island, and questions of women's education and access that she's never before had to consider. Commissioned by Ensemble Studio Theatre through the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, MISS MITCHELL is a musical inspired by the life of Maria Mitchell, the first astronomy professor at Vassar. 

Violet Asmara Tafari (she/they) is a West Indian, Production Manager and Stage Manager, using the lens of African teachings and a griot to inform her management style. Allowing storytelling and creativity to lead the way Violet assist and supports artists of various calibers and mediums as they unfold their work on stage. Blending the gap between technician and artist Violet utilizes her ritual and healing background to create fluid ways to support pushing the boundaries of art and the community that embraces it. Growing up backstage and on stage, Violet learned the inner workings of what it takes to create memories. Exploring art as a Musician, Dancer, and Visual Artist she discovered the inner-freedom and healing it brings to a community. Witnessing the unity that art creates she found her way backstage managing union and non-union crews, collaborates, and experimentalist. Violet's work with companies such as AFRIKIN, Syncing Ink, NYSAF, and many others allowed her to navigate the other worlds of theater, music festivals, and a griot's way of storytelling. Using love as her medium it has driven Violet to create her company Freequency Connects, a landing space to provide production support and guidance as artists navigate new pathways, goals, and manifestations of their presented works.  Violet’s production work has explored the various multi-layer methods of storytelling, from Ancestral work to Global panel talks and Curated Cyphers. Violet’s goal and passion lays in guiding an artist through their ritual to their moment on stage, sharing and exploring with the collective. 

Susan Tenney (she/her) is an Award-winning Director and Choreographer, recently directing Catherine Curtin in Connect for Planet Connections Zoom Fest, which garnered an encore performance. Her work has been seen Off B’way and in venues including La Mama, Cincinnati Playhouse, McCarter Theatre, Tanglewood, Edinburgh Fringe, Princeton University, and Lincoln Center’s Bruno Walter Auditorium. Other recent direction, includes Accepting Applause by Catherine Filloux, and Magaly Colimon-Christopher’s Waterfall of the Gods. Four seasons with the Williamstown Theatre Festival as Resident Choreographer, she had the honor of working with Tennessee Williams on a celebration of his oeuvre. Working on multiple productions, and staging 30 Cabarets, she worked with actors that included Blythe Danner, Karen Allen, Myra Lucretia Taylor, Daniel Davis, and James Naughton. Recipient of five Planet Connections Theatre Festivity Awards in Direction (3) and Choreography (2). League of Professional Theatre Women, Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. BFA, SUNY Purchase.

Lucie Tiberghien (she/her) is a French and American director based in Brooklyn. She founded Molière in the Park Inc in the fall of 2018, the first non-profit in Brooklyn solely dedicated to bringing free theater, on a yearly basis, to Prospect Park. Most recently she directed an online production of Tartuffe For MIP which garnered 35,000 views and a New York Times Critic’s Pick headlined “When Tartuffe meets Trump, It’s Revolutionary,” She has been directing and developing new work in New York and regionally for the past 20 years. 

Caroline Michele Uy (they/them) is a stage manager originally from Los Angeles, CA. They received their BFA in Design & Production and a BA in Cognitive Science with a minor in German Studies from the University of Michigan. Their special interests include new/developing work and opera. They have worked at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s Playwrights and Cabaret Summer Conferences, New York Stage & Film, and Brown University/Trinity Repertory. Opera credits include Die Fledermaus, La bohéme, Alcina, and Candide.

Lily Wolff (dramaturg; she/her) is a British-American theatre director and new play dramaturg currently based in Houston, Texas. Most recently she dramaturged an Alley Theatre commission by Isaac Gomez, directed a workshop of Austin playwright Raul Garza’s new play Running Bear, and traveled to London to direct in a festival of Italian new plays at Theatre503.  In the pre-COVID age, Lily was the Literary Manager at the Alley Theatre, co-producing the Alley All New Festival and running the Alley All New initiative alongside Director of New Work Liz Frankel. She has developed work by Theresa Rebeck, C. Denby Swanson, Katie Bender, Liz Duffy-Adams, Vichet Chum, Arthur M. Jolly, Eleanor Burgess, Hilary Bettis, Claire Kiechel, Charles Fuller, Bess Wohl, Christina Anderson, Johnna Adams, and Gabriel Jason Dean, among others. Directing credits include: From White Plains (Thunderclap Productions), The Madres (NNPN Rolling World Premiere, Shrewd Productions), Cry It Out(Theatre En Bloc), A Bright Room Called Day (Southwestern University), The Effect (Capital T Theatre), Lungs (Austin Critics’ Table “Best Direction” award, Hyde Park Theatre), Fahrenheit 451 (Different Stages), As You Like It (Shrewd Productions), Gidion's Knot (Capital T Theatre) and Stop Kiss (UT Austin). Lily is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.