Rob Ackerman

(Playwright, Tabletop)

Rob Ackerman’s credits include Tabletop (directed by Connie Grappo for The Working Theater, Drama Desk Award winner for Best Ensemble Performance), Disconnect (directed by Connie Grappo for the Working Theater), and Icarus of Ohio (hotINK 2007, Tisch School of the Arts Mainstage, 2008). His latest play, Volleygirls, was commissioned by ACT in San Francisco and premiered there in March 2009. His first play, Origin of the Species, became an award-winning feature film starring Amanda Peet. Mr. Ackerman has had residencies at Yaddo, the Lark Play Development Center, and Flux Theatre Ensemble. He also works as a prop master on commercials, films, and Saturday Night Live, for which he recently helped to make "Whopper Virgins," "Chewable Pampers," and "Mostly Garbage Dog Food." Mr. Ackerman was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, majored in theater and Spanish at Middlebury College, and earned an M.F.A. in directing from Northwestern University. He and his wife, author Carol Weston, live in Manhattan with their two daughters.

Arin Arbus

(Director, Untitled Manuel Borras Play; Gail)

Arin Arbus is the Associate Artistic Director at Theatre for a New Audience for whom she directed Othello (Lortel Nomination).  This season she is directing Measure for Measure for TFANA.  She was a Playwrights Horizons Directing Resident, a Williamstown Workshop Directing Corps Member, a member of Soho Rep.’s Writer/Director Lab, is a Drama League Directing Fellow, and a Princess Grace Award Recipient.  She has directed at The Intiman Theatre, The Hangar Theatre, Theatre Outlet, FringeNYC, Storm Theatre, HERE Arts Center, Juilliard and Williamstown Workshop.  In association with Rehabilitation through the Arts, Arbus also leads a theatre company of inmates at Woodbourne Correctional Facility – a medium security prison in upstate New York.

Michael Batistick

(Playwright, Gail)

Mike Batistick is a New York City-based playwright who grew up in New Jersey. He’s received critical acclaim for his three Off-Broadway plays, Port Authority Throw Down (which was produced by the Working Theater and the Culture Project), Chicken, and Ponies (both of which were produced by Michael Imperioli’s Studio Dante). His play Bodega Lung Fat was produced at the Hackney Empire in London, his play Flag produced at the Hangar Theatre in Ithaca (NY), and his play Urban Legend received critical praise and media attention from the Washington Post as part of the first annual Source Festival in Washington, DC. Greenbox Films recently made Ponies into a feature-length film--for which he wrote the screenplay--starring John Ventimiglia, Kevin Corrigan, and Tonye Patano (dir. Nick Sandow). He is a graduate of the Juilliard playwriting program, a recipient of a NYSCA grant, and has been commissioned by both the Atlantic Theater and the LAByrinth Theatre Company in New York. Ponies, Port Authority Throw Down, and Chicken are available through Dramatists Play Service.

Jessica Bauman

(Director, Maiden Voyages)

Manuel Borras

(Playwright, Untitled New Commission)

Manuel Borras is incarcerated in a medium security prison in New York.  He has been incarcerated for the last seventeen years.  Manuel was a member of Rehabilitation Through the Arts for five years, for whom he wrote, directed and acted in numerous productions.  Manuel received his BA from Bard College (Bard Prison Initiative).  He grew up in the Bronx.

Ed Cardona, Jr.

(Artistic Associate; Playwright, American Jornalero)

Ed Cardona Jr.’s plays include: Apricot Sunday – A ten-minute play, 2008: The Best 10-Minute Plays for 2 Actors (Contemporary Playwright Series) by Lawrence Harbison, published 2009.  Black & Blue Fruit, New Works Lab 09, Intar Theatre, Staged Reading, New York, NY.  Piragua Papi (Snow Cone Daddy), Insight 15, Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, Staged Reading, New York, NY.  Pablo’s Christmas – A children’s play, Page-to-Stage Commission, Dramatic Publishing, Adapted Pablo’s Christmas – A Children’s Book, By Hugo C. Martin, published in 2009. Up or Down, Staged Reading, The Welcome Mat Reading Series, Partial Comfort Productions, New York, NY.  PICK UP POTS!, Staged Reading, The Working Theater, New York, NY.  Bottle Rockets, Workshop Production, Insight 14, Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, New York, NY. Blunt-Piercing-Edge, Staged Reading, The Welcome Mat Reading Series, Partial Comfort Productions and NewWorksLab, Intar Theatre, New York, NY.  La Perla (The Pearl), Fiesta 2007: Words & Music, Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, New York, NY. Mr. Cardona has been a resident with Hispanic Playwrights-in-Residence Lab at INTAR Theatre and The Hall Farm Center for the Arts & Education, Townsend, VT.  He is a member of Partial Comfort Productions and The Professional Playwrights Unit at the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre.  Mr. Cardona has received his M.F.A. in Playwriting from Columbia University, May 2006, where he received the John Golden Award for his thesis play, PICK UP POTS!.

Kia Corthron

(Playwright, Bugs of the Pigs in the Lions)

Kia Corthron's A Cool Dip in the Barren Saharan Crick will premiere March 2010 at Playwrights Horizons in a co-production with The Play Company and the Culture Project.  Last spring Trickle was part of Ensemble Studio Theatre’s One-Act Marathon.  Other plays include Moot the Messenger (Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Humana Festival), Light Raise the Roof (New York Theatre Workshop), Snapshot Silhouette (Minneapolis’ Children’s Theatre), Slide Glide the Slippery Slope (ATL Humana, Mark Taper Forum), The Venus de Milo Is Armed (Alabama Shakespeare Festival), Breath, Boom (London's Royal Court Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, Yale Repertory Theatre, Huntington Theatre and elsewhere), Force Continuum (Atlantic Theater Company), Splash Hatch on the E Going Down (New York Stage and Film, Baltimore's Center Stage, Yale Rep, London's Donmar Warehouse), Seeking the Genesis (Goodman Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club), Digging Eleven (Hartford Stage Company), Life by Asphyxiation (Playwrights Horizons), Wake Up Lou Riser (Delaware Theatre Company), Come Down Burning (American Place Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre), Cage Rhythm (Sightlines/The Point in the Bronx).  Awards include the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Creative Arts Residency in Italy, Playwrights Center’s McKnight National Residency, Barbara Barondess MacLean Foundation Award, AT&T On Stage Award, Daryl Roth Creative Spirit Award, Mark Taper Forum's Fadiman Award, National Endowment for the Arts/TCG, Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays, New Professional Theatre Playwriting Award, Callaway Award, and in television a Writers Guild Outstanding Drama Series Award and Edgar Allan Poe Award for The Wire.  In December Bugs of the Pigs in the Lions will be workshopped at the Goodman Theatre.  Kia is currently a member of the Dramatists Guild Council and of the Writers Guild of America, and an alumnus of New Dramatists.

Gordon Dahlquist

(Playwright, Velazquez)

Gordon Dahlquist has been a member of New Dramatists, and is a New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect.  His works include: Venice Saved (PS122, New York), Messalina (Evidence Room, Los Angeles; SPF, New York), Babylon is Everywhere: A Court Masque [text] (CINE, Schaeberle Theatre; Theatre Magazine), Delirium Palace (Evidence Room, Los Angeles; published in Breaking Ground), The Secret Machine (Walker Space), Vortex du Plaisir (Ohio Theatre), and Island of Dogs (4th Street Theatre).  He has been an artist in residence at ASK Theatre Projects, Dartmouth College, Vassar College, and the Hotchkiss School. He was a guest lecturer at ECLA (Berlin), and a plenary speaker for the 2004 Ohio Shakespeare Conference.  His first novel, The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters, has been published in 30 countries.  His second novel, The Dark Volume, was published in the USA in March 2009.

André De Shields

(Artistic Associate; Creator/ Performer, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory…)  

In a career spanning forty years, André De Shields has distinguished himself as an unparalleled actor, director and educator.  He is the recipient of the 2009 National Black Theatre Festival’s Living Legend Award, the 2007 Village Voice OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence of Performance and the 2009 AUDELCO Award for Outstanding Performance in a Musical/Male.  Working Theater: Michael Henry Brown’s Ascension Day.  La MaMa E.T.C: Haarlem Nocturne (AUDELCO Award).  The Flea: Cato.  The Public Theater-NYSF: Euripides’ The Bacchae.  The Classical Theatre of Harlem: Derek Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain (AUDELCO Award), King Lear, Caligula, Langston Hughes’ Black Nativity and Archbishop Supreme Tartuffe (AUDELCO Award).  Broadway: Impressionism with Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen, Mark Medoff’s Prymate (Drama Desk Nomination), The Full Monty (Tony Nomination), Play On! (Tony Nomination), Ain’t Misbehavin’ (Emmy Award) and The Wiz (Title Role).  Film: Extreme Measures with Hugh Grant, Prison with Viggo Mortensen and The American Snitch.  Television: Rescue Me, Life On Mars, Lipstick Jungle, Sex and the City, Cosby, Law & Order, As the World Turns and Another World.  Regional:  David Mamet’s A Life in the Theatre, Inherit the Wind, Death of a Salesman, Our Town, The Man Who Came to Dinner and Ibsen’s Ghosts with Jane Alexander.  He is a distinguished alumnus of both the University of Wisconsin-Madison and New York University (Gallatin School).  A triple Capricorn, André is the ninth of eleven children born and reared in Baltimore, Maryland.  Visit www.andredeshields.com. Namaste!  

Colman Domingo

(Director, EXIT CUCKOO (nanny in motherland))

Colman Domingo recently directed Exit Cuckoo by Lisa Ramirez for the Working Theater and a workshop of Smoke by Vickie Ramirez for The Roundabout Theater Company. His solo play A Boy and His Soul recently premiered at the Vineyard Theater to critical acclaim. He directed the critically acclaimed Off Broadway, Los Angeles and San Francisco productions of Lisa B. Thompson’s Single Black Female. He has directed for Tony Award winning regional theaters such as Berkeley Rep (Sundiata), San Francisco Mime Troupe (Yo! Youth Speaks), and companies such as Lincoln Center’s Director’s Lab, Magic Theater, African American Shakespeare Company, Theaterworks, Inquiline, Theater Rhinoceros, Campo Santo, Solo Mio Festival and been a Guest Director for Geva Theater/SUNY Brockport. Recently starred on Broadway in the Tony Award winning musical Passing Strange. Colman has recently been in the acting company of Well on Broadway and has performed Off Broadway in Passing Strange and Henry V (Public/NYSF), And Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi (Public/Sundance Lab), American Maul (Reverie/Culture Project) and Bright Ideas (MCC). Regionally at ACT, Berkeley Rep, Guthrie, Huntington, California Shakespeare, Indiana Rep, Geva, San Jose Rep, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, and the Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference. His film and television work includes Miracle at St. Ana and Passing Strange (dir. Spike Lee), Freedomland (dir. Joe Roth), True Crime (dir. Clint Eastwood), King of the Bingo Game, Around the Fire, and Kung Phooey among others. Mr. Domingo is the proud recipient of an Obie, Dramalogue, Dean Goodman, and a Bay Area Theater Critics Circle Award.  As a playwright he has received commissions, fellowships and awards from New York Theater Workshop, New Professional Theater, San Francisco Foundation for the Arts, The March of Dimes, and Theater Bay Area.

Scott Ebersold

(Director, The Golden Vanity: william bell/four last songs)

Scott Ebersold enjoys working with playwrights to develop new plays.  Scott’s directing credits include: Children at Play by Jordan Seavey (Collaboration Town at the Living Theater), Nerve by Adam Szymkowicz, the silent concerto (Best Director, FringeNYC 2005), marea, the october crisis (to laura), william bell, and expat/infero (Best Production, FringeNYC 2003) by Alejandro Morales, among others.  His work has been seen at Lincoln Center Director’s Lab, HERE, Hypothetical, INTAR and New Dramatists.  He directed the film The Moment written by Adam Szymkowicz, which recently premiered at the Gotham Screen Film Festival.  SSDC Observership: Charles Busch’s Die Mommie Die!, (Carl Andress, dir.).  Scott is a founder and Co-Artistic Director of Packawallop Productions.   He is also a Lincoln Center Director's Lab alum; Directing-Mentor at Tisch School of the Arts PHTS; and former member of Tectonic Theater Project's Literary Department.

Jackson Gay

(Director, Slay the Dragon)

Jackson Gay: Kenneth Lin’s Intelligence-Slave (Alley Theatre). Jennifer Maisel’s, Out of Orbit (2010 Sundance Theater Institute at Mass MoCA). Punk Princess workshop at NYMF (book/lyrics Yasmine Lever/ music Stew and Heidi Rodewald/ featuring Our Lady J and Justin Bond). Lucy Thurber’s Scarcity for Atlantic Theater Company, where she previously directed Kia Corthron’s Master Disaster and Rolin Jones’ The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow, which was selected as a 2006 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Jason Grote's Box Americana (2008 Eugene O'Neill Playwright's Conference). Len, Asleep in Vinyl, by Carly Mensch, Second Stage Uptown and Juilliard. 10 Things To Do Before I Die by Zakiyyah Alexander (Second Stage Uptown). Workshop presentations of David Adjmi’s Marie Antoinette for the Goodman Theater, Sundance in Residence at the Public Theater, and the JAW/West Festival. Collaboration with Jennifer Tipton for the Guggenheim Museum's Works & Process. Best Production Connecticut Critic’s Award The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow at the Yale Rep. Founder of the film company YARN: Tiny Dancer  (Jayce Bartok), Keep Them From The Wolves  (Ryan O'Nan), Make Me Happy  (Courtney Baron) and the children's feature animation Going South (Sean Cunningham).  Jackson is the recipient of the Jonathan Alper Directing Fellowship at Manhattan Theatre Club, the Williamstown Theater Festival Directing Fellowship and the Drama League's New Directors/New Works Fellowship. 2008 University of the Arts Silver Star Distinguished Alumni Award. MFA Directing Yale School of Drama. Jackson is from Sugar Land, Texas.

Connie Grappo

(Director, Tabletop & Hold Please)

Connie Grappo began her association with the Working Theater in 1999 as director of Belmont Avenue Social Club by Bruce Graham and subsequently directed Tabletop and Disconnect by Rob Ackerman, and Hold Please by Annie Weisman. Since becoming Artistic Director in the fall of 2005, she has directed Port Authority Throw Down by Mike Batistick, Lynn Rosen’s Back From the Front, and began last season with King of Shadows by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa. Among her other directing credits are new plays at Second Stage, Yale Rep, Cleveland Playhouse, Westport Playhouse, the WPA, Actors Theatre of Louisville, San Diego Rep, CRT, as well as theaters in Australia, Canada and South Africa. She has written and directed one short film titled ‘Little Feet’, which premiered at Sundance and aired on the Showtime Network. She received her MFA at Yale School of Drama in 1995 and has since served on the faculty of both YSD and Yale University, where she currently teaches Acting. Connie also teaches an Acting workshop at Fishkill Correctional Facility in Beacon, NY, through Rehabilitation Through the Arts. 

Eleanor Idona Herman

(Playwright, Uncle)

Born and raised in the Village of Harlem, New York City, N. Y., Eleanor Herman is widowed,  mother of two children, six grand children and six great-grand. In 1986, she retired from New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection Agency after twenty-five years of service.  She served as a member of the Harlem Y’s VIP (Volunteer) Program, (June 2002) and is the Founder and Executive Director of the Revolving Stages Theatre Company, Inc. (2001- 2005). Revolving Stages began operating in 2001 when Eleanor, along with three other women decided to launch a theater group so they could produce their own plays.   Their venue, The Little Theatre, located in the Harlem YMCA, has been in existence since before the Second World War, and is where such icons as Ruby Dee, Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, and Diana Sands all got their start.   In their first season, September 2002 to October 2005, they produced thirty staged readings (full lengths for the most part) .  One Sunday a month they gave a forum to unknown playwrights from the community.  They also scheduled solo artists, poetry reading, storytelling with musical accompaniment and held open forums:  "The Role of Black Women in Theatre", hosted by women in business, education, and theatre from the community, as well as two book readings by newly published authors.  Some of the talented professionals who have worked with us:   Beatrice Winde, Arthur French,  Ellen Holly, Clifford Mason,  J.E. Franklin,  Eric Coleman, Joy Moss, Henry Miller, Frank Adu and Bill Jay.  Theatre Arts School education includes: New Federal Theatre Playwriting Workshop 2000-2001; Playwrights Horizons Theatre School 1993-1994; University of the City of New York, Hunter College (Masters Program in Theatre   Concentration in Playwriting), 1989 – 1992; Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center 1988 thru 1996. Winner of Irv Zarkower Playwriting Award, Fall 1989.  Works produced include: Uncle (the H.A.D.L.E.Y. Players, 2008), The Dream Exchange (co-produced with The Creative Voices Theatre Co., 2003), Put it on Ice (co-produced with Beatrice Winde, Artistic Director of Revolving Stages Theatre Co at the Pantheon Theatre, 2001). Dramatists Guild, Associate Member.

Victor Lodato

(Playwright, Slay the Dragon)

Victor Lodato is a playwright, poet, and novelist. He is a Guggenheim Fellow, as well as the recipient of the Weissberger Award for his play Motherhouse. Other plays include Wildlife, Dear Sara Jane, The Bread of Winter, Margo and Zelda, and Slay the Dragon. Other honors include a Helen Merrill Award, the John Golden Prize, Julie Harris Playwriting Award; as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Princess Grace Foundation, The Robert Chesley Foundation, The Camargo Foundation (France), and The Bogliasco Foundation (Italy).  His play 3F, 4F received its world premiere at the Magic Theatre, as did his play The Eviction (winner of a Roger L. Stevens Award from The Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays). The Eviction was subsequently produced by Theatre Na Zabradli in Prague, where it remains part of the company’s permanent repertory. Other works have been produced at Actors Theatre of Louisville (Humana Festival), Contemporary American Theater Festival, Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, Summer Play Festival/NYC, Theater Alliance (Washington, DC), Quartieri dell’Arte Festival (Viterbo, Italy), and Teatro Colosseo (Rome). His plays have received workshops and readings at Manhattan Theatre Club, American Conservatory Theatre, The National Theatre/London, The Guthrie Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Primary Stages, The Play Company, and The Playwrights' Center. Victor has thrice developed work at the O'Neill Playwrights Conference. He has received commissions from South Coast Repertory and the Magic Theatre. Victor is an alumnus of New Dramatists, and a member of The Dramatists Guild of America. His writing has appeared in North American Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Southern Review, Northwest Review, and New American Short Plays (edited by Craig Lucas). Victor’s first novel, Mathilda Savitch, will be released by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in Fall 2009. The book has been translated into eight languages, and will be published in ten countries.

Victor Maog

(Director, American Jornalero)

Susan McKeown is a vocalist from Dublin and lives in Manhattan. A prolific recording artist, she has released ten albums of original and world music, and tours internationally. In 2004 she received a BBC Folk Award nomination and in 2007 the Klezmatics album Wonder Wheel on which she was special guest vocalist, won the Grammy for Best Contemporary World Music Album. Susan is the vocalist in the OBIE-award-winning Mabou Mines production Peter & Wendy. She has appeared on various National Public Radio programs—All Things Considered, A Prairie Home Companion, New Sounds Live and The Infinite Mind—and has worked with such luminaries as Natalie Merchant, Linda Thompson, Pete Seeger, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Billy Bragg, Arlo Guthrie, Andy Irvine, Flook, Lunasa and the Scots fiddle master Johnny Cunningham. 

Henry Miller

(Director, Uncle)

Director, dramatist, and theatre scholar Henry Miller, a veteran of 1960s /70s Black theatre movement, has directed more than thirty Regional, Off, and Off-Off-Broadway stage productions; he is probably best known for his direction of his Samuel French award-winning plays, Gifts of Parting and Winter Reunion, and the 2000-01 internationally recognized productions of Porgy and Bess produced by the Opera Company of Philadelphia and the Indianapolis Opera.  He held the 2009 Lanston Hughes Visiting Professor's Chair of Theatre at the University of Kansas, and he is presently a co-director of Harlem's Uptown Playwrights' Workshop.  His collection, documenting his and many other artists contribution to African American Theatre, “The Henry Miller Theatre Papers,” is archived at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a Division of the New York Public Library.

Bill Mitchelson

(Director, I am a Man)

Honor Molloy

(Artistic Associate; Playwright, Maiden Voyages; Co-curator, “Future of Working Theater” Reading Series)  

Honor Molloy is a Dublin-born storyteller and playwright whose plays have been produced in Ireland, Australia, England and New York City. Her plays have been produced by the Public Theatre New Works, Sydney’s Annual Mardi Gras Arts Festival, Actors Theatre of Louisville, BACA Downtown, Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, The Theatre Outlet in Allentown, PA, and Ireland’s Inishbofin Arts Festival. Her work has been developed by A.S.K. at Lincoln Center Theater, London’s Royal Court Theatre, Seattle Rep/Hedgebrook Women’s Playwrights Festival, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Playlabs, JAW/West, Curious Theatre Company, City Theatre in Pittsburgh and Arkansas Rep. She holds fellowships from the NEA, NYFA (2002, 1990), a NYSCA Individual Theatre Artist Commission, a Bunting Fellowship at Harvard/Radcliffe, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, residencies at the Edward F. Albee Foundation, MacDowell and Yaddo, as well as a Berrilla Kerr Playwriting Award. She is an alumna of New Dramatists and holds severals awards specific to that organization that include: an Australian National Playwrights’ Conference Exchange; a Whitfield Cook Prize; Working Sessions, a music-theatre development partnership between New Dramatists and the Summer Play Festival; and the 2003 Frederick Loewe Award. Honor is currently writing a novel Smarty Girl—a darkly comic portrait of Dublin in the 1960s

Alejandro Morales

(Playwright, The Golden Vanity: william bell/four last songs)

Alejandro Morales is the author of the silent concerto (a play in three movements), sweaty palms, sebastián (Whitfield Cook Award), expat/inferno (New York International Fringe Festival Overall Achievement Award), marea, castle of blood (based on the 1964 cult film of the same name), the october crisis (to laura), and william bell/the golden vanity.  His work has been presented and developed in a variety of venues including The Public Theater, HERE, INTAR, South Coast Repertory, Nuyorican Poets Cafe and Packawallop Productions, a company he co-founded and is Co-Artistic Director of.  He is an alumnus of New Dramatists and a 2008 Public Theater Emerging Writer.  His work has been published by NoPassport Press.

OyamO

(Playwright, I am a Man)

OyamO (a.k.a. Charles F. Gordon) has received playwriting fellowships and awards from the Berrilla Kerr, Guggenhiem, Rockefeller, and McKnight Foundations and has been awarded grants from the Ohio and New York State Arts Councils and three NEA Fellowships. His plays have been produced in numerous theatres, including the Goodman in Chicago (I Am A Man, originally commissioned and produced by the Working Theater and Let Me Live originally produced by the Working Theater); The Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., the Seattle Children's Theatre (Pink And Say); the Minneapolis Children's Theatre (Boundless Grace); Manhattan Theatre Club and CBS Cable TV (The Resurrection of Lady Lester); the New York Shakespeare Festival's Public Theatre (His First Step); the Kennedy Center, and the Wexner Center (In Living Colors); and the Geva Theatre (Famous Orpheus). His play, I Am A Man, was optioned by HBO, for which he also wrote the Ida B. Wells Story for the Famous Black American Anthology. TriStar Pictures commissioned him to do the treatment for The Ota Benga Story. He studied at Yale, and is a member of PEN, Dramatists Guild, New Dramatists (alumnus), the Ensemble Studio Theatre, and Writers Guild East.  OyamO is an Associate Professor of Theatre and writer-in-residence at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Lisa Peterson

(Director, Untitled Poultry Play)

Lisa Peterson New York: Shipwrecked (Primary Stages); The Poor Itch (Public); End Days (EST); Tight Embrace (Intar), Bexley OH, The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, Slavs!, Traps, The Waves, Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (NYTW – Obie Award), The Fourth Sister, The Batting Cage (Vineyard), Collected Stories (MTC), Birdy and The Chemistry of Change (Playwrights Horizons), Tongue of a Bird (Public), The Square (Ma-Yi / Public), The Model Apartment (Primary Stages), The Scarlet Letter (CSC) and Sueño (MCC). Most recent Regional: CTG/Taper: Water & Power, Electricidad, Chavez Ravine, The House of Bernarda Alba, The Body of Bourne, Tongue of a Bird and Mules. Other Regional: La Jolla Playhouse, Arena Stage, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Guthrie, McCarter, Hartford Stage, Yale Rep, Baltimore Center Stage, Huntington, Dallas Theater Center, Intiman Theatre, Berkeley Rep, Long Wharf, California Shakespeare Theater, South Coast Rep, Williamstown Theatre Festival, N.Y. Stage & Film, Sundance Theatre Lab, Midwest PlayLabs, New Dramatists, Young Playwrights Festival. Other: associate director at La Jolla Playhouse 1992-1995 and resident director at the Taper 1995-2005.

Alfred Preisser

(Director, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory…)

Alfred Preisser is an award winning director, writer and producer of theatre. He has led over forty professional productions in New York and regionally. Currently he is the Artistic Director of Bloodstone Theatre, a New York based company that produces new plays with universal themes and aggressive modernist interpretations of classics for national and international touring. From 1999 - 2007 Mr. Preisser was the Founding Artistic Director of The Classical Theatre of Harlem, where he has created a wide and distinguished body of work noted for its physicality, originality, and use of music and dance. His production of Melvin Van Peebles' Aint Supposed To Die a Natural Death garnered seven Audelco Awards including Best Director, and his 2006 production of King Lear with Andrè De Shields opened the 75th Anniversary season at The Folger Shakespeare Theatre in Washington D.C. He has created critically acclaimed original adaptations of Medea, The Trojan Women, Electra and Caligula and his production of ARCHBISHOP SUPREME TARTUFFE recently completed a sold out run at The Harold Clurman Theatre on 42nd Street, and was named Outstanding Musical Production of The Year by The Audelco Committee. Other projects with CTH include Macbeth, which toured Germany in 2004, Hamlet, Day of Absence, Dream on Monkey Mountain, and Romeo and Juliet.  Mr. Preisser was the Director of the Theatre Department at The Harlem School of the Arts from 1999-2007, where he staged over twenty student productions. He led an extremely competitive College Prep Theatre Ensemble that partnered with The Classical Theatre of Harlem in creating an unprecedented series of theatrical internships for New York City high school students. Several members of Mr. Preisser's student ensembles now work with him on a professional level.

Lisa Ramirez

(Artistic Associate; Playwright/Performer, EXIT CUCKOO (nanny in motherland); Untitled Poultry Play)

Originally from San Francisco, Lisa Ramirez performed at many Bay Area Theatres including The Magic Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, Actor’s Theatre of San Francisco, and Intersection for the Arts. She received 3 Bay Area Critics Circle Awards and a Dramalogue Award for her work as an actor. In addition to acting, Lisa was the Literary Director for Brava! For Women in the Arts where was a curator of several reading series and events.  In New York, Lisa has performed at the Roundabout Theatre, Tectonic Theatre, 3 LD, the Clurman Theatre, Barrow Group Theatre, HERE Arts Center, The Ontological-Hysteric Theatre, and New York Theatre Workshop. She was a Playwright in Residence with NYTW at Dartmouth College in August 2006 and is a Usual Suspect. She was invited to perform her solo-show EXIT CUCKOO (nanny in motherland) at the Feile-Na-Bealtine literary festival in Ireland and at the famous Bewley’s Café Theatre in Dublin. In the spring of 2009, Working Theater gave EXIT CUCKOO (nanny in motherland) its World Premiere at the Clurman Theatre on Theatre Row (Colman Domingo directed). Lisa most recently wrote and performed in her new play ART OF MEMORY at 3-Legged Dog in New York. ART OF MEMORY was collaboration with Company SoGoNo where they were in residency in July and August. (Tanya Calamoneri conceived and directed). In 2010-2011 Lisa will be collaborating with The Foundry Theatre’s, On The Table Program and will be writing a new play that is being commissioned by Working Theater.

Joe Roland
(TheaterWorks! Arts Instructor)

Lynn Rosen

(Playwright, Progress in Flying)

Lynn Rosen’s plays have been developed or produced at many theatres, including: The Lark (Puddy Tat Studio Retreat 2009, Apple Cove BareBones, 2003 Writing Fellow), Centerstage, Baltimore (Puddy Tat FirstLook Series 2008), The Working Theater (Back From the Front), New Harmony Project (2007 Writer-In-Residence Puddy Tat), Todd Mountain Theatre Project (Apple Cove), The New Group (Washed Up on the Potomac full-length, New Group New Works series), New Georges (Mini-workshop of Puddy Tat, Ideal Home Dawn Powell Festival), Geva Theatre (Progress In Flying, American Voices New Play reading series), Ensemble Studio Theatre (Washed Up on the Potomac 2003 Marathon, also received an EST/Sloan commission for Progress In Flying – a 2007 Humana Festival finalist),  The Studio Theatre (Nighthawks, published by Samuel French), Willow Cabin Theatre Company (Nighthawks), NY International Fringe Festival (Back From the Front), The Fire Dept. (At War: American Playwrights Respond to Iraq – Back From the Front). Lynn’s plays have also been produced in Germany. Lynn is a member of the Women’s Project Lab, EST, The Dramatists Guild, The Fire Dept., and is a New Georges Affiliated Artist. She was recently named one of “50 to Watch” by The Dramatist magazine. Coming up: Washed Up on the Potomac at Centerstage, Baltimore, March, 2010.

Joe Sutton’s provocative plays about politics, race, the Second Amendment, and other topical issues include Voir Dire (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and the Best Play Award of the American Theatre Critics Association), As It is in Heaven, The Winner, The Third Army, and Restoring the Sun.  Joe co-wrote The Preda-tor’s Ball with Karole Armitage, the piece premiering at the Maggio Musicale in Florence, Italy, before enjoying a subsequent run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.  Other theatres producing Joe’s plays include New York Theater Workshop, Long Wharf, Seattle Rep, Arena Stage, the Cleveland Play House, and the Old Globe.  After Hurricane Katrina, Joe initiated and helped create The Breach, a New Orleans-centered theatre piece co-written with Catherine Filloux and Tarell McCraney which premiered at New Orleans’ Southern Rep before going on to play at Seattle Rep.  More recently, Joe’s play Complicit opened at London’s Old Vic with Artistic Director Kevin Spacey directing. Joe is a recipient of numerous awards and honors, among them fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.  Joe has also received the FDG/CBS playwriting award and New Dramatists’ Joe A. Calloway Award.  When not in rehearsal, or teaching playwriting at Dartmouth College, Joe resides in Montclair, NJ with his wife Anne and their sons James and Nicholas. 

Daniella Topol

(Director, Progress in Flying)

Daniella Topol’s recent credits include: Sheila Callaghan’s Lascivious Something (Women’s Project in association with Cherry Lane), Susan Bernfield’s Stretch (People’s Light and Theatre Company), Maria-Irene Fornes’ Sarita (Fordham University), Judith Thompson’s Palace of the End (Epic Theatre), Trista Baldwin’s Sand (Women’s Project and Productions), Sheila Callaghan’s Dead City (New Georges), Susan Yankowitz’s Night Sky (Baruch Performing Arts Center), Caridad Svich’s Instructions for Breathing (Passage Theatre), Nicki Bloom’s Tender (Summer Play Festival at the Public).  Upcoming productions include: Pool Boy (Barrington Stage) and Morini Strad (City Theatre).

Maureen Towey

(Artistic Associate; Creator/Director, Untitled re-imagining of Three Sisters)

Recently, Maureen Towey was awarded a Princess Grace Work-in-Progress award to workshop a new production called We Give Up at the Baryshnikov Arts Center.  She also received a Princess Grace fellowship in 2007 to support her work with Michael Rohd and Sojourn Theatre, where she is now an artistic associate.  Her work with Sojourn includes directing Throwing Bones and serving as an ensemble member for GOOD, Built, and the upcoming On the Table. She was a 2006 Fulbright Scholar in South Africa where she directed Swallow What You Steal, which toured rural villages; she also conducted health-related research, which led to the creation of Throwing Bones, and assisted Brett Bailey for the opening ceremonies at the Harare International Arts Festival in Zimbabwe.  Other credits include I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document Given to Me by a Young Lady from Rwanda, Animals Out of Paper (Boise Contemporary Theatre), The Vassar-Warner Project (NY Stage and Film/Powerhouse), On the Verge (movement director, Northwestern University), Collected Stories (Coho), CAKE (Ten Tiny Dances), crowd: a blanket of strangers (chashama), Wound Up (HERE), four new works by Jess Lacher, including The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (Best Ensemble, FringeNYC) and assistant director to JoAnne Akalaitis on Beckett Shorts (New York Theatre Workshop, starring Baryshnikov).  Maureen is a native New Yorker, an alum of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, a former Development Director for Anne Bogart’s SITI Company, and a graduate of Northwestern University.  In addition to her theatre work, Maureen is currently a Creative Director for the rock band Arcade Fire. 

Annie Weisman

(Playwright, Hold Please)

Annie Weisman is a Los Angeles based playwright whose work includes Hold Please, originally commissioned and produced by South Coast Repertory, and subsequently produced at San Diego's Globe Theatres, the Working Theatre in New York, and others. Her play Be Aggressive premiered at La Jolla Playhouse and went on to productions at Dallas Theatre Center, Chicago's Rivenden Theatre Ensemble, Theatreworks in Palo Alto and others.  Be Aggressive is published in Smith and Kraus' Best Plays of 2001, Vintage's Under 30: Plays for a New Generation and by Dramatists Play Service and was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.  Annie is the recipient of an NEA residency grant, a Sundance Ucross residency, and commissions for new work from the Mark Taper Forum and Trinity Repertory. Her most recent play, Surf Resort, has received developmental support from the Ojai Playwrights Conference and South Coast Repertory.  She is currently developing an original musical collaboration with composer Michael Friedman and director Des Macanuff titled The Essential Alice for La Jolla Playhouse. Her television credits include Eastwick, Samantha Who? for ABC, Dead Like Me for Showtime, Inconceivable for NBC, Heartland for TNT, and the unaired Baseball Wives for HBO.  Annie is a member of the Writers Guild and the Dramatists Guild, and a graduate of Williams College.

Stefanie Zadravec

(Playwright, The Electric Baby Play)

Stefanie Zadravec’s plays have been produced and developed at The Kennedy Center, Theater J, The Barrow Group, Bay Street Theater, Vital Theater, The Phoenix Theater, Garson New Works, and Jackson Rep. Stefanie made her Off-Broadway debut in 2006, as a contributing writer for the critically acclaimed, The Fear Project. Her full-length, Honey Brown Eyes, won the 2009 Helen Hayes Award for Best New Play, and was published in American Theatre magazine. Her full-length, Save Me, won the the Phoenix Theater’s National Playwriting Competition, Baltimore Playwright’s Festival’s Carol Weinberg Award and was a nominee/finalist for  the Cherry Lane Mentor Project, Futurefest, and the Jane Bingham Award.  Stefanie received both a Dakin Fellowship and a Tennessee Williams scholarship to the Sewanee Writer’s Conference.  She is published in two Playsource anthologies and is currently a contributing writer for 167 Tongues, a series of new works about the most diverse spot on earth. She is an associate member of The Dramatists Guild and a company member with The Barrow Group. www.szadravec.com