Cori Thomas (Playwright)(she/her) is an-award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and author. She is the Mellon Foundation Playwright in Residence at WP Theater and a Soros Equality Fellow. Produced Plays include LOCKDOWN (TRW Plays); When January Feels Like Summer (Dramatic Publishing Company); Co- Author: I Cried To Dream Again – Penguin/Random House (May 2022) Finalist “In The Margins” Social Justice Book Award. Multiple residencies and fellowships including Mellon Foundation Playwright-In-Residence at WP Theater in NYC; MacDowell; Sundance Institute; O’Neill National Playwrights Conference; Bogliasco Foundation; Baryshnikov Foundation, Jerome Foundation; New Dramatists Alum; Helen Merrill Prize, American Theater Critic’s Association Osborne Award- Best New Play, and
more.
Co-Founder San Quentin Film Festival SQFF (Fall 2024) www.sanquentinfilmfestival.com
Tea Alagić (Director) is an internationally recognized theater maker and producer based in New York City. She holds a BFA in acting from Charles University in Prague and an MFA in directing from Yale School of Drama, where she was awarded the Julian Milton Kaufman Prize. Since 2012, she has taught directing and collaboration at The New School for Drama, where she served as Head of Directing from 2016 to 2020.
Alagić has directed major productions across the U.S. and Europe, including world premiere of The Brothers Size by Tarell Alvin McCraney (The Public Theater, Lortel Award nomination), Jackie by Elfriede Jelinek (WP Theater, Lortel Award nomination ), Romeo and Juliet (CSC Rep), and Passing Strange (The Wilma Theater), for which she received several awards and nominations, including a Barrymore Award for Outstanding Direction and nominations for Outstanding Production. Born in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Alagić fled her country in 1992 due to war and found refuge in theater. Her work reflects a deep commitment to cross-cultural collaboration and storytelling.
Lisa Peterson (Director/Playwright) is a two-time OBIE Award-winning writer/director. Her works include An Iliad, written with Denis O’Hare (NYTW, OBIE and Lortel Awards); The Good Book (co-written with O’Hare, Court Theater, and Berkeley Rep); The Waves (adapted from Virginia Woolf with composer David Bucknam, NYTW). Lisa is renowned for directing new plays and classics across the country; recently she directed the world premiere of Doug Wright’s Good Night Oscar on Broadway. She was Associate Director at Berkeley Rep, Center Theatre Group, and La Jolla Playhouse. She is a recent recipient of the Gordon Davidson Award for Lifetime Achievement. Upcoming writing projects include The Song of Rome with O’Hare, and The Idea of Order with composer Todd Almond.
Monet Hurst-Mendoza (Playwright)(she/her) is a playwright and TV writer from Los Angeles who lives in New York City. Her plays have been developed with The Alley Theater, Rising Circle Theater Collective, On-Site Opera, Astoria Performing Arts Center, WP Theater, The Public Theater, Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Westport Country Playhouse, and Long Wharf Theatre. She is an alum of the Emerging Writers Group at The Public Theater, R&D Group at The Civilians, Fresh Ground Pepper’s Playground Playgroup, WP Theater Playwrights Lab, and the Van Lier Fellowship at New Dramatists. She has been in residence at MacDowell, Ucross, Stillwright, La Mama Umbria, Millay Arts, The MITTEN Lab, and SPACE on Ryder Farm. Monet was a writer/producer for seasons 21-24 of Law and Order: SVU. Episodes she co-wrote won three Imagen Awards for positive portrayals of Latinos in media and a nomination for Mystery Writers of America’s 2023 Edgar Allen Poe Award. Proud member of The Kilroys, The Dramatist Guild, and WGAE.
Tatiana Pandiani (Director) is a director-choreographer and writer who works in English and Spanish. She’s the creator of bilingual musical Azul (Jonathan Larson Winner, NAMT, O’Neill, Goodspeed) which has sold out shows at 54Below and Joe’s Pub. Recent: Dial M for Murder (Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park), Indecent (Perseverance Theatre, Alaska), Our Town (Dallas Theatre Center). Tatiana directed and choreographed the world premiere of Torera at the Alley Theatre, in Houston. She received a Lucille Lortel Alcove commission for her new play, Hinge Baby, a climate change comedy she is co-writing with Danny Tejera; she is also developing English Only based on the true events of the English Only movement in Florida in the 1980/s alongside journalist and author Nick Griffin. Columbia MFA. Reps: UTA & Brillstein. For more info: www.tatianapandiani.com / www.azulthemusical.com
Kayla Amani is a director and storyteller from and based in NYC. Kayla is passionate about creating and uplifting work involving the intricacies of Black and Queer experiences, while also finding delight in seeking out the humanity and complexities within morally compromised characters. They are a company member and frequent director with PlayGround-NY, winning the season’s “People’s Choice Award” for their direction of @rudymocha has entered the chatroom. In addition, they’re a member of TAG, an artist-led collaboration cohort run through The Tank. Kayla has proudly assisted directors such as Lileana Blain-Cruz (Flex, White Girl in Danger), Caitlin Sullivan (The Keep Going Songs), and Tamilla Woodard (Weightless) among others. They have loved working with companies such as Second Stage, Lincoln Center and WP Theater.
Britt Berke is a director whose work interrogates love, power, and how these entities are intertwined and revolutionized. She directed the world premiere of Betty Smith’s Becomes a Woman (Mint Theater Company), which received an Outer Critics Circle Nomination for Outstanding Off-Broadway Play. Recently: watch me (NYTW at Adelphi); Springtime (Chautauqua Theater Company); DOGS (Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep); Anne Carson’s Antigonick (Torn Out Theater); Promenade in concert (The Public Theater’s Fornes Marathon); I Don’t Trust Adults (Joe’s Pub); Scenes with Girls (TheaterLab); All My Sons (NYU Grad); workshops with Mabou Mines and La MaMa; and short films SHIPS and The Skin of the Water. Select assisting: The Skin of Our Teeth (dir. Lileana Blain-Cruz); Mud / Drowning (dir. JoAnne Akalaitis). Britt is an alumna of the Drama League Directors Project, Roundabout Directors Group, MTC Directing Fellowship, and Mercury Store Directing Intensive. BA, Barnard College of Columbia University. brittberke.com
Penzi Hill (she/her) is a New York based theatre artist/producer/dramaturg. Penzi started her career at Williamstown Theater Festival where she was a part of the inaugural class of Black Theatre United’s Early BIPOC Theatre-Makers. Subsequently, Penzi was the Associate Producer of WP Pipeline Festival (2022), an intern for the Movement Theatre Company in Harlem, the Producing Intern at Tom Kirdahy Productions, and the Assistant for the Theatrical Literary Department at IAG. Currently, Penzi is the Artistic Assistant at MCC Theater. NYU Tisch (2023).
Susanna Jaramillo is a Queens-based director and stage manager hailing from Cranford, New Jersey. Artistically, Susanna believes in radical inclusion. She aims to create work that subverts our expectations of identity and uplifts voices that are often left out of the theatrical canon. Her work lives in a world of sensorial extremes and seeks to interrogate the ways that we do and don’t engage with the intersectional nature of identity and what that means for each of us. Recent credits include: The Memory Brigade (The Motor Company) the doctor will see you shortly (Keen Company), azn sad grl (Mercury Store) Myth of the Mountain (Open Jar), Jesus 2.0 (Workshop Theatre), Fucking A (PPAS), Best Life (JACK). Assisting credits include: Yellow Face (Broadway, Roundabout) The Ants (Geffen Playhouse), Wolf Play (MCC) Dom Juan (Bard SummerScape). Susanna is an alum of the Roundabout Director’s Group and the Drama League Directing Assistantship Program.
Alex Keegan is a director of new work, adaptations, and devised pieces. She’s a 2023 Drama League FutureNOW Directing Fellow, 2022/2023 Directing Fellow at Rattlestick Theater, New Georges Affiliated Artist, and on faculty at Wesleyan University. Recent directing: MANNING by Benjamin Benne (World Premiere, Portland Stage), MAIDEN VOYAGE by Cayenne Douglass (The Flea), WOLFCRUSH by Haygen-Brice Walker (Wesleyan), CHARLOTTE’S WEB (National Tour, TheaterWorksUSA), BIRDS OF NORTH AMERICA by Anna Ouyang Moench (Chester Theatre Co.), AFFINITY co-adapted with Ryan Adelsheim from Sarah Waters’ novel and UHURU by Gloria Majule (Yale Drama), AUNTIE VANYA by Reed Northrup (Ars Nova ANT Fest), and new work in development with Primary Stages, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and NYTW Adelphi Residency. Alum: Roundabout Directors Group, The Civilians R&D Group, Lincoln Center Directors Lab, Williamstown Directing Corps. MFA: Yale School of Drama, where she received the Julian Milton Kaufman Memorial Prize for Directing. alex-keegan.com
Roshni Lavelle (she/her) is an arts administrator, curator, and creative producer currently working as a Line Producer at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, where she primarily focuses on the annual free and choose-what-you-pay summer festival, Summer for the City. She proudly supported the reopening of David Geffen Hall, and has led collaborations with organizations such as GlobalFEST, the Bushwick Starr, and Deaf Broadway. She is passionate about cultivating and presenting works that reveal new ideas, generate empathy and joy, and encourage audiences to reflect on their roles within the worlds they inhabit. In her current role, she strives to create community-driven spaces where people can gather, believing that we find our purpose through conversation with others. A proud Chicago native, she holds a BFA in Drama and English from New York University and an MFA in Performing Arts Management from Brooklyn College.
Mikhaela Mahony is a Brooklyn-based director working at the intersection of theatre, film, and opera. She is a frequent collaborator with Ensemble Studio Theatre and the Obie-Award winning EST/Youngblood, and has developed work with New York City Opera, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Boston Lyric Opera, The Syndicate, The Lobbyists, City Lyric Opera, the Chautauqua Institution, Bard College, and Rutgers’ Mason Gross School of the Arts. Summer, Mikhaela’s debut as a film director, was an official selection at the Buffalo International Film Festival, Flathead Lake International Cinemafest, and FilmColumbia. She is the Director of Opera at Rutgers University, and serves on the faculty of Mannes School of Music at The New School. As an associate, Mikhaela regularly works alongside artists such as Lileana Blain-Cruz, Daniel Fish, and Anne Bogart. Mikhaela is a proud volunteer artist with The 52nd Street Project. MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts, BA from Barnard College. Mikhaela is a proud volunteer artist with The 52nd Street Project.
Skye Pagon (she/her) is a Brooklyn-based producer, director, performer, and arts administrator. She received her BFA in Drama from New York University, where she first fell in love with classical theater and telling epically theatrical stories in curious and intimate spaces. She is a resident producer for the actor-lead company, Atomi Theatre Collective, and has produced shows and events at Lincoln Center, the Tada! Youth Theater, and Hedgepig Ensemble. As a director, she has worked at NYU and with Hedgepig Ensemble. She served as a founding Curator for Expand the Canon, an annual shortlist of classical plays aimed at expanding gender diversity in the classical theater canon and championing underproduced works from a multiplicity of global theatrical traditions. She currently works on the Programming team at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
Mukta Phatak is a playwright, actor and teaching artist based in New York City. Her writing has been produced/developed at the Children’s Theater of Charlotte, Ancram Opera House, The Workshop Theater, Trike Theatre and in devised works as part of Fringe festivals. She has also written extensively for children through her work with Mind Body Music NYC.
Mukta is a project-seeker and much of her work blossoms from the creative communities she cultivates. A proud daughter of Indian immigrants, her intersectional identities are at the core of her artistry. In her writing, acting and everyday life she strives to be a force for justice, learning, and play.
Lianna Rada-Hung is an arts administrator and producer born and raised in New York City. She received her B.A. in Dramatic Literature at NYU’s College of Arts and Science and is currently the Artistic Programs Manager at Williamstown Theatre Festival. Lianna serves as the Program Coordinator for the American Repertory Theater, a co-producer on the Broadway-bound Queen of Versailles starring Kristin Chenoweth, and the co-founder and producer of the Episodic Theatre Project. Before her time at WTF, she was a Production Intern at Back Roads Entertainment, Sesame Workshop, and Late Night with Seth Meyers. She has stage managed several theatrical productions, including the original musical Ships: A Musical Trilogy at The Tank and Soho Playhouse, several musicals as part of NYU’s Lamplighters, and the 2022 season of WTF’s Fridays@3 reading series.
Jordan Ramirez Puckett is a Chicanx writer from the San Francisco Bay Area. Their plays include A Sapphic Family Christmas, Transitional Love Stories, Untitled Dad Play, 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, Creede Repertory Theatre, Flint Repertory Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Intar Theatre, Playwrights Realm, San Diego Repertory Theatre, San Francisco Playhouse, and TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, among others. Jordan was named a finalist for the 2022 Yale Drama Series Prize and is a 2024 graduate of the Juilliard School’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program.
Deneen Reynolds-Knott’s plays include BITING THE HAND (Florida Studio Theatre Commission, 2022), SHOEBOX PICNIC ROAD SIDE: ROUTE ONE (World Premiere at Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Fall 2021), BABES IN HO-LLAND (2020 Bay Area Playwrights Festival, World Premiere at, Shotgun Players, Winter 2024), PARTICULARLY MEDDLESOME ANCESTORS (2022 Ingram New Works Festival, Nashville Rep) and BATON (2018 Premiere Stages Play Festival, Staged reading at Florida Studio Theatre’s 2022 Summer Reading Theatre, San Diego Rep’s 2021 Black Voices Reading Series). She contributed work to 24/6: A Jewish Theater Company’s Telephone Plays, True Colors’ 2022 Next Narrative Monologue Competition and The Billie Holiday Theatre’s 50in50: Shattering the Glass Ceiling. Deneen was a member of Clubbed Thumb’s 2019-2020 Early-Career Writers’ Group and participated in SPACE at Ryder Farm’s Family Residency in Summer 2022. She is a New Georges affiliated artist.
Amy Staats is a writer, actor, director, producer, and a 2018 Tow Playwright in Residence through the Atlantic Theater Company.
The world premiere of Amy’s play EDDIE AND DAVE had an extended run off Broadway at the Atlantic Theater and co-starred Amy in the role of ‘Eddie Van Halen.”
Her one-act play, THROWS OF LOVE, has received multiple productions and is the winner of the Samuel French Short Play Festival. Other plays include BAT KITTY (The Momentum Festival); I HOPE SHE’LL BE OKAY (New Works Now) and HANDS (developed at ATC and SPACE at Ryder Farm). As an actor, Amy most recently performed the lead in the Broadway production of THE THANKSGIVING PLAY (u/s three performances). She is a resident artist at Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor and SPACE on Ryder farm (RIP), an affiliated artist with New Georges, and a semi-finalist at Sundance Theater Lab and The O’Neill Playwrights Festival. Her Russian spy/gymnastics dramedy DEFECTED is in development with Olivia Wingate (MO Studios) and Wren Arthur (Olive Productions).
Maia Safani (she/her) is a Brooklyn-based creative producer, education programs strategist, and arts administrator. Her work centers community, accessibility, and collaborative placemaking. She is a former member of Signature Theatre’s artistic team, where she created Signature’s inaugural education program and line produced various artistic productions and initiatives supporting Signature playwrights, including Quiara Alegría Hudes, Dominique Morisseau, and Sarah Ruhl. Prior to Signature, she worked on global programs at The Lark Play Development Center, where she helped produce convenings and staged readings of works by writers from Russia, Mexico, China, Romania, and the Middle East. Beyond theater, she has also produced live music events and supported film and visual arts initiatives. She is currently the Associate Director of Arts Administration at NYU Gallatin. Bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University.
Danielle Stagger is a playwright and performer from Queens, NY. Her plays largely engage questions of performance, respectability, and shame through the exploration of the appropriate and the forbidden. She prioritizes the authentic presence of Blackness, queerness, and womanhood both on and off stage and, as an artist in practice, works to decentralize and destabilize the product-driven, linear theatrical process. Danielle is the inaugural recipient of the Lily’s Lorraine Hansberry Fellowship, is a two-time Eugene O’Neill NPC Finalist, and was a nominee for the 2024 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Danielle’s plays have been finalists for the SoHo Rep Writer/Director Lab, the Ollie New Play Award, and the Lark’s Venturous Playwrights Fellowship. She has been commissioned by Second Stage Theater and Manhattan Theatre Club; she holds a B.A. in Theater and Performance Studies from Stanford University and an MFA in Playwriting from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale.
Mary Bacon (Blue) Drama Desk Award for Patti in Coal Country, and Susan in Nothing Gold Can Stay, and her NYC theatre career. Broadway: Rock N Roll, Arcadia. Off-Broadway select credits: DIG, (Primary Stages), Coal Country, (Audible/The Public), Giant; (The Public), Harrison, TX, Roads to Home, Little Women, Happy Now? and Charles Busch’s The Tribute Artist; (Primary Stages), Days to Come, Women Without Men (Drama Desk/Lortel nominations, The Mint), Eccentricities of a Nightingale ( TACT). Recent regional: THE SCARLET LETTER (Two River),SWEAT (Guthrie). Film/TV and more at marybacon.net. Actors Center Member. For Andrew.
Sasha Diamond (Red) (she/her) New York: Regretfully, So the Birds Are (Playwrights Horizons & WP Theatre), Peerless (Primary Stages), Once Upon a (Korean) Time (Ma-Yi), Teenage Dick (Ma-Yi & The Public), Bobbie Clearly (Roundabout), Significant Other (Broadway), Kentucky (Ensemble Studio Theatre), and others. Television credits include: Mystic Christmas (Hallmark), The Equalizer (CBS), Bull (CBS), New Amsterdam (NBC), NCIS: New Orleans (CBS), Magnum: PI (CBS), Tommy (CBS).
Amy Jo Jackson (Green) (they/she): WP Debut! NYC: Ensemble Studio Theater, Company XIV, Prospect, Red Bull, NY Shakespeare Exchange, Exit Pursued by a Bear. Fav Regional: Singin’ in the Rain (Weston), Fun Home (SpeakEasy Stage), Cabaret (Flat Rock), Little Mermaid (Arkansas Rep), Cymbeline (Opera House Arts), Film/TV: Dicks: The Musical (A24), High Maintenance, and the singing voice of a crab in Under the Boardwalk (Paramount). They won a 2022 Bistro Award for their acclaimed Tennessee Williams solo show The Brass Menagerie (official selection of the 2022 Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival and 2023 Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis). Her play You Know What They Say About Scorned Women was a 2024 winner of the Red Bull Short New Play Festival. Their original musical Hatchetation (@hatchetationthemusical) was a 2021 selection at the O’Neill (NMTC) and the 2023 Kilroy’s List/Web. She was a finalist for the 2022 Larson Grant and is the recipient of a 2023 EST/Sloan Commission. Their work as a nightlife artist has found them on just about every cabaret and comedy stage in NYC, with solo engagements at 54 Below, Joe’s Pub, the Green Room 42 and the Duplex. This one’s for Jeff and the fam.
Richard Masur (My Dad) Here is a sampling of his 52 year career: Broadway: Prayer For The French Republic, Lucky Guy, Democracy, and The Changing Room; Off-Broadway (partial): Sarah, Sarah, The Ruby Sunrise, Fetch Clay, Make Man, Relevance, The Net Will Appear. He has appeared in over 60 feature films, including Who’ll Stop the Rain; The Thing; Heartburn; Risky Business; Under Fire; My Girl; License to Drive; Another Year Together; Before, During and After; and Hudson. TV series (partial) – The Girls on the Bus, Kaleidoscope, Transparent, Younger, Girls, Bull, The Good Wife, The Good Fight, Orange Is the New Black, Red Oaks, MASH, One Day at a Time. Over 40 TV movies including – Fallen Angel, Adam, The Burning Bed (Emmy Nomination), It, And The Band Played On, and 61*. He was most recently seen on the HBO Max series The Girls On The Bus. Former National President, VP and Board Member of Screen Actors Guild & National Board Member of SAG-AFTRA. For a full list of his credits go to imdb.com.
Lakisha May (Me) (she/her) Broadway: Jaja’s African Hair Braiding, Skeleton Crew (Manhattan Theatre Club); Off-Broadway: Everybody, In The Blood (Signature Theatre Company), Sojourners (NYTW, Playwright’s Realm), The Miser (Moliere in the Park); Regional Theater: La Jolla Playhouse, American Conservatory Theater, Alliance Theater, Arden Theatre, Marin Theater Company, and others. Film & TV: Historias del Canal, City on a Hill, Boardwalk Empire, Law & Order: SVU, Forever, Blue Bloods and others. Education: MFA, The American Conservatory Theater. BA, Spelman College. Lakisha creates her own work and has produced projects with Nikyatu Jusu, Rashad Frett, Saheem Ali, Monkeypaw Productions, and others. kishamay.com @kisha_may
