T. Carlis Roberts

T. Carlis Roberts (he/him/his)

T. Carlis Roberts is an artist and scholar who engages sound as a tool for liberation. As a composer, sound designer, and music director, T has worked around the U.S. at theaters including Steppenwolf, Woolly Mammoth, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, La Jolla Playhouse, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, and California Shakespeare Theatre. As a songwriter and performer, T appeared on the Grammy-nominated album The Love by Alphabet Rockers, wrote original music for the Starz series Vida, and toured the country in A Queer Story of the Boy Band, a theatrical concert he co-created with QTPOC boy band The Singing Bois. T is co-founder of the Spiritual Technologies Project, a research and performance consortium that explores the metaphysical dimensions of African diasporic music, and author of multiple books and articles on music, identity, and cultural politics. T is also an educator, most recently serving as Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at UC Berkeley.

Ray Yamanouchi

Ray Yamanouchi (he/him/his)

Ray Yamanouchi was born in Queens, raised on Long Island, and received a BA in film and theatre from CUNY Hunter College in Manhattan. His plays include Tha Chink-Mart (PlayPenn 2018), Impact (Semi-finalist, National Playwrights Conference 2017), and The American Tradition (New Light New Voices Award 2018). He has developed work with WT Theatre, The Blank Theatre, Rising Circle Theater Collective, The New Harmony Project, SPACE on Ryder Farm, PlayPenn, Mission to (dit)Mars (Propulsion Lab), Ars Nova (Play Group), and The Playwrights’ Center (Core Writer). He has been commissioned by Ars Nova and Cygnet Theatre. (rayyams.com)

Kirya Traber

Kirya Traber (she/her/hers)

Kirya Traber is a writer, performer, and cultural organizer. She was a 2021 Hermitage Artist Retreat Fellow, a 2021 Djerassi Artist Residency Fellow, the Curator in Residence with Hi-ARTS from 2020-2023, New York Stage and Film’s 2020 Founders Award recipient, and Lincoln Center’s lead Community Artist in Residence from 2015-2020. Her collaborative work with Ping Chong + Company, Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ, was a NYTimes Critics Pick in 2018. Her work with First Person PBS received a NY Emmy Nomination in 2018. Her plays include: Both My Grandfathers (workshop, Lincoln Center in 2015), Ready or Not (formerly Lucky, development, NYSAF 2020), the musical If This Be Sin (development, Kennedy Center 2021), and Beyond Punishment: Stories of Justice and Healing (commissioned by Columbia Center for Justice 2023). Her debut novel, Ready or Not, will be published by Dutton Books. Kirya has received a Robert Redford’s Sundance Foundation award for Activism in the Arts.

Elle Thoni

Elle Thoni (they/them/theirs)

Elle Thoni is a queer playwright and public artist from Dakota land in Minneapolis, MN. In search of wildness amidst this Great Unraveling, they write plays about shapeshifters, emergent ecologies, and unlikely kinship. Drawing from a background in ensemble-devised performance, puppetry, and documentary theater, Elle creates pieces that are as lush and dynamic as the living systems they are inspired by. They are the recipient of the Rosa Parks Playwriting Award, second place Paula Vogel Playwriting Award and Mark Twain Comic Playwriting Award, and a Planet Earth Playwriting Award from the Kennedy Center. Their work has been supported by the New Harmony Project, Everwood Farmstead, the Mid-America Theater Conference, the MN State Arts Board, the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, and the Network of Ensemble Theaters, among others. Elle holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from Carnegie Mellon and is a proud member of The Dramatists Guild. They keep bees, and vice versa. ellethoni.com

DeLanna Studi

DeLanna Studi (she/her/hers)

DeLanna Studi is a Cherokee actor/playwright whose TV credits include Dreamkeeper, Edge of America, Shameless, General Hospital, Z Nation, Goliath, Reservation Dogs, and Disney’s The Roof. Her theater credits include the First National Broadway Tour of August: Osage County, Off-Broadway’s Informed Consent, and Gloria: A Life. She retraced her family’s footsteps along the Trail of Tears with her father and wrote her play And So We Walked. Recently, it made its Off-Broadway debut at Minetta Lane, where it was recorded for Audible. She has created plays for Theatre for One, The Theatre Center, and Period Piece. She chairs SAG-AFTRA’s National Native Americans Committee. She is the Artistic Director of Native Voices at the Autry, the only Equity Theatre in the country developing and producing plays written by Native American playwrights. DeLanna is a 2022 United States Artists Fellow and an Advance Gender Equality’s Arts Legacy Playwright Grant Recipient.

Michael Shayan

Michael Shayan (he/him/his)

Michael Shayan is an Emmy Award-nominated Iranian-American writer, performer and illusionist from “Tehran-geles,” CA. Out Magazine recognized him on the OUT100 list of the “most impactful and influential LGBTQ+ people." His solo play, Avaaz, world premiered at South Coast Repertory, directed by Tony-nominee Moritz von Stuelpnagel with a Tony and Emmy-winning team. The play will receive its East Coast premiere at The Olney in March 2024, ahead of a national tour. His plays have been produced & developed by Audible, The Geffen Playhouse, South Coast Repertory, La MaMa, New York Stage & Film, Ojai Playwrights Conference, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Theatre Aspen and The Lark, among others. Fellowships include the Sundance Institute, Sun Valley Writers Conference, and Lambda Literary. He was a writer & Consulting Producer on the Emmy-winning "The Book of Queer." At 13, he was the youngest performer in the history of the Magic Castle. BA: Harvard College. MFA: Playwriting, Brooklyn College. 

Jordan Ramirez Puckett

Jordan Ramirez Puckett (they/them/theirs)

Jordan Ramirez Puckett is a Chicanx writer from the Bay Area, currently living in New York City. Their plays include Untitled Dad Play, Transitional Love Stories, Huelga, En Las Sombras, To Saints and Stars, A Driving Beat, Las Pajaritas, Restore, and Inevitable. These works have been produced and/or developed by Abingdon Theatre Company (New York, NY), Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Goodman Theatre (Chicago, IL), Harold Clurman Laboratory Theatre Company (New York, NY), Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, Playwrights Realm (New York, NY), San Diego Repertory Theatre, San Francisco Playhouse, among others. A Driving Beat was short-listed for the prestigious 2022 Yale Drama Series Prize. Jordan recently graduated from the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program at Juilliard.

Eliana Pipes

Eliana Pipes (she/her/hers)

Eliana Pipes is a playwright and filmmaker. Productions: BITE ME (off-Broadway WP Theater & Colt Coeur); DREAM HOU$E (co-pro Alliance Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, and Baltimore Center Stage, published Samuel French); HOOPS (commission/premiere Milwaukee Chamber Theater). Commissions: Two River Theater and South Coast Repertory. Development: NYTW Dartmouth Residency, Playwright's Realm Scratchpad Series, South Coast Repertory PPF, NNPN Showcase, Old Globe Powers New Voices Festival. Writing awards: Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellowship, Alliance Kendeda Prize, Leah Ryan Prize, KCACTF Harold and Mimi Steinberg Award, National Latine Playwrights Award, and Dr. Floyd Gaffney Award. TV: writer on SPARTACUS: House of Ashur. Film: Academy Gold Fellowship for Women, WAVE Grant and Outfest x Colin Higgins Youth Filmmaker Grant, Orchard Project's Episodic Lab, Sundance Institute Latine Collab Scholarship. BA Columbia University, MFA Playwriting Boston University. www.elianapipes.com.

Phanésia Pharel

Phanésia Pharel (she/her/hers)

Phanésia Pharel is a Haitian-American playwright from a Dragon Fruit farm in Miami.Daughter of an immigrant teacher and farmer, she writes to honor people. Full lengths; THE WATERFALL (Workshop, Old Globe Theatre, EST reading), R&B (Bay Area Playwrights Festival Finalist/Honorable Mention, Playwrights Realm Finalist), LUCKY (New York Stage and Film, Kennedy Center Latinx Playwriting Award, Kennedy Center Rosa Parks Playwriting Award, Kennedy Center Lorraine Hansberry Distinguished Achievement). BLACK GIRL JOY (Kilroys 2023, Bay Area Playwrights Festival Finalist/Honorable Mention, Jane Chambers Finalist, Frank Moffett Mosier Fellowship for Works in Heightened Finalist Prize). Other Honors include New Harmony 2023 Finalist and City Theatre National Short Playwriting Finalist. Phanésia is a member of the Obie award-winning EST/ Youngblood group. BA: Urban Studies, Barnard College of Columbia University. MFA: Playwriting, University of California @ San Diego 25’

J.C. Pankratz

J.C. Pankratz (they/them/theirs)

J.C. Pankratz is a queer, trans, non-binary playwright creating lyrical, genre-defying work about gender, class, trauma, and transformation. Their plays are Mortals (Pridefest at The Tank), Eat Your Young (workshop production, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre), Little Kingdom (2nd Place, Mark Twain Playwriting Award), Seahorse (2021 FMM Fellowship for Works in Heightened Language), and Redeemer Mine (Finalist, O’Neill Playwrights Conference). Beloved collaborators also include The Workshop Theater, Theatremasters, Bunchaqueers, CompanyOne, and Kitchen Dog Theater. They are a 2023-24 Writing Fellow with the Playwrights' Realm, a 2023 Core Apprentice with the Playwrights’ Center, and a very amateur whittler. MFA: BU.

Julie Marie Myatt

Julie Marie Myatt (she/her/hers)

Julie Marie Myatt’s plays include: The Happy Ones - South Coast Rep, The Magic Theatre. Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter - Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and the Kennedy Center. Someday - Cornerstone Theater Co. My Wandering Boy - South Coast Rep and the Summer Play Festival, NYC. Boats On A River - the Guthrie Theater, (finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.) The Sex Habits of American Women - Magic Theatre, the Guthrie Theater, among others. Her work has been commissioned, developed and/or seen at Yale Rep, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Seattle Rep, Geva, Denver Center Theatre Company, ACT Seattle, Roundabout, and Steppenwolf, among others. She received a Walt Disney Studios Screenwriting Fellowship, a Jerome Fellowship, a McKnight Advancement Grant, Fadiman Award, and Michener Author in Residence, UT Austin. She is an Alumni of New Dramatists and was a Mellon Playwright in Residence at South Coast Rep, 2013-2016. She currently teaches playwriting at Northwestern University. 

Tara Moses

Tara Moses (she/her/hers)

Tara Moses is a citizen of Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, award-winning playwright, director, and co-Founder of Groundwater Arts. Her completed works include Sections, He’eo’o, Quantum, Bound, Hamlet: El Príncipe de Denmark, Don Juan, Arbeka, Patchwork, Oñgwehoñwe, Snag, Sugar, OklaHOME, Billie, Othello, Haunted, and Poyvfekcv. Selected development/production theaters include: Company One Theatre (Boston, MA); AlterTheatre Ensemble (San Rafael, CA); Kitchen Dog Theater (Dallas, TX); Geva Theatre Center (Rochester, NY); Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Ashland, OR); American Indian Community House (New York, NY); Sound Theatre Company (Seattle, WA); Good Luck Macbeth Theatre Company (Reno, NV); Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program (New Haven, CT); and Native Voices at the Autry (Los Angeles, CA). She holds a B.A. in Theatre from the University of Tulsa and is a MFA candidate in Directing at Brown University/Trinity Rep. www.taramoses.com

Jay B Muskett

Jay B Muskett (he/him/his)

Jay B Muskett (Dine ́) is an Indigenous writer from Nakaibito New Mexico. He has earned an MFA in Dramatic Writing from the University of New Mexico and is an artEquity and 2x MacDowell Fellow. He has been a finalist in the 2021 National Playwright’s Conference and awarded the Thornton Wilder Fellowship by the MacDowell Colony. Full productions include 1n2ian produced by the University of New Mexico and Sheepherders Special by New Native Theatre in St. Paul Minnesota. Dance was selected to be a part of the annual reading at Native Voices at the Autry in Los Angeles and the full-length Life Within the Cracks was invited to be a part of The Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival in Abeline TX. Muskett is currently an adjunct faculty member at based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Sam Mueller

Sam Mueller (they/she)

Sam Mueller is a Chicago-born, Florida-raised, New York-based playwright. Their work primarily explores bodies, public spaces, and the search for safety and security to live as one's authentic self. Their plays include PIN. (2023 O’Neill Finalist, 2023 EST/Sloan First Light), Laced (2022 Princess Grace Semifinalist, 2020 Kilroys List, 2019 O’Neill Finalist), and 70.3 (2020 Hearth Theater Commission). They find a deep joy in working with students; their work has been read at Northwestern University, Columbia College Chicago, University of Central Florida, Western Michigan University, and University of Dayton. Sam is a proud member of EST/Youngblood and an alum of the Ucross Foundation. They feel most at home in the pit of a punk show. The plays (and Sam) are all very queer. BS: Northwestern University

Daria Miyeko Marinelli

Daria Miyeko Marinelli (they/she)

Daria Miyeko Marinelli (they/she) is a Japanese-Italian playwright/screenwriter who delights in using the heist genre, stories of wildness, and bifurcating narrative structures to challenge current and construct new cultural mythologies. Their plays include Beautiful Blessed Child, cropt, Ravenous, What Happens Next and this is what i chose. Daria’s work has been performed at La Jolla Playhouse’s WOW Festival, Atlantic Theatre Company, EST, The Flea, and HERE Arts Center. Mx. Marinelli has developed work with Cirque du Soleil, Roundabout Theatre Company, The Playwright’s Realm, Fault Line Theatre, SPACE on Ryder Farm, The New Harmony Project, pseudonym productions, EST-LA, and The MFA Playwrights Workshop and TYA/USA’s New Visions New Voices at The Kennedy Center. Mx. Marinelli is currently developing a TV series with Hill District Media and serves on the Board of Directors for The New Harmony Project and Fault Line Theatre. BA: Brown University. MFA: University of Texas at Austin.

Gloria Majule

Gloria Majule (she/her/hers)

Gloria Majule is a playwright from Dodoma, Tanzania presently residing in Seattle, WA. She seeks to tell stories that bring multiple black voices together from across the world, and are accessible to black audiences no matter where they are. She writes plays for and about Africans and the African diaspora. Gloria has been commissioned by Audible and Atlantic Theater Company. She is the 2023 winner of the Leah Prize from the Leah Ryan Fund. Her plays have been developed by Atlantic Theater Company, American Blues Theater, Vassar's Powerhouse Theater, The New Group, Premiere Stages at Kean University, Great Plains Theatre Commons, Alliance Theatre and Westport Country Playhouse among others. Gloria graduated summa cum laude from Cornell University with a BA in Performing & Media Arts and Spanish, and holds an MFA in Playwriting from Yale School of Drama. She is a Playwriting Professor at Cornish College of the Arts. Website: gloriamajule.com

Lavina Jadhwani

Lavina Jadhwani (she/her/hers)

Lavina Jadhwani (she/her) is a Chicago-based director, playwright, and activist. As a playwright, her work has been seen at the Guthrie, the Goodman, the Gift, East West Players, Cincinnati Shakes, and Indianapolis Shakes, and more. Directing credits include Guthrie Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, PlayMakers Rep, the Rep of St. Louis, Asolo Rep, Mixed Blood, the Neo-Futurists, the Gift, Teatro Vista, Silk Road Rising, Rasaka Theatre Company, where she served as Artistic Director for seven years. Lavina serves on the boards of the National New Play Network and the Chicago Inclusion Project. She is a proud cancer survivor, dog mom, and child of immigrants. BFA/MA: Carnegie Mellon School of Drama; MFA: The Theatre School at DePaul University. www.lavinajadhwani.com / @lavinajadhwani 

Rudi Goblen

Rudi Goblen (he/him/his)

Rudi is a playwright, professor, and performer who creates solo theater and devised theater work. As an acclaimed dancer, he has toured nationally, and internationally, competing, adjudicating, and teaching with his award-winning group Flipside Kings. ​Rudi is a recipient of the Colman Domingo Award, a three-time recipient of playwriting awards from the Kennedy Center, the Distinguished Achievement for the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award, and an O'Neill Finalist; as well as two Miami-Dade County Choreographer Awards, a FEAST Award for his book of poetry "A Bag of Halos and Horns," and is a Theater Masters' Take Ten Playwright. ​He is a founding member of Teo Castellanos/D-Projects and Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre. He has trained and worked with Cirque Du Soleil and DV8 Physical Theater. Publications include Theater Magazine, Imagined Theatres: Writing for a Theoretical Stage, and Samuel French/Concord Theatricals. Rudi holds an MFA in playwriting from the Yale School of Drama.

Shara Feit

Shara Feit (she/they)

Shara Feit makes sad/funny work about messy/virtuosic/queer women and gender nonconforming folx to build transformative community and foster radical care. Shara’s full-length plays are little lives (2019 O’Neill Finalist, 2020 BRIO Award, 2023 Terrence McNally Incubator Finalist, development: G45, Geva, Pipeline Theatre Company), Bad Things (2021 Jerome Fellowship Semifinalist, 2023 O’Neill Semifinalist), The Matriarchs (development: G45), Ties (Agnes Nixon Award development: Northwestern, Wyrd Sisters Productions), and High School Dybbuk (development: Alliance for Jewish Theatre). Shara's work has also been supported by the Banff Centre, Williamstown Theatre Festival’s Professional Training Program, Rule of 7x7 at the Tank, Barn Arts, The Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival (2020 Winner), The Sewanee Writers’ Conference (2019 Romulus Linney Scholar), B Street Theatre, the Lanford Wilson Festival, the Dorot Foundation, and The 24 Hour Plays. BA: Northwestern University.

Psalmayene 24

Psalmayene 24 (24)

Psalmayene 24 is an award-winning playwright, director, and actor. He is currently the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Playwright in Residence at Mosaic Theater Company. Playwriting credits include Monumental Travesties, Dear Mapel, and Les Deux Noirs at Mosaic Theater Company; Out of the Vineyard at Joe’s Movement Emporium; An Eloquent Fugitive Slave Flees to Ireland at Solas Nua; Free Jujube Brown! at The African Continuum Theater Company; and Zomo the Rabbit: A Hip-Hop Creation Myth at Imagination Stage. Directing credits include Tempestuous Elements at Arena Stage; Good Bones, Flow, and Pass Over at Studio Theatre; Necessary Sacrifices: A Radio Play at Ford’s Theatre; Native Son at Mosaic Theater Company; Word Becomes Flesh at Theater Alliance; and Cinderella: The Remix at Imagination Stage. His play, Les Deux Noirs, is published by TRW Plays and his solo play, Free Jujube Brown!, is published in the anthology, Plays from the Boom Box Galaxy (TCG).