The BRB Retreat is a deep dive into FGP’s methods of delighted listening and joyful creation, providing an opportunity for artists of all mediums to initiate their own projects, build collaborative relationships, and develop their artistic process. The annual summer retreat, now in it’s sixth year, has served hundreds of theatre artists, musicians, choreographers, composers, designers, installation artists, authors, arts administrators, and podcasters.
ANGELA SCLAFANI is an NYC-based composer and performer. She is a resident of the Orchard Project Greenhouse, a two-time alumna of Ars Nova’s ANT Fest, a 2018 Jonathan Larson Grant Finalist, and a first place winner of the 2018 Great American Song Contest. Angela was also a recipient of the Richie Jackson Artist Fellowship and the Anna Sosenko Assist Trust Grant. Her new song cycle Passion Project: Love Songs from Women to their Work will premiere in NYC this fall. Favorite performances include Todd Almond’s Kansas City Choir Boy, starring Courtney Love, and supporting the British-pop band Years & Years as a backup vocalist on the North East leg of their Communion tour. Her recorded music releases are available to stream and download online. Angela graduated from NYU Tisch with a BFA in Drama. www.angelasclafani.com
MALLORY JANE WEISS is a Manhattan-based playwright whose work primarily spirals around female stories and pie. Select productions include Beginning (Adams Pool Theater – Harvard University), A&Z’s Escapades in Moonstruck City (The New School), and Pony Up (The New School, Princess Grace Finalist 2019). Her play, Losing You, Which Is Enough has had workshop readings at The Lark and Cherry Lane Theatre. She is developing work with Gingold Theatrical Group, where she was a member of their Speakers’ Corner writers’ group. BA: Harvard University, MFA: The New School
ADRIAN COLLINS is a Brooklyn-based artist from Austin, where she appeared in THE WOLVES (B. Iden Payne Award, Austin Critics Table Award), DNA, and ENRON. Adrian is interested in discovering where method, meaning, and organic matter intersect. She is developing the third piece of her forthcoming food performance series while at BRB. adrian-collins.com
MOLLY BEACH MURPHY is a playwright and director from Texas. Her work has been developed at New York Stage & Film + Vassar’s Powerhouse Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, Williamstown Theater Festival, The Orchard Project, Village Theater, Yale Institute for Musical Theater, Ars Nova, The Civilians’ R&D Group, UArts’ Polyphone, Fresh Ground Pepper. She is a Page 73 Fellowship semi-finalist and member of P73’s I-73 writer’s group. New Georges Affiliated Artist. She has worked as an associate director for Tina Landau and Jo Bonney among others. Published works in The Hairpin and Santa Ana River Review. mollybeachmurphy.com
JARED FIELD is a composer, conductor, music educator and clarinetist. He has written several musicals with his sister Jessie, including Rachel (2018 JDT Lab Selection, WINNER Outstanding Musical – 2015 Fresh Fruit Festival, 2013 Harold and Mimi Steinberg Prize for Best Original Play), and La Maupin (WINNER – 2018 MUT International Competition, WINNER Audience Favorite – 2017 Fresh Fruit Festival). In addition to his musical theater work, Jared has written classical chamber and choral music, as well as music for plays and dance pieces. Jared received his BA in Music Composition from Brandeis University, where he earned Highest Honors and graduated Summa Cum Laude. He received his MA in Music and Music Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. Jared is currently the Director of Middle School Music at Worcester Academy in Worcester, MA, where he is a proud recipient of the O’Connell Award for excellence in teaching. www.jfieldmusic.com
JESSIE FIELD is an NYC playwright and director. Past musical collaborations with her brother, composer Jared Field, include Rachel (2018 JDT Lab Selection, WINNER Outstanding Musical – 2015 Fresh Fruit Festival, 2013 Harold and Mimi Sternberg Prize for Best Original Play) La Maupin (WINNER 2018 International MUT Competition, WINNER Audience Favorite – 2017 Fresh Fruit Festival) and Harold! The Musical (Grant Recipient in the 2009 Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Arts). Jessie has also written TYA straight play To The West, which was a finalist in the Growing Stage’s New Play Reading Festival and was presented as the school play at Randolph High School last year. Jessie served as 2015-’16 Directing Apprentice at Capital Stage in Sacramento, California, and has directed numerous plays in the Boston and New York areas. She works for Roundabout Theatre Company as an usher and is currently earning her MFA as a member of Cycle 29 at NYU Tisch’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program. www.jessiefield.com
JOE DRYMALA is a composer and multi-instrumentalist who also writes words, mostly for the theater but sometimes for other audiences. He is a Texan by birth and upbringing but makes art in Brooklyn and Beacon. A 2018 Jonathan Larson Grant Finalist, Joe wrote the score and book for the musicals STREET LIGHTS (New York Musical Theater Festival, further development at Old Globe Theater, San Diego) and SKY’S END (Winner of The Blank Theater Co.’s Young Playwright’s Festival, L.A. “Robbie” Award Nominee for Best Music and Lyrics) and he wrote the book and much of the score for the original incarnation of the musical WHITE NOISE (New York Musical Theater Festival, “Best Score” Summer Theater Awards, featured on TV newsmagazine ABC Primetime). In 2003 his opposition to the Iraq war led him to Vermont to volunteer for Gov. Howard Dean’s presidential campaign, where he ended up as Gov. Dean’s primary speechwriter, though he didn’t write the speech that people think of when you say the name “Howard Dean.” He did get to write a 5,000 word essay on poverty in America for Vanity Fair Magazine on Gov. Dean’s behalf (“How The Poor Live Now,” December 2003) and a speech on the Republican Party’s strategy of racially divisive politics which Gov. Dean delivered in South Carolina and which The Black Commentator called “the most important statement on race in American politics by a mainstream white politician in nearly 40 years.” Joe is also a founding member and composer for People Doing Math, a podcast created with director Andrew Scoville, playwright Jaclyn Backhaus and media designer Dave Tennent, in which the math-curious-but-challenged hosts explore mathematical questions through their art. People Doing Math has recorded live episodes at Ars Nova’s ANT Fest and The Public Theater’s Under The Radar Festival.
C.C. KELLOGG is a theatre and filmmaker from San Antonio, Texas. From closet dramas to multimedia installations, her work combines verse and expanded theatrical modes and has appeared at The McKittrick Hotel, The Brooklyn Art Library, The New York Public Library, AvignonLeOff, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, The Sekrit Theater, and Shakespeare’s Globe, among others. C.C. is the producing facilitator of Invulnerable Nothings, a Brooklyn-based performance collective which she cofounded in 2016. BA, English, Certificate in Theater, Princeton University. MA, Shakespeare in Performance with a new media emphasis, Bath Spa University. C.C.’s postgraduate research in the digital humanities focuses on live theatrical broadcast, 360 degree film, and narrative virtual reality.
OMAR VELEZ MELENDEZ is a playwright from Puerto Rico. In 2015, his play, Que ne pas, was a finalist at the UPR Humanities Literature Contest. His playwriting debut took place at the 2016 UPR Student Theatre Festival with The Natives Fight for Their Cave: Part 2. His work has also been developed by Teatro SEA and Pregones/PRTT. Other plays include We Built Our Homes Near Kingdoms of Animals and Magic (2019 Rita & Burton Goldberg Playwriting Prize), The Last Episode of El Super Mega Show and Lajasarriba.
DOUG KMIOTEK is an NYC based comedy writer. His first full-length farce, Family Affairs, was a 2019 finalist for the O’Neill New Play Conference and the Goldberg Playwriting Prize. Other playwriting work has been developed with NYU, the Amoralists and Slingshot Theater Company. His NYC debut production, Tamra Wasserman: This is Real, This is Me (An evocative autobiographical play by Tamra Wasserman), premiered at the PIT in 2018. He is a graduate of NYU’s MFA Dramatic Writing program (’18).
BRIAN ‘DYALEKT’ KUSHNER is an MC, playwright, and educator, mostly all at once. His first album/one man play Square Peg Syndrome helped him get named to the Public Theater’s Emerging Writer’s Group. He also took the show back to St Croix to rock 17 schools & orgs alongside a 6 week curriculum on identity and literacy. His current show Was The Museum of Dead Words debuted at Mozart’s and will be dropping in BK soon. Both albums are on Spotify. He has been a mainstay in NYC’s theater and Hip Hop scenes, rocking everywhere from the Bowery Ballroom to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and even the United Nations. His work focuses on understanding your own identity and finding your voice, communicating with other authentically, and building community. Dyalekt cohosts both the Brunch & Budget Podcast and new spinoff Preach to the Choir. He’s also the director of pedagogy at Pockets Change, where he teaches hip hop + finance workshops to kids, teens and adults. There’s more but let’s just have a cypher instead.
JOHANNA SOLEYN studied theatre at Pacific Union College. Her journey began on the stage, but quickly she discovered her passion for writing. Since her time at PUC Johanna has pursued her passion for family and raising her son. She is thrilled to be dipping her toes back into theatre and rediscovering her love for writing.
TURNER BARRETT LAW aka Comrade Barbie is a drag performer, producer, and trans/queer rights activist based in Brooklyn. They produce and host both Queers’n’Peers Variety (Pine Box Rock Shop, 4th Mondays) and the Queens County Royal Court (The Footlight, 4th Tuesdays), as well as having a residency with Plan B Variety (Bizarre Bar, 3rd Mondays). They are also an organizer for the Queer Liberation March. They like cats/dogs, lipstick, and long walks through imagined utopian futures. (NYU Playwrights Horizons Theater School ’16)
NOAM HARARY is a actor and producer, formerly of LA and now glad to be NYC based once more. As an actor he enjoyed performing at the Shelter Festival and Nylon Fusion Festival this spring. Additionally he joined the In[HEIR]itance Project, an organization that collaborates with communities for collective artmaking to instigate engagement around challenging civic conversations by using sacred texts as a backbone. As a producer, Noam started Gum Zoo Pictures, a company creating engaging commercial content based on storytelling versus product, and a host of short films in festivals that most often are driven by the idea of the stranger, the alien or the immigrant in us all. Developing projects regarding the Syrian refugee crisis, or related to World War II are his jam. He also likes laughing though, he promises.
MARY GLEN is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and filmmaker, whose work seeks to heal internalized oppression and reclaim joy. A self-taught filmmaker, she has been producing, directing, and editing video content for 9 years; her music videos have received premieres at Billboard, Vents Magazine, and the Vinyl District. Current projects include a documentary on the stigma surrounding bipolar disorder, a play about a post-apocalyptic matriarchy, and getting enough rest. She loves getting messy in rooms of artists, finds deep joy in collaboration, and is most fulfilled in the midst of a creative process. heymaryglen.com
ADI ESHMAN is a playwright, screenwriter, and teacher based in Brooklyn, NY. My work has been read or produced at Columbia University, the Los Angeles Theatre Center, New Ohio, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, Cherry Lane Theatre, Ophelia Theater, The Shelter, Nuyorican Poets Café, Theater for the New City, and The Tank. My play King Lesbian was named one of the best new Jewish plays this year by the Jewish Plays Project. I’m also the co-founder of the Greenroom, an event series where theater professionals are invited to talk about their careers. I worked as a writer’s assistant on Steven Soderbergh’s experimental HBO miniseries, MOSAIC. I’m a member of The Civilians’ Field Research Team, and a proud member of the Dramatists Guild. BA: NYU Gallatin.
SARAH GALLEGOS is a playwright and filmmaker. Her films have been screened in festivals such as the New York Short Film Festival and the Inwood Film Festival. Her first play, BeanyTodd, will be presented in the lounge at Dixon Place at the end of August. she/her. sarah-gallegos.com
MATT ZAMBRANO is a Latino actor, writer, director, improvisor, puppeteer, spoken-word artist and mime. He has worked regionally all over the country, and most recently was a featured creator/performer in Next Day Thrones: A Parody of Ice and Fire! at the Peoples Improv Theater, directed by Kristin McCarthy Parker. He is a company member of Broken Box Mime Theater and The Story Pirates in NYC, and holds an MFA from the National Theater Conservatory. He is a Teaching Artist with Disney Theatrical Guild, and this spring wrote and directed the Nat Geo Kids Amazing Awesome 2020 Almanac Game Show!, which toured the U.S. Regional Credits include: A Comedy of Errors (Shakespeare Theater of D.C.); Man of La Mancha (Orlando Shakes); Our Town, The Foreigner (Milwaukee Rep.); Baskerville! (Philadelphia Theatre Co.); Peter and The Starcatcher, Loves Labours Lost, Richard II, Merry Wives of Windsor, Scapin (Utah Shakes); The Santaland Diaries, The Liar, As You Like It, Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, A Christmas Carol (Denver Center Theater Company). Check out www.MattZambrano.com for more info.
ADRIENNE LaVALLEY is a writer, actor and avid gardener of way too much kale. She also has a penchant for discussing things that make people uncomfortable. This can be heard on her podcast ‘The Old Man and The Me’ where she combines her love of voice overs and writing to tell stories about life, mental illness and lack of both. Her ineptitude towards small talk can also be enjoyed in her play ‘The Good Father’, which follows a family struggling with chronic and generational mental health issues. ‘The Good Father’ starts workshopping this fall. On stage she was most recently seen playing a deeply troubled upper east side woman (there seems to be a theme here) in Brunch Theatre’s ‘Seaweed, Chocolate Nibs and Black Cats’. She’s originally from the Finger Lakes area of NY and currently lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband and super mutt Junebug. She’s also ridiculously excited to be part of FGP’s retreat this year.
JOEY MASSA is a playwright and filmmaker whose work explores family relationships and dynamics, specifically looking at motherhood, women’s positions as caretakers, and the ways in which queerness interacts with those things. She is a 2019 Athena Theatre Playwriting Fellow and a graduate of Brown University where she studied Writing for Performance under Erik Ehn and Lisa D’Amour.
ERIN ADAMS is a NYC based actress, writer. She is a frequent collaborator with AMIOS. Most recently, her work was a part of Barton Booth’s “Make Room” series on Governor’s Island with Daughters of Troy. Erin holds a degree in Theatre and Literary Arts from Brown University and a MFA in Acting from the Old Globe/University of San Diego.
JULIA HOCH is a New York based storyteller, working as a director and playwright to create new work that integrates music, theater, and dance. As the Artistic Director of Hyacinth Productions, she runs The Salon series focusing on artistic collaboration and conversation across disciplines. Other New York Directing credits include, L’Histoire Du Soldat , Over/Again, [Out]/Take/[Out], What Does She See?, A Night for Josh, And Friends!, and The Guardian. Julia has several pieces in development, including a new play Vissi D’Arte, a new musical with Tim Parker, and an original opera Rationed Chocolate and Cigarettes with composer J.P. Redmond.
Check out her work at HyacinthProductions.com.
BRANT RUSSELL is an Associate Professor in the Acting program at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati (CCM). I am the artistic director of the CCM Playwrights Workshop and the drama editor for The Cincinnati Review. I work extensively at Know Theater here in Cincinnati and at Queens Theatre in NYC. Before coming to Cincinnati, I was in Chicago, where I worked at Steppenwolf, Chicago Shakes, Writers’ Theatre, A Red Orchid, Steep, Side Project, Collaboraction, and many more. In October, I’ll be a Visiting Scholar at Université Bordeaux Montaigne. I live in Cincinnati with my wife, Marta, and two boys, Foster (7) and Soren (5). I’m a member of SDC and of the Lincoln Center Directors’ Lab.
CANDACE THOMPSON is a [human] performer and interdisciplinary media maker fascinated with the feedback loops generated by place, culture, identity, climate, economics, and daily interpersonal interaction. She makes video, audio, performance, and ritualistic installations– both IRL and online—that examine and challenge the truths we purportedly hold to be self-evident. Perhaps they aren’t so self-evident after all. Her project “The Collaborative Urban Resilience Banquet” (aka The C.U.R.B.) uses the act of urban foraging and the projected “what if” disaster scenarios of climate change to examine critical issues around food systems and food sovereignty, land access, environmental remediation, multi-species interdependence, and right relationship(s) with the (un)natural world. Her project “OK Gurgle” (with collaborator Lex Powell) examines how the robber barons of the tech-era pilfer and profit off of our emotional attachment(s) to our digital devices. She was a 2018-2019 Fellow with More Art’s Engaging Artist’s Program, is an Associated Artist with Culture Push, and is a resident this year with Residency Unlimited’s Dirt and Debt Program, the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Swale House and Fresh Ground Pepper. Follow her various projects on instagram at @the_c_u_r_b and @okgurgle.
KOSAKU HORIWAKI Born in the Kagoshima prefecture of Japan in 1969, Kosaku Horiwaki earned his education in Japan and the United States. Upon leaving Japan, he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts at the NYU Tisch School of Arts’ Film & Television and worked thereafter as a production manager in the Japanese Television industry for twenty years. Kosaku is now in the second phase of his career – pursuing his dream of directing as an MFA student at the Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema at Brooklyn College.
SARA KOMMER is an NYC based playwright-performer-painter-poet. Playwriting credits include “An Untitled Play About Sluts” (Dixon Place, Playwrights Horizons Downtown) “Dreamboat” (Dixon Place) and “The Content Generation: Comme des Garçons” (Playwrights Horizons Downtown). On the other side of the stage she has been seen performing in drag as Daddy Long Legs and TRISH. She completed a BFA in Theatre with Honors from NYU Tisch, and a semester at Tisch International Programs: Stanislavski, Brecht, and Beyond in Berlin. She holds a 200hr Vinyasa Yoga Teacher Certification. More information and work samples available at www.sarakommer.com.
JACOB JARRETT (he/him) is a New York City based composer, playwright, and music director. Writing credits include: Queer Baby Jesus (Dixon Place ’19), Wonder Boy (New York Musical Festival’s Developmental Reading Series ’18, The Dare Tactic ’18), and Normativity (Polyphone Festival ’17, New York Musical Festival ’16). Associate Music Direction credits include: The Elementary Spacetime Show (Powerhouse Theater), Noise (The Public, Playwrights Horizons Downtown), and Retrograde (Polyphone Festival). Jacob is the recipient of NYMF’s “Outstanding Emerging Artist” award and the Ira Brind School of Theatre’s “Excellence in Playwriting” award.
NINA ROY Nina Roy is a New York based director, choreographer and performer/creator of new and experimental theatre. Most recently, Nina choreographed The Music Man in The Marshall Islands for Youth Bridge Global, a non-profit organization that facilitates youth theatre productions in international developing communities. Directing credits:Queer Baby Jesus (Director/Co-Librettist, Dixon Place), Wonder Boy (Associate Director, NYMF ‘18), Untitled Work in Progress (Associate Director, The Muse Project, The Flea), Ancient Future (Associate Movement Director, Polyphone Festival ‘18) and Edison (Movement Director, Edinburgh Fringe ‘17). Performance credits: Easy Guide to Time Management (Object Movement Festival), The Command Center (AND Theatre Company), Brine (Dixon Place), Beddagered (The Players Club), An Evolution of a Sexual Bean (Self written, Prague Fringe Festival). BFA UArts ’17.
FREDDY EDELHART (they/them) makes new live art about the sinister, queer realities, the power of objects, and the intersection between theatre and game design. Their work has been supported by BAX, Pilobolous, Pipeline Theatre Company, Crosshatch/Hill House (Bellaire, MI), Barn Arts Collective, Chinatown Soup, FEAST, Paper Kraine, PH Downtown, and the Lambda Literary Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Artists. Email them and they’ll make some art in your house, it’ll be fun! freddyedelhart.com.
ALEXIS POWELL is an multidisciplinary performer making work with the Hearsay & Hyperbole performance ensemble. She also has an impressive wig collection.
CINTHIA CHEN is an interdisciplinary artist from Taiwan, currently based in New York and working in film and theater. In film, she works mainly in editing and production design, and has been involved in projects with NextRound Productions and ARRI China. In theater, she works as a video designer, props designer and stage manager, and is currently a director and research apprentice with Theater Mitu. Cinthia was also a selected artist for the 2018-19 Mabou Mines SUITE/Space program, a residency through which she wrote and directed a ‘live cinema theater’ piece, Anna May Wong, the Actress Who Died a Thousand Deaths. Recent works include: Corkscrew Theater Festival (Paradise Factory Theater), Notes from the Basement (Dixon Place), V O I D (HERE Arts Center), The Caribbean Queen (Theater Row).
LARISSA LURY is an Associate Professor at New Mexico State University, a freelance director, a deviser and a former acrobat. She’s directed and workshopped plays for companies including Cherry Lane, The Playwrights’ Center, Dorset Theatre Festival, Portland Center Stage, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Clubbed Thumb, Southern Rep, New Georges, Ma-Yi, New Jersey Rep, Keen Company’s Keen Teens, McCarter Theatre’s Youth Ink!, Curious Theatre Company, American Southwest Theatre Company, Lake Dillon, Passage Theatre, Abingdon/Small Pond, Leviathan Lab, and Prospect Theatre. She was a 2015-16 National Directing Fellow, a 2017 LMCC Process Space Resident, a 2016-17 New Georges Audrey Resident, and a 2008-09 Resident Director at Ensemble Studio Theatre. She is a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, and a New Georges Affiliate Artist. She received a BS from Northwestern University and an MFA from UC San Diego.
KAROLINE XU Karoline Xu is an actor and writer, currently outlining a TV drama about TV drama. She was most recently seen in Tom Stoppard’s The Hard Problem (LCT) and [Veil Widow Conspiracy] (Next Door @ NYTW). Select credits: You Across From Me (Humana Festival), Angels in America (Actors Theatre of Louisville); Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Santa Cruz Shakespeare); A Language to Hear Myself (American Repertory Theater); Hitting Bedrock (La MaMa). BA: Harvard College. karolinexu.com
AMY JO JACKSON is an actor/singer/kabarettist and glitter alien based in New York City. The recipient of the 2019 Denovan Fellowship in Cabaret, which culminated in a recent performance of their newest piece, “The Brass Menagerie,” Amy Jo has sung at many venues in NYC and across the country, most notably Feinstein’s/54 Below (several solo concerts; producer and host of The Broadway Villains Party and 54 Sings Annie Lennox), Joe’s Pub, Bell House, Green Room 42, Knitting Factory, Duplex, Slipper Room, Caveat, Laurie Beechman, Union Hall, Metropolitan Room, Boston’s Club Café, and on the high seas as a guest artist with Atlantis Events. Selected acting credits include Alison in FUN HOME (SpeakEasy Stage – IRNE nom), Ursula in THE LITTLE MERMAID (Arkansas Rep), Almira Gulch/The Wicked Witch of the West in THE WIZARD OF OZ (Syracuse Stage), and multiple performances with Exit, Pursued by a Bear and Ensemble Studio Theatre. amyjojackson.com/@amyjojackson
LM FELDMAN is a queer, feminist playwright who writes theatrically adventurous, physically kinetic, ensemble-driven plays that are both epic and intimate – usually about outsiders, often about searchers, always about the human connection. Her plays include THRIVE, OR WHAT YOU WILL (New Georges Audrey Residency, Page 73 Residency); ANOTHER KIND OF SILENCE (FEWW Prize Honorable Mention, Magic Theatre Virgin Play Festival, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, PlayPenn Conference, Playwrights Realm Fellowship); AMANUENSIS, OR THE MILTONS (Georgetown University, Northwoods Ramah Theatre commission); THE EGG-LAYERS (Jane Chambers Honorable Mention, New Georges/Barnard College co-commission); GRACE, OR THE ART OF CLIMBING (Denver Center, Art House Productions, ATCA/Steinberg New Play Award Nomination, Barrymore Nomination); and A PEOPLE (Orbiter 3, Jewish Plays Project); as well as a half-dozen devised works and a baker’s dozen of short plays. She has been nominated for the Wendy Wasserstein Prize, Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Barrie & Bernice Stavis Playwright Award, and the Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award. A graduate of the Yale School of Drama and the New England Center for Circus Arts, L is also a performer & dramaturg of contemporary circus. She has performed at festivals around the world, and she’s an artistic coach for circus artists around the country. She loves theater that moves, and circus that tells stories. L has lived in seven cities and is now based in Philadelphia – where she is an InterAct Theatre Core Playwright, a proud member of Orbiter 3, a New Georges Affiliated Artist, and a teacher of playwriting and contemporary circus. She is writing two new plays. // www.laurenfeldman.com
SETH MCNEILL is a New York City based theatre artist who has worked on both new and very old plays at Dixon Place, Theatre for a New Audience, Last Frontier Theatre Conference, Fresh Ground Pepper, Amios NYC, The Barrow Group, Primary Stages, the American Shakespeare Center, TinyRhino, Rule of 7×7, The Amoralists, Exquisite Corpse, The Farm Theater, Downtown Urban Arts Festival, and Metropolitan Playhouse. He has been named a semifinalist for the Shakespeare’s New Contemporaries Prize and Primary Stages ESPA Drills, and a is a two-time recipient of the Vera Mowry Roberts Fellowship. Member of the Dramatists Guild. Education: Masters from Hunter College, Circle in the Square.
ANYA GIBIAN is a actor-musician, songwriter, and composer. She plays multiple instruments, but considers herself first and foremost a cellist. Acting credits include the national tours of Cabaret and Once; and world premiere family musicals The Pirate La Dee Da and Velveteen Rabbit at Atlantic Theater Company. She recently played Daenarys (and many others) in Recent Cutbacks’ parody of Game of Thrones, Next Day Thrones.
JACOB MARX RICE has had plays produced and developed at The Flea Theater, Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, The New Ohio, Atlantic Theatre Stage 2, and others. His plays have won the 2017 Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the 2018 Faculty Award from the NYU/Tisch Department of Dramatic Writing and the 2018 Sloan Foundation Screenwriting Grant. He is an alumn of the Pipeline PlayLab and Fresh Ground Pepper’s PlayGround PlayGroup, as well as a member of The Shelter.
MICHELLE J. RODRIGUEZ (Puerto Rican singer, songwriter and musical theater composer) makes music that “span[s] laid-back southern soul and Latin pop flare” (NPR) and features “flourishes of bolero, bossa nova and even jazz” (Chicago Tribune). In 2018, she was a finalist for NPR’s 2018 Tiny Desk Concert Contest with her solo music project, MICHA. She has received support from Ars Nova, New York Theater Workshop, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts and the University of Chicago. Musicals include East o’, West o’! (Ars Nova/ANTFEST), and works in development Jiran, Bibliophile, Rokera. Ms. Rodriguez recently made her Public Theater début composing the music for The Mobile Unit’s production of The Tempest directed by Laurie Woolery, and she is currently under commission by the Public Theater for a new musical for their Mobile Unit program. BA in Theater and Arabic from Williams College. Michamusica.com
CLAIRE MODDEY performs, directs, writes, devises, and designs objects for theater. As a playwright, her most recent work, femme pathos, was seen at The Brick as part of The Exponential Festival in 2018. In the last year, you may have seen her work on The Ringdove (performer) with Mettawee River Theater, The Space Between the Letters (performer and deviser), Totally Wholesome Foods (costume and prop design) with Theater in Asylum, We’re Imploding (puppeteer) with Megan Murtha at The Tank, and boob tube (writer/director/designer) at FEAST. Other credits include Before the Sun and Moon (performance) with Mettawee River Theater Company, Forsaken Nation (directo
TOM COSTELLO is a freelance director and the Associate Artistic Director of Pipeline Theatre Company. His most recent productions include Babel by Sevan K. Greene at the Rough Draft Festival and This Girl Laughs, This Girl Cries, This Girl Does Nothing at Atlantic For Kids. He is an Associate Artist at the Flea Theater where he directed the world premieres of Smoke by Kim Davies and The Wundelsteipen (and other difficult roles for young people) by Nick Jones. He is the Director of the Atlantic Acting School’s alumni program where he is also a faculty member and frequent director, most recently mounting a production of Sarah Ruhl’s Passion Play. He was a 2017 Drama League Directing Fellow in his hometown of Ithaca, NY where he directed Olivia Dufault’s The Messenger. BFA: NYU/Tisch
NIKKI DILORETO Nikki DiLoreto is a director, writer, and producer from Kentucky. Recent credits include the NYC premiere of the new musical Bubble Boy, and the world premiere of the new play with music Talk to Me. As a filmmaker she has directed multiple original works, including the award winning web series The Weekend Detectives and Ghost Girl. Associate credits include the Tony Nominated Broadway revival of Kiss Me, Kate, and David Henry Hwang’s new musical Soft Power, which will make its NYC debut at the Public in the fall of 2019. Nikki is a SDC Associate Member, an alum of Fresh Ground Pepper’s Playground Playgroup, Williamstown Theatre Festival Directing Corps, a participant in the SDCF Observership Program, and a SDC Associate Member. BFA Boston University.
