(Playwright & “Man”), raised in Columbia, South Carolina, is a Brooklyn-based playwright and actor. Her plays include Last Night and the Night Before, Laid to Rest, The Review or How to Eat Your Opposition (2018 WP Pipeline Festival, 2013 Eugene O’Neill Theater Center National Playwrights Conference Finalist) The New Normal, and The Cowboy Is Dying. Donnetta was a 2018 Space on Ryder Farm Working Farm Resident Playwright and a 2016-2018 WP Playwrights Lab member. She is the inaugural recipient of the Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award. Her work has been supported by The Public Theater, New Harmony Project, Berkeley Rep, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, The Labyrinth Theater Company, New York Theater Workshop, and more. Donnetta is also a staff writer on the television show “Manhunt: Lonewolf”. Acting credits include Broadway’s In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) and Well, Twelfth Night (The Public Theater/Mobile Unit), O, Earth (The Foundry Theatre), and Men on Boats (Playwrights Horizons and Clubbed Thumb), plus many regional theater and film/TV roles.
(“Man”) Broadway: One Man, Two Guvnors; Passing Strange. Off Broadway: Passage (Soho Rep); A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Henry V, Twelfth Night, Romeo & Juliet, The Comedy of Errors, Pericles (The Public Theater/Mobile Shakespeare Unit), Gone Missing (City Center/Encores! Off Center), Mankind (Playwrights Horizons), The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World (Signature Theater), The Glory of the World (BAM), #9 (59E59); The Rover (NY Classical Theater); Marat/Sade (Classical Theater of Harlem). Regional: Repertory Theater of Saint Louis, Shakespeare Theater Company, Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Actors Theater of Louisville, Barrington Stage, American Conservatory Theater, Dallas Theater Center, Triad Stage, Crossroads Theater Company, California Shakespeare Theater, etc. Film: The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Medal of Victory, Bee Season. Education: MFA, American Conservatory Theater, BFA University of Evansville.
(Director) is the BOLD Theater Women’s Leadership Circle Associate Artistic Director of WP Theater and the co-leader of WP’s Directors Lab. As a director, her recent projects include Associate Director on Hadestown on Broadway, Top Girls and Men on Boats at American Conservatory Theater, James Scruggs’ 3/Fifths at 3-Legged Dog, PolkaDots: The Cool Kids Musical at The Atlantic Theatre Company (Off-Broadway Alliance Award). She is the co-founder of PopUP Theatrics, a partnership creating immersive and participatory theatre for audiences in Europe, South America, Mexico and the US since 2007. She is a former Time Warner Foundation Fellow of the WP Directors Lab, Alumnus of The Lincoln Center Director’s Lab, Audrey Fellow at New Georges and a Usual Suspect at New York Theatre Workshop. She is a graduate of The Yale School of Drama’s Acting program where she currently teaches and is the recipient of The Josephine Abady Award from The League of Professional Theatre Women and The Charles Bowden Award from New Dramatists.
Sukari Jones is a playwright and lyricist who believes in art as a form of social justice. Sukari is most interested in the intersection of race and power in the United States as seen through a magical or sci-fi lens. She is passionate about creating impossible theater that necessarily centers people of color–in particular Black femmes. Similar to the Bechdel test, the Sukari test would be: see if you have you created a work that centers POCs, who inhabit roles as three-dimensional human beings who are neither an animal, a criminal or a slave/servant. Education: B.A. Vassar College, M.F.A. NYU Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program. Memberships: WP Lab, BMI Lehman Engel Advanced Musical Theater Workshop, The Public Theater’s Emerging Writers Group. Sukari’s work has been produced and developed at The Public Theater, Cherry Lane Theater, Lincoln Center, Lark Play Development Center, Barrington Stage Company, Joe’s Pub, Prospect Theater Company, Feinstein’s/54 Below, National Alliance of Musical Theatre Conference and Goodspeed Opera House. Fellowships/Residencies: The MacDowell Colony, W.K. Rose (Vassar College), Catwalk Art Residency, Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center National Music Theatre Conference INCUBATOR residency, NAMT Festival of New Musicals. Commissions: Atlantic Theater Company, Barrington Stage Company.
Alexis Scheer was named Rising Theatre Star by Improper Bostonian in the Boston’s Best Issue and is currently featured on the Kilroys’ List and Remezcla’s 8 Exciting Latinx Playwrights. Plays include Our Dear Dead Drug Lord (world premiere Off-Broadway WP Theater/Second Stage; developed at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Off the Grid Theatre, and McCarter Theatre Center; Kilroys’ List, featured finalist at HowlRound’s LTC Carnaval of New Latinx Work, Relentless Award semi-finalist, Bay Area Playwrights Festival finalist, 50PP’s Best Unproduced Latinx Plays, 50PP’s Best Latinx Plays for College); Laughs in Spanish (developed at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre and San Diego REP), Christina (developed at Cleveland Playhouse; Roe Green Award Winner) and Chosen (BCA She Said Festival, Sanguine Theatre’s Playwrights’ Week). She is a proud Miami native and New World School of the Arts alum, and holds a BFA in Musical Theatre from The Boston Conservatory and MFA in Playwriting from Boston University. She also moonlights as the Producing Artistic Director of award-winning fringe company, Off the Grid Theatre. www.alexisscheer.com
Whitney White is a director and musician based in Brooklyn, New York. Recent work: A HUMAN BEING, OF A SORT by Jonathan Payne (Williamstown Theatre Festival), WHAT TO SEND UP WHEN IT GOES DOWN by Aleshea Harris (The Movement, NYT Critics’ Pick), JUMP by Charly Evon Simpson, (PlayMakers Rep, NNPN Rolling World Premiere), CANYON by Jonathan Caren (IAMA, LA Times Critics’ Choice), AN ILIAD (Long Wharf), RITA TAMBIEN RITA by Tony Meneses (Julliard), OTHELLO (Trinity Rep), and BR’ER COTTON by Tearrance Chisholm (Endstation). Her original musical DEFINITION will be part of the 2019 Sundance Theatre Lab and is currently in development with The Bushwick Starr. Her musical look at Macbeth and black female ambition MACBETH IN STRIDE will premiere at the American Repertory Theater in Boston this spring. Associate Directing: MARVIN’S ROOM (Broadway), IF I FORGET (Roundabout), OTHELLO (NYTW), THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES (Atlantic Theatre). Upcoming: OUR DEAR DEAD DRUG LORD (WP Theater/Second Stage), FOR ALL THE WOMEN WHO THOUGHT THEY WERE MAD (Soho Rep). Whitney is an Associate Artist at The Roundabout Theatre, and the current recipient of the Susan Stroman Directing Award. Past fellowships include: 2050 New York Theatre Workshop, 2018 Ars Nova Makers Lab, 2018 Next Wave Residency, the Inaugural Roundabout Directing Fellowship, and Colt Coeur. Acting credits include OCEANS 8 opposite Anne Hathaway. MFA Acting: Brown University/Trinity Rep, BA: Northwestern University. www.whitney-white.com
Carmen Berkeley is thrilled to be making her New York theater debut in Our Dear Dead Drug Lord. She previously starred in OutCast Production’s solo-show, Scorch. Carmen graduated in 2019 with her BFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University.
Daniel Duque-Estrada: Other theaters and plays include the NY premiere of Recent Alien Abductions at The Play Company; Multiple seasons with Trinity Rep in Providence, RI (Resident Acting Company Member); two seasons with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival; two seasons as a resident actor at the Dallas Theater Center; Commonwealth Shakespeare Company in Boston; CalShakes and Shakespeare Santa Cruz, among others. Television: “Second Chance.” He holds an MFA in acting from Brown University/Trinity Rep.
Broadway: Arcadia, NY Theater: Juliet + Romeo, Julius Caesar, The Maid’s Tragedy (Pocket Universe), Middle of the Night, Lemon Sky (Keen Company), Brilliant Traces (Art of Warr), Film/TV: Rebel in the Rye, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Taking Woodstock. Alyssa is the founder of Pocket Universe, a theater company dedicated to reconsidering and re-imagining classic stories and conventions. BA: NYU Gallatin, MA: LAMDA. Proud member: Team SMASH. Big thanks to CTG. alyssamaygold.com
Rebecca Jimenez is honored to be making her Off-Broadway debut in Our Dear Dead Drug Lord. She is a recent BFA graduate from SUNY Purchase. Past credits: Leveling Up, A Chorus Line, Women Playing Hamlet, Henry 6, Bully, The Crucible, Earthquakes in London. Thank you to mi familia… Mami, Papi, Vero, Steph, Abuela, and to my friends. So proud to be doing work by fellow Miami native, Alexis Scheer.
Michaela is thrilled to be making her Off-Broadway debut bringing her closer to her “Broadway Goals”. Many thanks to the staff of Our Dear Dead Drug Lord and to Take3Talent for for giving her this amazing opportunity. And of course, many thanks to her parents and sister Miranda who are always proud of her!
WP/Second Stage debut! Broadway: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Original Cast), The Music Man. TV: Orange Is the New Black, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Chicago P.D., Law & Order: SVU, The Good Wife, Person of Interest, The Big C. Host of Nick Studio 10 and 2013 Kids’ Choice Awards Pre-Show. Film: Holiday Rush, Submission, Central Park. Graduate of NYU/Tisch. Love to Mom & Dad for literally everything. @likal0v3 @thebrooklyncellar
Kyla is a playwright from the San Francisco Bay Area. Her debut play Fall, In Love and War was developed by Anna Deavere Smith and supported by the Astrea Foundation. She has developed her work through the Hemispheric Institute, Institute for Art and Civic Dialogue and the Institute for Theatre in the Jazz Aesthetic. Kyla’s work as a producer informs her playwriting practice; Kyla co-piloted/produced the Creative Ecosystem initiative at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, a model later expanded at 651 Arts and the Kennedy Center.
As a dramaturg Kyla has worked extensively with artists such as Daniel Alexander Jones and Sharon Bridgforth and has dramaturged works developed at Lincoln Center, Soho Rep, the Classical Theatre of Harlem, the Sundance Institute and La Mama, Etc.
Kyla’s work in creative research – exploring the history of California real estate, agribusiness and conservative campaign management – has been presented at the University of Heidelberg, The American University of Paris, New York University and the New School. She holds a BA in Metropolitan Studies, minor in Public Health from UCLA and an MA in Interdisciplinary Research from NYU.
www.kylasearle.com
is a Japanese-American writer and performer who makes plays, musicals, and several opportunities for dance parties. She has developed work through Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Black Swan Lab, Barn Arts Collective’s Hamilton Project Residency, the BMI Librettists Workshop, Great Plains Theatre Conference’s PlayLab, the Maria Irene Fornés Playwriting Workshop, and HB Studio’s First Floor Studio Residency. Her work has been presented at Trinity Repertory Company, the National Asian-American Theatre ConFest, Dixon Place, On the Verge Summer Repertory, A-Squared Theatre Workshop, and FringeNYC, among others. She is a winner of KCACTF’s 2019 Darrell Ayers Playwriting Award, the 2017 Theater Masters’ National MFA Playwrights Festival, the NY Society Library’s Emerging Women’s Artist Grant and a Puffin Artists’ Grant. She is currently finishing her MFA in Playwriting at Brown University and this summer she will be participating in Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor Residency and the NNPN/Kennedy Center MFA Playwrights’ Workshop. www.juliaizumi.com
is a New York-based director and theater maker. WP credits: Ole White Sugah Daddy (2019 Parity Play Festival), Natural Shocks (Benefit Reading starring Kathy Najimy) and Sundown Yellow Moon (Associate Director). Other recent credits: MADONNA col BAMBINO (created with Sarah Einspanier/Deepali Gupta; New Georges, Ars Nova, New Ohio), Next Year People (created with Katie Bender, Rachel Mars and Gab Reisman, Fusebox Festival 2019), Cherie Dre (Danspace Project),16 Winters (Ars Nova) and The Haunted (City Theater). She is the Associate Director of The Lucky Ones and Hundred Days (dir. Anne Kauffman). Caitlin co-founded Seattle’s critically acclaimed Satori Group, where she directed seven collaboratively created, original works. As Artistic Director of the Williams College Summer Theatre Lab, she developed new plays by Martyna Majok, The Bengsons, Dipika Guha, Mallery Avidon and Caroline McGraw. Born and raised in Boston (Dorchester), Massachusetts, Caitlin is a graduate of Williams College, an alum of the Drama League Directors Project and Next Stage Artist Residency, and a New Georges Affiliate Artist.
is a director and producer of theater and new media. Her work has been presented at Abrons Arts Center, BAM Next Wave, The Bushwick Starr, Clubbed Thumb, New Ohio, JACK, Prelude and more, and she’s co-created AR / VR pieces for Tribeca Film Festival, New York Theatre Workshop, and The New York Times. She served as Assistant Director on the West End, off-Broadway, and on tour for Elevator Repair Service’s Gatz, The Select, Arguendo, Fondly Colette Richland and more, has worked extensively with Target Margin Theater, and is the recently-appointed Director of Artistic Programming at Theatre Row. She is a current member of the WP Theater Directors Lab and the New Georges Jam, an alum of Clubbed Thumb’s Directing Fellowship and The Civilians’ R&D Group, and a recipient of residencies at The Drama League, New Georges, LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, NACL, and Target Margin Theater. She teaches at NYU and Dartmouth College. www.sarahcameronhughes.com
(Playwright, Love) is a Brooklyn and Boston-based playwright from Washington, D.C. Her plays include One More Less (2017 Relentless Award Finalist, 2017 O’Neill Conference Finalist, 2016 NYFA-award-winning submission, Playwrights Horizons New Works Lab directed by Robert O’Hara), A Patron of the Arts (2018 Cherry Lane Theatre Mentor Project, mentored by Anne Washburn, directed by Mike Donahue; South Coast Rep 2016 New SCRipts Series; 2018 BAPF finalist), Great Kills (2014-2015 Princess Grace Award-winning submission, 2016 Kilroy’s List, Premiere Stages 2015 New Play Festival), Is Edward Snowden Single? (2019 Kanas City Rep, 2018 Dorset Theatre Festival, 2017 Colt Coeur Play Hotel), and, her latest project, LOVE, her take on our #metoo moment. Her work has been developed or produced at Playwrights Horizons, Cherry Lane Theatre, South Coast Rep, Colt Coeur, Primary Stages, Dorset Theatre Festival, Ensemble Studio Theatre, terraNOVA Collective, The Lark, New Dramatists, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and Premiere Stages. Kate is a proud resident playwright at New Dramatists (2016-2023) and Colt Coeur former playwright in residence and current company member. A short film she wrote and directed, LAZARUS, screened at film festivals around the country. She teaches writing at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Riker’s Island, and lots of places in between. Katecortesi.com
(Director, Love) Stage Director, Activist. 2019 National Directing Fellow at the O’Neill Theater Center. Off Broadway/Regional: Agnes (NY Times Critics’ Pick, 59E59 Theaters); Belleville (Pasadena Playhouse); Dear (MCC, Playlabs); Blue Ridge (Williamstown, Boris Sagal/Drama League Fellowship); The Siblings Play (Cherry Lane); Street Children (NY Times Critics’ Pick); Gun Country (A.R.T/NY); The First Immigrant by Martyna Majok (Williamstown); Invincible Ones (Signature Center); Have You Been There (Rattlestick); Here to Be Seen (Commissioned by the Brooklyn DA); The Vagina Monologues for Taconic Correctional Facility and the Women’s Prison Association. Jenna has developed new work at MCC, Playwrights Horizons, The Public, Labyrinth, A.C.T., Primary Stages, MTC, EST/Youngblood, among others. She is the recipient of a Jonathan Alper Award (MTC) and two SDCF Observerships. Jenna is the Co-Founder of Creative Solutions at SPACE on Ryder Farm, and a proud member of The Actors Studio Directors Unit, the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, and an Affiliated Artist of New Georges.
(Playwright, Ole White Sugah Daddy) is an award-winning writer, actress and comedian whose multi-genre work spans from stage to screen. She is a member of the 2018-19 Emerging Writers Group at The Public Theater, a Luminary Artist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and a past recipient of a TCG Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship as well as a Creative Residency at SPACE on Ryder Farm. Her plays include Ole White Sugah Daddy, Era Era, Selah, African Tea, along with one-woman shows FUFU & OREOS and Obehi Janice: Casanova. An alum of Georgetown University, Obehi’s work has been featured in American Theatre Magazine, NPR, and For Harriet, among other publications. Originally from Lowell, Massachusetts, Obehi splits time between Brooklyn and Los Angeles, where she is currently a staff writer on HULU’s Castle Rock. She recently joined The Kilroys, an advocacy group for gender parity in the theatre.
(Director, Ole White Sugah Daddy) is a New York-based director, theater maker and creator of new work. Recent credits include MADONNA col BAMBINO (created with Sarah Einspanier/Deepali Gupta; New Georges, Ars Nova, New Ohio), Sacha Yanow’s Cherie Dre (Danspace Project), Mary Hamilton’s 16 Winters (Ars Nova) and Claire Kiechel’s The Haunted (City Theater). Other recent associations include New York Theatre Workshop, LCT3, The Public Theater and La Jolla Playhouse. She is the Associate Director of The Lucky Ones and Hundred Days (dir. Anne Kauffman). Caitlin co-founded Seattle’s critically acclaimed Satori Group, where she directed seven collaboratively created, original works. As Artistic Director of the Williams College Summer Theatre Lab, she developed new plays by Martyna Majok, The Bengsons, Dipika Guha, Mallery Avidon and Caroline McGraw. Born and raised in Boston (Dorchester), Massachusetts, Caitlin is a graduate of Williams College, an alum of the Drama League Directors Project and Next Stage Artist Residency and a New Georges Affiliate Artist.
(Playwright, (w)holeness) makes plays about sex, intersectional communities and what it means to heal in a violent world. Their play, How to Defend Yourself will be produced in the 2019 Humana Festival and at Victory Gardens Theatre in 2020. Padilla’s work has been developed with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Ojai Playwrights Conference, Victory Gardens, INTAR Theatre and San Diego REP. Padilla facilitates playwriting workshops with the La Jolla Playhouse/TCG Veterans & Theatre Institute and teaches playwriting and devised theatre at USD and UCSD. MFA, UC San Diego, BFA NYU Tisch. Currently under commission from Colt Coeur. Padilla is also a director, actor and community builder who looks at rehearsal as a laboratory for how we might be together. www.lilypadilla.com
(Director, (w)holeness) is a queer non-binary human/theatermaker/organizer/sex educator/facilitator ferociously dedicated to our collective liberation and to the idea that how we make is as important as what we make. Recent theater credits include: Co-director of Diana Oh’s {my lingerie play}: the Concert and Call to Arms!!!!!!!!! (Rattlestick), Composer/MD for Light Shining In Buckinghamshire (NYTW), music supervisor/co-captain (along with director Rachel Chavkin and MD Nehemiah Luckett) of the TEAM’s Primer for a Failed Superpower. They studied musical theater at NYU (Tisch) and justice ministries at Auburn Seminary, and they were a 2018 Directing Fellow in TransLab at the Public/WP. www.orionjohnstone.com
(Playwright, The Place Women Go) is a New York-born writer of French and Lebanese descent. Her plays include SELLING KABUL (2018 L.Arnold Weissberger Award and Jay Harris Commission from Williamstown Theater Festival, Citation of Excellence from Laurents/Hatcher Award, 2017 Kilroys List, Noor Theater Highlight Reading Series, La Jolla Playhouse DNA Reading Series), AGAINST THE HILLSIDE (Ensemble Studio Theater premiere, Lark Playwrights’ Week, Eugene O’Neill Playwrights’ Conference, 2016 Kilroys List, Roundabout Theater Underground Reading Series, NNPN National Showcase of New Plays), and POWERSTRIP (Playwrights Horizons Reading, Women’s Project Workshop). She is a member of the 2016-2018 Womens’ Project Lab, EST/Youngblood, and a 2015-2016 Dramatists’ Guild Fellow. She holds a BA in Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies from Columbia University and an MFA in Playwriting from the New School for Drama. She is currently a third-year student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai planning to specialize in Psychiatry.
(Director, The Place Women Go) is a theater and film director living in New York City. She has developed worked with Playwrights Horizons, NYTW, Williamstown Theatre Festival, EST, The Tank, and The Geffen in Los Angeles. She received her BA from Yale University where she was a nominee for the Sudler Prize for Excellence in the Arts. Maggie has served as an Associate Director for Bartlett Sher, Phyllida Lloyd, Dan Sullivan, James Bundy, Davis McCallum and Daniel Aukin. She is a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, the inaugural 2018-2019 BOLD Resident Director at Northern Stage and the recipient of the 2018 Boris Sagal Directing Fellowship at Williamstown Theatre Festival. Most recently, Maggie curated a female director-driven reading series called PUBLICREADS, completed her first narrative short film titled CONDOLENCES and directed a GOTV video for Michelle Obama’s When We All Vote Organization.
(Playwright) Rehana Lew Mirza’s play Hatefuck was on the 2017 Kilroy list and has been previously developed by Colt Coeur and WP, as well as Playwrights Horizons, New Group, Ma-Yi, and Primary Stages. Her other plays includes Ladybits (readings: Lark Playwrights Workshop, Local Lab); A People’s Guide to History in the Time of Here and Now (workshops: Primary Stages, PH School, Tisch); Soldier X (productions: Ma-Yi; Brooklyn College; 2015 Kilroy; NYSCA/Lark commission); Neighborhood Watch (NNPN/InterAct commission); Lonely Leela (workshop prod: LPAC); and Barriers (productions: Desipina, Asian American Theater Company). Her musical Bhangin’ It (with collaborators Sam Willmott and Mike Lew) has been workshopped through Project Springboard, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat/3R, Goodspeed, Orchard Project, and at La Jolla Playhouse where she and Mike Lew are Artists-in-Residence. She and Mike also share a Mellon Foundation National Playwright residency administered in partnership with Howlround at Ma-Yi Theater. Additional honors: HBO Access Fellow, Colt Coeur artist residency, Lilly Award (Stacey Mindich “Go Write A Play”), and TCG/New Georges Fellowship. MFA: Columbia University; BFA: NYU Tisch.
