All events will be held at the Hilton Garden Inn at I-35 and 119th St in Olathe, Kansas, 12080 S. Strang Line Road.
Conference Schedule
Reception - $307:00pm Thursday, September 27
Join us in the Pre-Function area for mingling, drinks and snacks, consisting of a variety of cheeses, crackers and fruit. Each playwright will receive a drink ticket for a glass of house wine or domestic beer (there will also be a cash bar). At 8:00pm, we will gather in the ballroom to hear introductions from our adjudicators, Beth Blickers and Sean Grennan, and invited speakers.
Play Readings - Free
Session 1 & 2: 8:30am - 12:45pm Friday, September 28
Session 3 & 4: 1:45pm - 6:30pm Friday, September 28
Session 5: 11:30am-12:30pm Saturday, September 29
Session 6 & 7: 1:30pm - 5:15pm Saturday, September 29
Midwest Comedy Scene Off - Free
7:30pm Friday, September 28
Our writers and guests from the audience will write a quick, one minute scene based on what they draw from the bowl, and have them performed immediately by local actors.
Breakout Sessions - Presenting Playwrights Only
9:00am Saturday, September 29
Dinner Gala - $50 ($80 for two)
7:00pm Saturday, September 29
The dinner menu is chicken madeira (unless you’ve arranged for a substitute), house salad, bread, seasonal vegetables, garlic mashed potatoes, cheesecake and iced tea. There will be a cash bar in the Pre-Function area.
FULL CONFERENCE PACKAGE - $80
Presenting Playwrights
*resident playwright of Midwest DramatistsJohn Adams
John is a playwright, communications professional and part-time improv comic from the Kansas City area. He has written three plays, including Old Girl (which was selected for the 2016 6x10 Play Festival and the 2017 Midwest Dramatists’ Conference) and Some Specter (which was selected for the 2018 Alphabet Soup LGBTQ+ play festival and is currently being adapted into a young-adult novel). When not writing, John performs at comic-book conventions and improv festivals around the U.S. with his improv team, That’s No Movie. He is also founder and co-producer of America’s Improv Test Kitchen, a monthly comedy show in Kansas City that seeks to give diverse, independent performers a stage and an audience to share their voices.
Lindsay Adams*
Lindsay is a resident playwright at the Midwest Dramatists Center, and proud member of the Dramatists Guild and LMDA. Her play, River Like Sin, was a Semi-Finalist for the 2018 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. Her Own Devices received two awards from the Kennedy Center and the 2016 Judith Barlow Prize. She has received production or development at Women’s Project Theatre (NYC), Theatre Alliance (DC), Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (PA), Keegan Theatre (DC), Interrobang Theatre (MD), Page-to-Stage Festival (DC), This is Water Theatre (TX), The Hub Theatre (VA), Westridge Middle School (KS), Westport Center for the Arts (MO), Fishtank Theater (MO), KC Public Theater (MO), The Pearl KC (MO), and The One Minute Play Festival (DC). She received her MFA in Playwriting from the Catholic University of America.
Amanda L. Andrei
Amanda is a Filipina Romanian American playwright and writer from Virginia. Her plays include Lena Passes By, Waiting for a Birthday, Crocodile (The Last Escape), Every Night I Die, lovesick (adj), My Dove, Woohoohoo: Election Day, Reeducating Roses, and Yurchencko’s Defection. Amanda’s work has been produced and developed at Playwright’s Arena, University of Southern California, Single Carrot Theatre, Bucharest Inside the Beltway, Georgetown University, LaTiDo, the Beltway Drama Series, Rorschach Theatre, Dash Productions, and the College of William & Mary. Amanda has a BA from the College of William and Mary, an MA from Georgetown University, and is pursuing her MFA in Dramatic Writing at the University of Southern California.
Marilyn Anselmi
Marilyn is a North Carolina based playwright whose plays have been seen in New York, Tennessee, North Carolina, California, Nebraska, and Vermont among others. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, a recipient of 2012 North Carolina Humanities Council Grant and 2013 NC Arts Council Artist Fellowship.
Dean Bevan
Dean has written 22 plays in the past 14 years, which have been performed in New York, London, and in 20 cities across the US from Florida to California, Alaska to Virginia, including his own Lawrence, Kansas. His plays have won numerous awards. During the same period, Bevan has also been active on stage, appearing in 34 plays and musicals in roles including Norman Thayer in On Golden Pond, Vladimir in Waiting for Godot, FDR in Annie, and most recently as Private Secretary to Queen Victoria in Explorers Club. He has also directed eight plays. He earned the Ph.D. from the University of Kansas, and served as Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Baker University.
Shelli Pentimall Bookler
Shelli holds an M.A. in Theatre Arts from Eastern Michigan University as well as an M.F.A. in Playwriting from Temple University. Several of her original plays have been produced including her original musical Snyder v Phelps which premiered at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Other plays produced include Addicted at Bucks County Community College, Honeydew at Upper Dublin Players and Eastern Michigan University, and Possessions, which was created for the Pennsylvania Red Cross Homeless Shelter 25th Anniversary gala. Several short plays have been featured in play festivals including Committed at Montgomery Theatre and the Brick Playhouse, Decision at Village Players of Hatboro, Jugs at the Colonial Playhouse, Global at Heartland Theatre Company, Vanity, featured in Seeds of Spring, A Night of Feminist Performance Art, and Rainbow at the Brick Playhouse. She was recently named a New American Voices playwright by Landing Theatre Company in Houston, Texas.
Simon Bowler
Simon graduated from the University of Westminster, London, and then produced for Channel 4, the BBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, Discovery, Oxygen, Bravo, and Friends of the Earth. He has written award-winning screenplays and he is currently developing several plays, a drama series, and a book of poetry. Recently his play, The Briefing, was chosen for the William Inge Theater Festival. He is currently developing several full-length plays and a major television drama series.
Paul Bowman
Paul is a retired maintenance director, writes plays and fictions. He has had eight of his one-act plays produced (The Perfect Lover, Why We Went To War, My Son, Johnny & Linda, Maintenance Man, Traffic Stop, The Waiting Room, and Graduation Party). A Soldier’s Testimony was produced in Owensboro, Kentucky in July. Nine of his stories (flash fictions and short-shorts) have been published in print or on-line. Another story will be published in June. A monologue, Everything Is OK, was published by Monologue Bank.
Joshua W. Brewer
Joshua is a theater and film artist based in Chicago. He was educated at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama where he earned a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Drama with a focus in directing and is currently an MFA Candidate in Theatre at The University of Memphis. His plays include Apples and Roofies with The Rum & Coke Collective, Endlings with The Rum & Coke Collective and Gorilla Tango Theatre, Remains with Gorilla Tango Theatre, A Canterbury Journey with Zoot Theatre Company, and Living, Breathing Things at The University of Memphis. He was the Artistic Director at the Rum & Coke Collective and one of its proud founding members.
Emma Carter*
Emma is a playwright, actress, and teaching artist currently based in Kansas City. She holds a BFA in Theatre Arts with a minor in Music from Stephens College. She is a member of the Midwest Dramatists. Most recently she received staged readings of her work at both the William Inge Festival Play Lab 2018 and the Stella Adler Studio for Acting First Breath New Play Reading Series 2018 in NYC. Find copies of her work on the National New Play Network. Visit www.emmakcarter.com for my info.
Rachael Carnes
Rachael is the director of Arts & Culture for the Oregon Supported Living Program, an organization that serves people with disabilities. Rachael is recognized as an international leader in the field of inclusive education, teaching workshops in The Hague, Istanbul and across the U.S., including the Kennedy Center’s annual Arts for Learning Institute. She discovered playwriting in 2016 and had her first professional production last year. An excerpt of her full-length play Fumblewinter was among those selected for the 2018 William Inge Festival New Play Lab Series. Her work has been picked up for readings or production in Chicago, New York City, the Bay Area, Washington D.C., Minneapolis, Louisville, St Louis, Chattanooga, Chapel Hill, Cedar Rapids and Ames, IA, Prescott, AZ, and London.
Bryan Colley*
Bryan is a frequent producer at the Kansas City Fringe Festival, where he has written the multi-media science show Voyage to Voyager (performed in a planetarium!), the chamber opera Red Death, the companion pieces Sexing Hitler and Hexing Hitler, the sci-fi musical Khaaaaan! the Musical, and the comedies Lingerie Shop and Jesus Christ, King of Comedy. His play The Maltese Murder was commissioned by the Johnson County Public Library for the National Endowment for the Arts Big Read, and his play The Feast was produced by Gorilla Theatre Productions in 1998. His unproduced works include The Amanuensis, Dream Operator, The American Institution, and the opera King Pest. Find out more at www.jupiterkansas.com.
Enid Cokinos
Enid began her creative writing journey in 2014. Four of her plays have been produced in Indiana and Connecticut and her short fiction and non-fiction pieces are published in various online journals. Currently, she is writing three new plays and a children’s book. A native of southwest Michigan, Enid has gathered a treasure-trove of material while crisscrossing the country for family and career. She now lives in Carmel, Indiana with her husband, Todd.
Sandra Dietrick
Sandra is a native Iowan and graduate of the University of Iowa Playwrights Workshop. Her work has been produced in New York, Roanoke, Charlottesville, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, and some of the finer theater-producing correctional facilities of the Midwest. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Fight Director Robert Tuftee.
Eli Effinger-Weintraub
Eli is a playwright and prosaist rooted in the Upper Mississippi River Valley, in Anishinaabe and Santee Dakota territory. They are a queer, atheist, Reclaiming-tradition witch who delights in the magic of daily life, turning possibility into story, and the timelessness and fleetingness of theater. Their other passions include deathwork, mushrooms, and transportation cycling. Eli lives in Minneapolis, MN, with their wife, artist/designer Leora Effinger-Weintraub, and two water buffalo disguised as cats. Catch Eli’s twitterings @awflyweeeli
Grace Epstein
Grace is currently an Associate Professor of English at the University of Cincinnati where he teaches dramatic literature and film studies. She has written scholarly articles, fiction, poetry and nonfiction for a number of publications and had three plays fully mounted and several more with staged readings. She is currently working on a play that takes in the 1920’s under prohibition.
Anna Fox
Anna is an alliterative amalgamation of performer/poet/playwright and aspiring astrologer. Her work has been seen at The Williamstown Theatre Festival, The Sam French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival, Fusion Theater Company, Live Girls! Theatre, Theater Masters National MFA Playwriting Competition, Tongue in Cheek Theatre, Stage Left Theater in Spokane, Wide Eyed Productions, The Midwest Dramatists Conference, Fresh Produced LA, and Free Fall Baltimore. Her play Alaska In The Summertime is featured on soundplay.media’s Bare Wire Theater Podcast (available for download on iTunes), and some of her short plays are published by Samuel French, The Dionysian and Bare Fiction Literary Magazine. She received her BS at Skidmore College and her MFA at UCLA. www.annapfox.com
Sharon Goldner
Sharon Goldner's writing goal as a playwright is to make audiences laugh at things they feel guilty for laughing at because she thinks humor helps break down barriers, enabling honest discussion. Sharon’s award-winning plays have been performed in eight theaters Off Broadway, The Kennedy Center, and in approximately thirty-five theaters across the U.S. She is a 2014 fellowship recipient with Newfoundland’s SheSaidYes! Theatre, a 2017 Midwest Dramatist Conference playwright, a 2018 Resident Theater Teaching Artist with Chesapeake Arts Center in Maryland (as well as a member of their theater-in-residence, The AngelWing Project), and a member of The Dramatists Guild. Her award-winning short stories have been published in literary journals all over the U.S.A, and in England, and she is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Sharon assures audiences that no letters of the alphabet have ever been harmed in the creation of her work.
Franky D. Gonzalez
Franky is a playwright living in Dallas, TX originally from Queens, NY. He holds a BA in Theatre from the University of North Texas and has been produced by several theatre companies and colleges in the Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex. In 2018 his play I’ll Tell You At Sunrise was produced as part of the Mid-America Theatre Conference Playwrights Symposium, and his play Even Flowers Bloom In Hell, Sometimes was selected for reading as part of the Nuestras Voces National Playwriting Competition with the Repertorio Español, for development in the PlayLab Series of the Great Plains Theatre Conference, and was a semi-finalist for the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. A proud member and ambassador for the Dramatists Guild, Franky enjoys collecting movies, plays, and memories with his family.
Emily Goodson
Emily holds a BA in English from Indiana University. Her work has been seen in Indiana, Michigan and Idaho. She wrote the book to the musical Spun: A Brother Sister Rock Musical that was produced at Bloomington Playwrights Project in Bloomington, Indiana.
Emily Hageman
Emily is theatre and music educator and playwright residing in Iowa. Emily’s one acts, short plays, and monologues have primarily been performed in Northwest Iowa, but have been performed in California, Kansas, Illinois, and Oklahoma. Her one act Back Cover was selected as the 2018 Critic’s Choice at the Iowa High School Speech Association Large Group Competition. Her ten-minute play Ta-Da or Toodle-Oo was selected for Heartland Theatre’s Ten-Minute Play Festival, her ten-minute play Present Tense was selected for Theatre Lawrence’s Short Play Festival, and her play Everafter.com was selected for the Stillwater Short Play Festival. Emily’s theatrical pieces are being constantly workshopped by the magnificent high school and middle school actors at Siouxland Christian School.
Greg Hatfield
Greg is an accomplished writer, director and actor, best known for his work in the ground- breaking, award-winning, comedy troupe, Dr. Browndog’s Monkeytime, in Cincinnati, Ohio. He has extensive experience in television and radio, producing, writing, acting and directing and has written for national publications. Greg is also a Marketing/PR expert, an early proponent of social media and graphic novels, who has seen results with top newspapers, magazines and national television programs. He lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, while slowly working on a history of the Dublin Gate Theater. Greg’s blog, Ruminations, is at greghatfield.wordpress.com.
Rand Higbee
Rand obtained a Theatre degree from South Dakota State University and a Master of Fine Arts in Playwriting from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. While at UNLV his first full-length play, Sir Isaac’s Duel, was named as an alternate to the National American College Theatre Festival held at the Kennedy Center. Since UNLV days Rand’s plays have continued to gain both productions and awards. He won a 2009 Wisconsin Wrights award for his superhero play The Lightning Bug which has since been published by Next Stage Press. His short play Next! has become one of the most often performed high school one-acts in the country. The 2012 debut production of his full length A Girl Named Destiny at the Venus Theater in Laurel, Maryland, was named as one of the best plays of the year by DC Metro Theatre Arts.
Marty Honig
Marty moved to Kansas City from Denver, Colorado in 2009 to be near family and to manage an historical building in the West Bottoms. She also came for the incredible creative energy that resides in Kansas City. That energy created the playwriting class with such amazing people as Brian Moses where she first wrote The Halloween Rapture. Marty feels so privileged to have had this experience. She can be seen about town in various vaudeville type venues performing with the Flock as her clown Ruby Rarebit. The Halloween Rapture was performed as part of the KC Fringe in 2014.
Michelle Tyrene Johnson*
Michelle is a playwright, author, journalist, diversity and inclusion speaker, and a former attorney in the Kansas City area. As a journalist, she covers race, identity and culture issues for KCUR 89.3, NPR’s Kansas City member station, and as part of a four-city collaboration. As a playwright, Johnson’s plays have been staged locally and nationally. She is the author of four books – three about workplace diversity and inclusion, and the latest being a self-published book about her grandmother called Cliff(ie) Notes: Lessons From A Badass Grandma.
Arthur M. Jolly
Arthur writes for stage and screen, recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with a Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting, and the Hammond House International Literary Prize 2017 for a Screenplay. He is a three time Joining Sword and Pen winner and a finalist for the Bloomington Playwrights Project inaugural Woodward/Newman Drama Award. He has penned over 60 produced plays. Published works include A Gulag Mouse, Trash, Past Curfew, The Ithaca Ladies Read Medea, Long Joan Silver, The Christmas Princess, The Four Senses of Love, How Blue is My Crocodile, Snakes in a Lunchbox, What the Well Dressed Girl is Wearing, Rising, Bully Issues and the short play collections Guilty Moments and Thin Lines. More at www.arthurjolly.com
Charlotte Jung
Charlotte is a certified Psychologist recently turned playwright. She’s Swedish by descent, but since 2016 living in the US (Chicago). Charlotte’s playwriting is dark, absurd, existentialist, oftentimes feminist, but always (almost...) with a comical twist. Charlotte has written three full length plays and two short plays and her work has been performed, primarily in Chicago, but also in Seattle and now most recently published in the online Puerto Rican theatre magazine Falso Mutis.
Liz Kerlin
Liz is excited to be making her playwriting debut with this piece Hope Help Line. Liz has been acting and stage managing in Kansas City for five years. She received her BFA in Performance from the University of Southern Mississippi in 2013. She has worked locally at such theatres as The Living Room, The Unicorn, and Fishtank Theatre. Most recently, she is stage managed for Kokopelli Theatre Company’s production of Down in Mississippi which was presented at The William Inge Theatre Festival.
Morgan Trant Kinnally
Morgan is a California-based playwright. Her work has been presented by Ion Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse Without Walls Festival, Scripps Ranch Theatre’s New Works Studio, For a Better Understanding of Mankind, Theatre for the New City, and Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris. She is a 2018 Eugene O’Neill semifinalist, 2018 Leah Ryan Emerging Women Writers Finalist, company member with Ion Theatre, and a Dramatists Guild Member. B.F.A. in Theatre/Acting from SUNY Buffalo, Masters of Education, and English teacher at Bayfront Charter High School.
Kevin King*
Kevin is a Midwest-based playwright, director, and producer. A member of the Dramatist Guild, King was a playwright-in-resident for the Charlotte Street Foundation’s Studio Residency program. He is currently a playwright-in-resident at the Midwest Dramatists Center. His works have regularly been seen in the Kansas City Fringe festival and in short play festivals like The Fishtank’s Along the Line short play festival and Whim Productions’ Alphabet Soup: Stories from Queer Voices LGBTQ+ short play festival. Through Whim Productions, where he is Producing Artistic Director, King has produced his plays including Flowers in the Wardrobe, Film Classics Presents: Heaven So Far (a “Best in Venue” winner at the 2011 KC Fringe Fest), and Mimi Dafoe: Confessions of an Aging Starlet. King’s plays range from campy, arch spoofs to slice-of-life works that place queer experiences front and center.
William C. Kovacsik
William holds a Bachelor of Arts from Drew University, as well as a J.D. from the Fordham University School of Law and an M.F.A. in Playwriting from Carnegie Mellon University. Mr. Kovacsik’s plays have been seen throughout the United States. His play Morisot Reclining was staged by the Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company in the spring of 2009. Mr. Kovacsik’s full-length play Scales of Justice was named Best Play at the 1999 Dayton Playhouse FutureFest. Mr. Kovacsik’s script Pillar of Salt won an international playwriting prize offered by Hanover College and the Eli Lily Foundation for plays dealing with spirituality. His script The Run of the River was named Best Play of the 1995 Pittsburgh New Works Festival by the Pittsburgh Tribune Review.
Greg Lam
Greg is a playwright, screenwriter, and board game designer who lives in the Boston area. He is the creator of Boston Podcast Players (bostonpodcastplayers.com) which presents plays and interviews with Boston playwrights. He is the co-founder of the Asian American Playwright Collective. His full-length play Repossessed received its world premiere at Theatre Conspiracy in Fort Myers, FL in August after readings in Boston, Seattle, and Connecticut. For more info, see pair-of-dice.com.
Mark Loewenstern
Mark is a four-time finalist for the Heideman Award and a winner of the Samuel French OOB Festival, among others. His plays include Near Nellie Bly (O’Neill semi-finalist), Parish Dunkeld, Carnality, One is the Road, A Doctor’s Visit, The Bloomingdale Road, The Slightly Exaggerated True Story of “Civic Virtue,” The Nastiest Drink in the World, and Grandmother’s House. His film work includes 6 Love Stories (w. Alicia Witt), Holiday Rumble, and 26 Months After Katrina. Mark is currently working on a commissioned play for California Stage Company about real-life 59-year old female serial killer Dorothea Puente. He studied theater at Juilliard, University of Pennsylvania and Kings College London. Dramatists Guild member #516. Email him at goodyarn@hotmail.com.
Robert Lynn
Robert’s full-length Christmas-themed comedy, The ReGifters, is the winner of the New American Comedy Festival and is published by Heuer Publishing. Robert’s play, With Friends Like These, is also published by Heuer. The Stupid Economy, a one-woman show, has appeared in the United Solo Artists Festival at Theatre Row in New York. Mother’s Wishes was the winner of the Aloha Performing Arts Center’s 24th Original Play Festival (Kealakekua, HI). His ten-minute play, Palindrome Love was a winner in the Short & Sweet Sydney 10-minute play festival, and was also performed in the Washington DC Capital Fringe Festival, and at the Fury Theatre in Chicago. It was also a semifinalist in the Heartland Festival (Normal IL), where his play, A Good Man, was a 2010 winner.
Andrew Martineau
Andrew has had productions and staged readings of his work in NYC with Ivy Theatre Company, Love Creek Productions, and DreamCatcher Entertainment. His play One Fifty was produced by Nu Sass Productions in DC. His one-act play Functions (Heuer Publishing) has been produced by high school theatres all over the country and South Korea. His comedy Trash Day has had several workshops in NYC and Baltimore. Etched in Stone was recently performed at the Eastern States Theatre Festival in Delaware and has won multiple awards. Andrew is a college English instructor and is a member of the Dramatists Guild.
Allan Maule
Allan is a Durham-based playwright and writer with more than twelve years of writing experience for the stage and digital media. His plays have been performed in New York, Chicago, and theaters across NC. Favorite productions of his plays include Framing the Shot (Sonorous Road Theater, Wordshed Productions), EverScape (NYC Fringe 2015 and Sonorous Road Theater), Tales and Fermentations (SEED Art Share with the City of Raleigh Museum), Two Late (Carrboro Arts Center 10x10), and Objectively (Sonorous Road). Allan is a graduate of Duke University and holds a masters in performance studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Michael John McGoldrick
Michael’s plays have been finalists in the following competitions: Trustus Theatre’s Playwrights’ Festival, Alleyway Theater’s Maxim Mazumdar New Play Competition and Playhouse on the Square’s NewWorks@TheWorks Playwriting Competition. His other plays have received staged readings from New Jersey Repertory Company, The Monarch Theater, Sundog Theater, Strange Dog Theater, Now and Then Creative Company and The Theater Project. He graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Dramatic Writing from ASU in May 2018.
Lindsay Partain
Lindsay is an Oregon playwright and a member of the Dramatists Guild. She has had the pleasure of working with Orphic Plays as a dramaturg on their original adaptation, Iphigenia 3.0 and with Jacob Coleman on his devised piece The Scrivener at Pacific University where she received her BA in Theatre. Lindsay is currently an editor for the online literary magazine Cascadia Rising Review. Recently her work has been produced at Artists’ Exchange in Rhode Island (Variations on the Death of Vera), Stage Left Theatre in Washington (Immortal Combat), and at The Tank in New York (Thor’s Hammer). Her work has also been chosen for public readings at the Samuel French Theatre & Film Bookshop in California (Backfired) and at Creede Repertory Theatre in Colorado (All the Way Down). Find and read Lindsay’s work on New Play Exchange.
Linda Paul
Linda is a writer, actor and musician, living in Saint Helens, Oregon, where I write, walk, take pictures of the Columbia river and play in a ukulele band.
Rich Pauli
Rich began writing for the theater in 2009, while a senior writer at Hallmark Cards in Kansas City. Since then, he has written over 40 plays, ranging from one-minute, don’t blink-or-you’ll-miss-it flash plays to full-length, my-God-I-hope-there’s-an-intermission pieces. He is delighted to be back for a second year at the Midwest Dramatists Conference, having found the 2017 version to be engaging, educational, and entertaining, to mention only a few of the many “e” words he recently discovered in his dictionary (there’s a whole section of them!). Rich is currently working on a comic operetta, Captain Quirk and the Love Goddess of Outer Space for which he has written the book, lyrics, and music. He is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild of America. When not writing, Rich can often be found engaging in activities involving strings, such as tennis, banjo playing, or unsnarling Christmas tree lights (seasonal). He is grateful to his spouse and best friend Rosemary for, well, just about everything.
Judith Pratt
Judith is also a director and theatre professor. She has studied playwriting with Lois Weaver, Arthur Kopit, Stuart Spencer, Laura Maria Censabella, and Liz Duffy Adams. Her plays have been produced in New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Austin, and Cape Town South Africa. Her full length-play The Wright Place was published by JAC Publishing Co. Recently, Cora’s Mountain was part of the Nor’Eastern Play Writing Showcase, Studying War was read at The Road Theatre’s Summer Playwrights 6, and Spiralling received a reading from Panndora Festival, Long Beach CA, and a podcast from 12 Peers Theatre.
Dominica Plummer
Dominica is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama, and has worked for many theaters, including the Guthrie Theater, the Minnesota Opera, the Yale Repertory Theater in the United States, and Shakespeare’s Globe in the U.K. Most recently, she was invited to join director and former National Theatre literary manager and director John Burgess’ playwriting group for a nine month playwriting intensive in London.
Greg Romero
Greg’s plays, site-specific experiments, and sound-art collaborations have been presented across the United States as well as in Canada, Jamaica, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland. Romero is an alum of the WordBRIDGE Playwrights Laboratory, The Last Frontier Theater Conference, and his works are published by YouthPLAYS and Playscripts, Inc. He received an MFA in Playwriting from The University of Texas at Austin where he held the James A. Michener Fellowship.
Jessie Salsbury
Jessie is a member of the Dramatists Guild. She is a Kansas City playwright and has participated in numerous local play readings and new work development. Most recently, her play Adoption of Grief was the winner of the Olathe Civic Theatre’s 2018 New Works Playwright Competition. Route 84 House Fire was featured in the 2017 Midwest Dramatists Center conference and the Barn Players 6x10 Ten Minute Play Festival. She is a playwright for 365 Women a Year: A Playwriting Project and her work can be found on the New Play Exchange.
Judah Skoff
Judah graduated from Brown University with a degree in literature. The Jewish Week named him one of the top “36 under 36” rising stars in the American Jewish Community due to his writing. He is currently a resident playwright with the Athena Theatre Company in New York. His plays have been produced at numerous theatres and festivals, including at Theatre503 in London which the Guardian has called “arguably the most important theatre in Britain today.” Others plays have been performed at the Abingdon Theatre, the Joria Mainstage Theatre, the Producer’s Club, The Theatre-Studio, the RADD Theatre Company, Writers Theatre of New Jersey, the Great Plains Theatre Conference, the Last Frontier Theatre Conference and many others. Judah’s writing awards include the National Playwriting Competition, the New Jersey Playwrights Contest, and two Governor’s Awards in the Arts.
Donna Stuccio
Donna earned a B.S. in Drama from Syracuse University and an M.F.A. from Goddard College’s Creative Writing program. She is Artistic Director of Armory Square Playwrights in Syracuse, New York. Her plays have had full productions and readings around the country. Donna works with inmates in playwriting workshops housed in a local correctional facility. She spent several years as a police officer and attempts to entertain anyone who will listen, as most former cops do, with stories of her time on the street.
Tim Toepel
Tim is a Wisconsin native and a graduate of the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Tim’s interest in dramatic writing began in college when he took a television writing course from Prof. Jerry McNeely. He later received a masters degree in radio, TV and film at UW – LaCrosse. Tim’s lifelong passion for comedy combined nicely with TV writing later when he had the opportunity to write some special material for the legendary comedian Steve Allen. A stint as a Writer/Producer for Public Television followed and Tim wrote and produced several award-winning documentaries. It was a Playwriting Workshop in Door County, Wisconsin in 2017 with Richard Carlson and Paulette Laufer in which Tim became very interested in Playwritng and wrote Welcome to Meadowood.
William Triplett
William’s awards and honors include Road Theatre (Los Angeles) Summer Playwrights Festival, 2017 – Semifinalist; Pandora Productions (Long Beach, CA) New Works Festival, 2016 – Winner; Charles M. Getchell New Play Contest, Southeastern Theatre Conference, 2013 – Finalist; National Playwrights Conference,Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, 2012 – Semifinalist ; Roger L. Stevens Award, Kennedy Center/Fund for New American Plays, 1991 – Winner. His plays have been read in Washington D.C., Long Beach, California, among others. He holds an MA in English from Georgetown University and a BS from Ohio University.
Hannah Vaughn
Hannah’s full-length plays include Away From, The Unfathomable Blue, and Look Up or Why We Don’t Go Camping Anymore. Her work has been seen at Dixon Place, The Players Theatre, Paper Kraine, Actors Theatre of Santa Cruz, Left Coast Theatre Company and developed with Fresh Ground Pepper, Live Source Theatre Group, and The Navigators. She is the co-creator and co-star of the web series, Dates Like This. For more information visit hannahvaughn.com.
Philip Middleton Williams
Philip’s’ first play, The Hunter, was produced at the University of Minnesota; Dark Twist was staged by the Actors Ensemble Theatre of Boulder, Colorado; The Purer, Brighter Years premiered at the Old Town Playhouse in Traverse City, Michigan. Here’s Hoping was presented in Petoskey, Michigan. Can’t Live Without You was his first play to receive a New York production at the Manhattan Repertory Theatre in January 2008. Other works include Ask Me Anything, Last Exit, A Life Enriching Community, and Which Way to The Beach, presented at the New Theatre’s Miami 1-Acts Festivals. A Moment of Clarity was a 2017 finalist in the City Theatre National Award for Short Playwriting. All Together Now won first place in the 2016 Playgroup LLC playwriting contest and was produced as part of the Willow Theatre of Boca Raton’s 2017-2018 season. His work has also been seen in the South Florida One-Minute Play Festivals. He has been a member of the Dramatists Guild since 1984 and lives in Miami, Florida.
