ALUMNAE Zakiyyah
Alexander (2004-2006) Click here for a list of the current 2010-2012 Lab Playwrights.
ZAKIYYAH ALEXANDER BEKAH BRUNSTETTER Bekah Brunstetter's plays include Be a Good Little Widow (Commissioned by Ars Nova, 2009), OOHRAH! (Ars Nova outloud reading series, developed in London at the Finborough Theater, Atlantic Theater Sept 2009), To Nineveh (NY Innovative Theater Award for Best new full length play, 2006) Sick (winner, Sam French short play festival 2006), Green (finalist, Alliance Theater’s Kendeda Competition; national finalist, Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival) Space (semi-finalist, Princess Grace Award 2007), I Used to Write On Walls (published and licensed by Samuel French,) Fat Kids On Fire (published and licensed by Playscripts, Inc), You May Go Now: A Marriage Play (Winner, 2008 NYIT award for best new Full Length Play [Babel Theater Project], Cenentary Stage 2009), Le Fou (The Atlantic Acting school), Happy Birthday/ I’m Dead (Samuel French Short Play festival Finalist, 2007), Miss Lilly Gets Boned (nominee, 2008 L. Arnold Weissberger Award), Celebrity, and Torch Number 2 (SOHO Think Tank), and Fucking Art (winner, Sam French Short play Festival 2008). Her plays have been read and produced by the Babel Theatre Project, New Georges, The Rattlestick Playwright’s Theater, the Ohio Theater (Think tank), NYU, Centenary Stage, NC New Voices, The New School for Drama, Working Man’s Clothes, Flux Theatre Ensemble, Phare Play Productions, Old Vic/ New Voices, Boston Theatre Works, Manhattan Theatre Source, SPF, and The Alliance Theater. Her plays are published by Sam French, Playscripts, Original Works, and Smith and Krauss. She is a member of the Ars Nova play group, the Playwright’s Center, At Play Productions, and the Dramatist’s Guild. She is proud to be the 2009 playwright in residence at Ars Nova, and a member of the Women's Project Writer's Lab. She received her BA (Theater/Fiction Writing) from UNC Chapel Hill, and an MFA in Dramatic Writing from the New School for Drama. Bekah is currently working on a commission for the Roundabout Underground and Naked Angels. www.bekahbrunstetter.com
ANDREA CIANNAVEI Andrea Ciannavei is a writer, actor and producer in New York City. Andrea just completed the two-year Lila Acheson Playwriting Fellowship under the direction of Marsha Norman and Christopher Durang at The Juilliard School. Plays include: Deep Trees, The Hard Sell, 7 Captiva Road and Pretty Chin Up which received a development production at LAByrinth Theater Company (Artistic Drectors: Philip Seymour Hoffman and John Ortiz) in Spring 2007 at The Public Theater. TV: The Borgias (Season 1, Episode 7. Tom Fontana, Executive Producer, Atlantique Creations SASU). Andrea is the recipient of Juillard’s Lila Acheson Playwriting Fellowship 2008-2010. Awarded the Lecomte du Nouy Prize 2008 - 2010. Grand Jury Prize - Best Supporting Actress from - New York Independent International Film and Video Festival’s for her work in Pigeonholed. Member of Women’s Project Playwrights’ LAB 2006 – 2008. Selected to participate in the Royal Court’s 2006 Playwright Residency in New York. Graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts’ Dramatic Writing Program. Member of LAByrinth Theater Company. Member of the Dramatists’ Guild. For more info: www.prettychinupproductions.com
ALEXIS CLEMENTS
Christine Evans plays have received awards and been produced in her native Australia at venues including Belvoir St. Theatre (Sydney) and the Adelaide International Festival of the Arts. In the U.S., her work has been seen in New York, San Francisco, Providence, New Jersey, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Atlanta, Santa Rosa and Boston. Selected productions include Trojan Barbie at the A.R.T (American Repertory Theatre, scheduled 2009); All Souls Day (Perishable Theatre; Boston Theater Marathon); Weightless (Perishable Theatre); Mothergun (Perishable Theatre; Emergency Theatre Project, NYC) Slow Falling Bird (Crowded Fire) and My Vicious Angel (Belvoir St. Theatre, Sydney.) Awards and honors include a Fulbright Award, the 2007 Jane Chambers Playwriting Award, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, the Rella Lossy Playwriting Award, the Monash National Playwriting Award (Australia), the Weston Award for Dramatic Writing, Perishable Theatres Womens Playwriting Festival (WPF) award (2000 and 2001), and the 2009 recipient of the Rhode Island State Council for the Arts Fellowship in Playwriting. Christine is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America and was a 2007 Resident Artist at Perishable Theatre. She holds an MFA (Playwriting) and Ph.D. (Theatre & Performance Studies) from Brown University. She is the Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Playwriting at Harvard.
KELI GARRETT
CHRISTINA GORMAN Christina Gorman is currently a 2010 Fellow of the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Harold Clurman 2010-11 Playwright-in-Residence at Stella Adler Studios. Her produced plays include: Just Knots (festival winner of the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Play Festival, NYC; Cockeyed Optimists Theatre Company, NYC) and is published in the Samuel French publication Off-Off Broadway Festival Plays, 34th Series; Split Wide Open (Summer Play Festival, NYC) and was runner-up for Princess Grace Award; DNA (Prospect Theatre Company, NYC; Hangar Theatre, Ithaca, NY; Samuel French Short Play Festival, NYC; New York International Fringe Festival, where it received the award for Overall Excellence in Playwriting); The God Particle (Estrogenius Festival 2010, NYC); and Keep the Change, co-written with Joy Tomasko (Women's Project for the World Financial Center's Word of Mouth Festival, NYC). Her play American Myth was developed at The Public Theater while she was a member of The Public’s inaugural Emerging Writers Group and where it was presented as part of The Public Theater’s Spotlight Series. It was also presented as part of the hotINK International Festival (NYC). Her plays have been developed at the Lark Play Development Center, Women’s Project, and Luna Stage. Christina is a member of the SPF Script Advisory Committee, an alumna of the Women’s Project Playwrights Lab and former fellow of the Ensemble Studio Theatre’s New Voices Program.
KATORI HALL Katori Hall is a playwright-performer hailing from Memphis, Tennessee. Her plays include Hoodoo Love, which was produced Off-Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theatre, and The Mountaintop, which was recently produced to great acclaim at London’s Theatre 503 and transferred to the Trafalgar Studios in London’s West End. It was nominated for Best New Play at the 2010 Olivier Awards. Other plays include Remembrance, Hurt Village, Saturday Night/Sunday Morning, WHADDABLOODCLOT!?!? and The Hope Well. Her awards include the 2009-10 Lark Play Development Playwrights of New York (PONY) Fellowship, Kate Neal Kinley Fellowship, two Lecompte du Nouy Prizes from Lincoln Center, Fellowship of Southern Writers Bryan Family Award in Drama, NYFA Fellowship, Van Lier Fellowship from the Public Theatre and the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award. Hall was shortlisted for the London Evening Standard Most Promising Playwright Award and received the Otis Guernsey New Voices Playwriting Award from the William Inge Theatre Festival. She is the first African-American to be honored with this award. Hall has been published as a book reviewer, journalist, and essayist in publications such as The Boston Globe, Essence and Newsweek. She has been a Kennedy Center Playwriting Fellow at the O’Neill. Hall is an alumna of the Women’s Project Playwrights Lab and the Primary Stages Dorothy Strelsin New American Writer’s Group. She is a current member of the Lark Playwrights’ Workshop, the Dramatist’s Guild and the Old Vic New Voices program. As an actor, Hall’s credits include Law and Order and Law & Order: SVU, The President’s Puppets (The Public), Growing Up a Slave (American Place Theatre), Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (American Place Theatre), the world premiere of Amerika (Theatre de la Jeune Lune/American Repertory Theatre), Spring Awakening (Moscow Art Theatre School), and Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death (Classical Theatre of Harlem). She graduated from Columbia University in 2003 with a major in African-American Studies and Creative Writing. She was awarded top departmental honors from the university’s Institute for Research in African-American Studies (IRAAS). In 2005, she graduated from the American Repertory Theatre Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University with a Master of Fine Arts in Acting. She is a recent graduate of the Juilliard School’s Lila Acheson Wallace playwriting program. Hall currently resides in New York City.
QUIARA ALEGRÍA HUDES
ANDREA LEPCIO Andrea Lepcio’s plays have been produced and developed at At Hand Theatre, Chashama, HERE, Lark Play Development Center, Manhattan Theatre Source, New Georges, NewShoe, Shalimar Productions, Three Chicks, Vital Theatre, and Women's Project in NY, and at Bloody Unicorn, Hangar Theatre, Provincetown Theatre Company, Synchronicity Performance Group and Trustus Theatre, regionally. Looking for the Pony was a NEA Outstanding New American Play finalist in 2008 and currently is a Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Award finalist. She is a member of America-in-Play, BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Librettist Workshop, NewShoe, New Perspective’s Women’s Work Lab, and is a New Georges Affiliated Artist. She is an alumna of the Lark’s Playwrights’ Workshop and the Women’s Project Playwrights’ Lab. A two-time finalist for the Heideman Award, her short plays and monologues have been published in Plays and Playwrights 2003, Estrogenius, lichen and by Smith & Kraus. Upcoming in 2010-2011: The Ballad of Rom and Julz work in progress concert reading at Bard Summerscape July 25th; Looking for the Pony (Venus Theatre, Laurel, Maryland October 2010 and Detroit Repertory Theatre, Michigan, June 2011.) Andrea is the Dramatists Guild Fellows Program Director. She is a member of the Dramatist Guild, League of Professional Theater Woman and New York Theatre Experience Advisory Committee. M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing, Carnegie Mellon University. M.B.A. UC, Berkeley. B.A. Human Ecology, College of the Atlantic. More information is available at her website: www.andrealepcio.com
CHERI MAGID KARA MANNING Kara Manning’s plays, including Sleeping Rough, Mind the Gap, Killing Swans and afterdark, have been performed or developed via the Royal Court Theatre, Hampstead Theatre, the O'Neill Playwrights Conference, Playwrights Horizons, MCC Theater, HighTide Festival Productions (UK), Rattlestick, Women’s Project, NYTW, LAByrinth Theater, Magic Theater, New Dramatists, the Lark Play Development Center, Studio Dante, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (The 24 Hour Plays), Here (Raw Impressions), The Directors Company, Ensemble Studio Theater and the Bloomington Playwrights Project. She is the 2007 recipient of the Princess Grace Award in playwriting. Kara is also a member of the 2008-2010 Women’s Project Playwrights Lab and MCC Theater’s Playwrights Coalition. She was a playwright-in-residence with the Royal Court Theatre’s International Residency, Page 73 Productions’ 2008 Yale retreat, LAByrinth Theatre’s 2009 Summer Ensemble Intensive and Women's Project's 2009 Envision Lab retreat via Voice & Vision. Recipient of the 2000-2001 Jerome Foundation, Affiliated Writers Program grant in association with American Theatre magazine, finalist for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival (2008), P73 fellowship (2008), the Heideman Award (2009, 2007), PlayPenn Conference (2006), Barrie Stavis Award (2005), semifinalist for the Cherry Lane Mentor Project (2007), shortlisted for NYU’s Hot Ink festival (2008) and nominee for the 2007-08 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. She is the literary manager of the Irish Repertory Theatre in New York. Member of the Dramatists Guild. She served as an assistant director at Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre (Fringe Festival), research assistant to Anne Bogart and the SITI Company. Kara is also a freelance music/arts journalist and a former MTV News reporter and staff writer for Rolling Stone magazine. She wrote liner notes for the Grammy-nominated Rhino box set "Respect: A Century of Women in Music.” She is a web editor/on-air interviewer for WFUV/The Alternate Side and wrangles musicians for John Wesley Harding’s Cabinet of Wonders. Graduate of Columbia University's M.F.A. program in playwriting.
MEGAN MOSTYN-BROWN
CYBELE PASCAL
MOLLY RICE Molly Rice’s plays have been developed/ produced in NYC and in theaters across the country. Heinemann Press, Clarkson Potter, the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor Press, Salvage Vanguard Press, Perishable Press, Austin Script Works Press, Head’s Tart, and DEVICE.com have published her plays, and her articles have appeared in the Kenyon Review, American Theater Magazine and the Austin Chronicle. Residencies include the Visible Bartlett Island Retreat, Yale/ P73 Residency, Missoula Colony, Voice and Vision, and Hangar Theater; awards include the Weston Award for Graduate Playwriting (Brown University), the Women’s International Playwriting Festival (Perishable Theater), and nominations for the Kesselring Fellowship, the PONY Award, Cherry Lane Mentor Project, and New York Innovative Theater Award (Outstanding Original Short Play). Current projects include THE SISTERS LEAR, commissioned by Visible Theater; the book and music (with Ray Rizzo) for CANARY, an original musical developed by Rattlestick Theater and Playwrights Horizons, the book for FUTURITY, a musical conceived by Brooklyn band The Lisps, and continuing development of SAINTS TOUR, a neighborhood tour that takes place in cities across the country, featuring local musicians and community service organizations. It was produced in Louisville, KY in April 2009, and in the West Village in April 2010 with the illustrious Taylor Mac as tour guide. Molly was a Lucille Lortel fellow at Brown University (2004-2007), where she earned her MFA in Playwriting. She has taught graduate and undergraduate students at Brown, the University of Rhode Island, Kenyon College (as Visiting Assistant Professor), and Rowan University; she currently teaches Advanced Playwriting at Marymount Manhattan College and Site-Specific Theater in an old mansion at Brown. This Spring she began a commission to write a play for the Tisch Graduate Acting Program, to be directed by Tea Alagic.
LYNN ROSEN
SONYA SOBIESKI Sonya Sobieski received her MFA in playwriting from Brooklyn College. She is an Affiliated Artist with the Obie Award-winning New Georges (New York, NY), who commissioned her full-length comic drama, Commedia dell Smartass, an alternative take on the archetypes of high school. The New Georges production was a Village Voice Choice, a New York Magazine Off-Off Broadway Pick, and subsequently produced by Serious Play! Theatre Ensemble (Northampton, MA) with a cast of homeschooled teens. Sonya is currently developing The Unfortunate Squirrel, a feel-good musical about the emptiness of modern life with music by Nicole Hale, Ronnie Reshef, Tom Swafford, Frederick Alden Terry, and Jana Zielonka. 2011 readings produced by Flying Carpet Theatre Company and Emerging Artists Theatre, 2010 reading produced by Woodshed Collective, and multiple excerpts performed at Little Theatre @ Dixon Place (curator Jeffrey Jones), 2008-2010. Other NYC: Vital Theatre, Clubbed Thumb, Cherry Lane Alternative, Prospect Theater and Raw Impressions Music Theater. She has been a finalist for the Actors Theatre of Louisville Heideman Award four times. Other honors include Best in Fringe Award from the New York International Fringe Festival, Weissberger Award finalist, Princess Grace Award semifinalist, Slamdance Finalist and Special Jury Prize for Best Short Screenplay at the Avignon/New York Film Festival. Theater writer for The Brooklyn Rail. Adjunct Lecturer in playwriting at the New York University School of Continuing and Professional Studies (Playwriting Tutorial: Working with a Dramaturg).
PEGGY STAFFORD
SAVIANA STANESCU Saviana Stanescu is a Romanian-born multi-award-winning playwright. Her work has been widely presented internationally and in the US. Recent New York productions include: Aliens with Extraordinary Skills off-Broadway at Women’s Project (published by Samuel French), Waxing West (2007 New York Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Full-length Script), YokastaS Redux at La MaMa Theatre, Suspendida and Vicious Dogs on Premises (with Witness Relocation) at the 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 produced by Women’s Project at the World Financial Center. Aliens with Extraordinary Skills (Inmigrantes con Habilidades Extraordinarias) has been successfully produced in Mexico City at Teatro La Capilla, May-July 2010. Bucharest Underground won the 2007 Marulic Prize for Best European Radio-Drama. In Stockholm, Sweden, White Embers produced by Dramalabbet made it in the TOP 3 of Best Plays in 2008 and in NYC is published by Samuel French as one of their 2010 OOB festival winners. Saviana has published books of poetry and drama including “The New York Plays”, “Aliens With Extraordinary Skills”, “Waxing West”, "Google me!", "Black Milk", and "The Inflatable Apocalypse” (Best Play of the Year UNITER Award in 2000). She co-edited the anthology of plays “Global Foreigners” (with NYU professor Carol Martin) and “roMANIA after 2000” (with CUNY professor Daniel Gerould). Her plays have received readings and workshops at The Lark, Long Wharf Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, New York Stage & Film, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Playwrights' Foundation, Traveling Jewish Theatre, Immigrants Theatre Project, LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, Origin Theatre Company, PS122, HERE, etc. Saviana is a new member of EST (Ensemble Studio Theatre) and a Usual Suspect with NYTW. She was a 2005-2007 TCG fellow with the Lark Play Development Center, where her plays Waxing West and Lenin’s Shoe had barebones productions. She also was a 2007-2008 NYSCA playwright-in-residence with Women’s Project and writer-in-residence for Richard Schechner’s East Coast Artists. Saviana holds an MA in Performance Studies (Fulbright fellow) and an MFA in Dramatic Writing (John Golden Award for excellence in playwriting) from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts where she has been teaching in the Drama Department for the last 7 years. Currently Saviana is the Director of Eastern European Exchange for The Lark Play Development Center and the Curator of playgroundzero – the works-in-progress series of undergroundzero festival of experimental theatre at PS122.
ANDREA THOME
JOY TOMASKO Joy Tomasko, current member of the Women’s Project Playwrights Lab, recently earned an M.F.A. in playwriting from California Institute of the Arts. While at CalArts, she developed several plays including Arden; My End; The Tragedy of Kelly Green; Underbelly, Underheart; and Unfold Me. She also wrote the short narrative screenplay The Dinner Hour, which was produced as part of CalArts' Flixus and co -created the installation Up Against the Wall for the Interactive Media Art show. For playwright Thersya Lukito, she directed The Moment Before at HERE's American Living Room Series. Prior to CalArts, Joy worked at The Public Theater/ NYSF for six years in the Producer's office. Among her obsessions is amassing frequent flyer miles to help fuel her wanderlust. Recent voyages oversees include the Czech Republic, Serbia, Rwanda and Uganda. She is currently working on a new piece titled The Closest Farthest Away with composer Sage Lewis, videographer Aleigh Lewis and Director Chi-wang Yang that once again is sending her flying.
Kathryn Walat’s Victoria Martin: Math Team Queen premiered Off-Broadway at the Women’s Project in 2007, and has appeared in Dramatics magazine and New Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2007. Other plays include Bleeding Kansas (Hangar Theatre), awarded a Francesca Primus Citation; Know Dog (Salvage Vanguard); and Johnny Hong Kong (Perishable Theatre). Her work has been commissioned and produced by La Jolla Playhouse and Actors Theatre of Louisville, and developed at such places as The Public Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, Playwrights Horizons, MCC, McCarter Theatre, Ars Nova, Sundance Theatre Lab, New Georges, Voice & Visions, Electric Pear, and Bay Area Playwrights Festival. She is the author of two plays for young audiences, Miss Electricity and Androcles and the Lion, both published by Playscripts, and has co-written the libretto (with composer Gregory Spears) for the opera Paul’s Case, being developed by American Opera Projects. Her new play Creation was commissioned by Yale Repertory Theatre and will be developed at the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, summer 2010. Kate is an affiliated artist with New Georges, where she is creating new piece for The Germ Project, and a member of MCC’s Playwrights Coalition, where she has been working on her latest play, entitled Greedy. She received her BA from Brown University, and MFA from the Yale School of Drama.
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Keli
Garrett’s plays have been produced and developed at Dixon Place
in New York City, the Zoo District in Los Angeles, 24 Hour Plays, Playwrights
Horizon in New York, Rites and Reason Theatre, Victory Gardens Theatre,
City Lit Theater Company, Chicago Theater Company, Organic Theater,
The Providence Black Repertory Company and The California College of
Arts and Crafts. The Rhode Island Arts Council, The Joyce Foundation,
City Lit Theatre and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum have
commissioned her work. Currently, Keli is a 2004-05 fellow of The Dramatists
Guild and The Women’s Project Playwright’s Lab. Keli holds
an M.F.A. 1999 in Creative Writing from Brown University, where in
1997 she was a Beinecke Foundation fellow. She holds a B.A. in Theatre
from Columbia College. Plays include:
Funkland,
Red Clay Hills, TOBAS, Uppa Creek, serve and protect, Meridian by Alice Walker, Faith and the Good Thing by Charles Johnson, breezing thru.
