Charly Evon Simpson’s plays include Behind the Sheet, Jump, form of a girl unknown, it’s not a trip it’s a journey, and more. Her work has been seen and/or developed with Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Lark, P73, The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, PlayMakers Repertory Company, Chautauqua Theater Company, Salt Lake Acting Company, and others. She is a recipient of the Paula Vogel Playwriting Award and the Lanford Wilson Award. Some of the commissions she has received include commissions from MTC/Sloan, Cleveland Playhouse, EST/Sloan, and one of the 2020 Elizabeth George Commissions through South Coast Repertory. Charly is currently a member of WP Theater’s 2018-2020 Lab and The New Georges Jam. She’s a former member of SPACE on Ryder Farm’s The Working Farm, Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writers’ Group, Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Youngblood, and Pipeline Theatre Company’s PlayLab. BA: Brown University. MSt: University of Oxford, New College. MFA: Hunter College. www.charlyevonsimpson.com
Victoria Collado is a Cuban-American director with an interest in creating exciting and adventurous theatrical experiences both inside and outside the proscenium frame. She recently directed the immersive theatre piece, AMPARO, written by Vanessa Garcia in partnership with Havana Club by Bacardi. Victoria has directed for Repertorio Español, MCC Youth Company, Sheen Center, IATI theatre, Microteatro Miami, Columbia University and others. Her production El Burlador de Sevilla received various nominations from the ACE awards, and won for Outstanding Ensemble. She was a Van Lier Directing Fellow with Repertorio Español, part of the Directing Corps in the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and a recipient of the SDCF Observership. Victoria was the assistant director to Tony Taccone in John Leguizamo’s Latin History For Morons on Broadway. She received her BFA from Florida International University. She is a fellow of the WP Theater’s 2018-2020 Lab. Ms. Collado is an Associate Member of SDC.
Ilana Becker is a producer and director specializing in new play and musical development, investigative and verbatim material, community-driven projects, and arts education. She is the current Civilians’ R&D Group Program Director, has served on the staff of All For One Theater, Lincoln Center Education, and Bret Adams Ltd, and spent a year as the Associate Artistic Director and Interim Artistic Director of Company of Fools/Sun Valley Center for the Arts. Recent Line Producing includes CollaborationTown’s Riddle of the Trilobites at New Victory Theater, and projects with All For One and Jewish Plays Project. Ilana is the creator of Argument Sessions, a series of ongoing immersive theatrical events weaving SCOTUS transcripts with collaboratively developed original material. She is a member of The WP Theater 2018-2020 Producers Lab, an associate member of SDC, and an alum of The Civilians’ R&D Group, Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, DirectorsLabChicago, Fresh Ground Pepper PlayGroup, as well as a Playwrights Horizons Robert Moss Directing Fellow and an Emerging Leader of NY Arts Fellow. She holds a BA in Dramaturgy from Emerson College and is an alum of NTI at the O’Neill Theater Center. www.ilanabecker.com
Christina Quintana (CQ) is a writer with Cuban and Louisiana roots. Her plays and musicals include: Citizen Scientist (Barrington Stage Company Burman New Play Award), AZUL (Southern Rep), Scissoring (INTAR, available via Dramatists Play Service), Evensong (Astoria Performing Arts Center), and Enter Your Sleep (Yale Cabaret), among others. She is the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, Playwrights Realm, Van Lier New Voices at the Lark, Queer/Art and Lambda Literary, and holds an MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University. Most recently, her dystopian television pilot, Invisible Lily, was featured on the 2020 WeForShe “Ones to Watch” List, and CQ served as staff writer on the upcoming ABC series The Baker and the Beauty. She is currently at work on a new musical commissioned by Black Cap Productions based on Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America by Roberto G. Gonzales. For more, visit www.cquintana.com
Arpita Mukherjee (she/her/hers) is the Artistic Director and co-founder of Hypokrit Theatre Company and the Festival Chair for Tamasha. Recent: Jump by Charly Evon Simpson (APAC), One Way by Ben Bonnema and Christopher Staskel (NAMT), The Golden Threshold by Cheeyang Ng and Eric Sorrels (Live & In Color), Strange Men by Will Snider (PlayPenn 2019), Citizen Scientist by CQ (Barrington Stage Company Playworks Weekend), Anon(ymous) by Naomi Iizuka (Iowa State University), Vietgone by Qui Nguyen (reading Song Collective), Eh Dah? Questions For My Father by Aya Aziz (Next Door @NYTW), and Elements of Change by Divya Mangwani (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, UNICEF). Upcoming: House of Joy by Madhuri Shekar (San Diego Rep), Tobias by Christina Quintana – CQ (WP Theater Pipeline Festival), Raisins not Virgins by Sharbari Ahmed (Next Door @NYTW). She is a 2019 – 2020 SDC Denham Fellow, a 2018 – 2020 Women’s Project Lab Member, 2018 Eugene O’ Neill National Directing Fellow, alumni of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, a 2019 Mabou Mines Resident Artist and 2019-2020 LMCC Artist-in-Residence at Governors Island. Arpita is currently the book writer for Monsoon Wedding musical, opening in London summer 2020. “
Marie is a producer who has worked for The Public Theater, National Black Theatre, the New Black Fest, Lee Daniels Entertainment, and The Apollo Theater. Marie recently worked as a Co-Producer on the feature film US. vs. Billie Holiday and she is currently the New Works Development Consultant for The Apollo Theater. She holds a B.F.A from The Theatre School at DePaul University in Theatre Arts and a M.A from Columbia College Chicago in Interdisciplinary Arts.
Vanessa Garcia is a multidisciplinary artist working as a playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and journalist. Her most recent play includes the immersive hit, The Amparo Experience (“Miami’s Hottest Ticket,” according to People en Español). She’s also written for TV, and was a Sesame Street Writer’s Room Fellow. Her debut novel, White Light, was published in 2015, to critical acclaim. Named one of the Best Books of 2015 by NPR, it also won an International Latino Book Award. As a journalist, feature writer, and essayist, her pieces have appeared in The LA Times, The Miami Herald, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Narrative.ly, and American Theatre Magazine, among numerous other publications. She holds a PhD from the University of California Irvine in English (with a focus in Creative Nonfiction), an MFA from the University of Miami (in fiction), and a BA from Barnard College, Columbia University (English and Art History). She wants to express her gratitude here to her amazing cohort and to the group of women she has had the honor and luck to work with these past two years at the WP Lab. This makes her a playwright with a very, very happy heart.
Sarah Hughes is a director and producer of theater and new media. She’s collaborated on new plays and devised works with Julia May Jonas, MJ Kaufman, Julia Izumi, Eliza Bent, Zarina Shea, Carl Holder, Elevator Repair Service, and more, and her work has been seen at Clubbed Thumb, Abrons Arts Center, WP Theater, The Bushwick Starr, and New Ohio, among others. As a producer she’s developed performances with Target Margin Theater, Sibyl Kempson, MoMA, and Half Straddle, and new media projects for Tribeca Film Festival, NYTW, and The New York Times. Sarah is a WP Theater Directors Lab Fellow and an NNPN/O’Neill National Directors Fellow, as well as an alum of Clubbed Thumb’s Directing Fellowship and The Civilians’ R&D Lab. She has been a resident artist with New Georges, the Drama League, LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, BRIC, NACL and more. Sarah was recently named Director of Artistic Programming at Theatre Row, where she created and runs the Kitchen Sink Residency. She teaches at Dartmouth College and NYU.
Alyssa Simmons is a creative producer and manager. She currently serves as the Assistant General Manager at The Public Theater where her primary responsibility is the Under The Radar Festival. Her interests run the gamut from devised performance to new plays to musicals to immersive experiences and live events. Alyssa pursues projects that challenge the idea of performance, broaden the form of storytelling, and, most importantly, make the audience experience something memorable. She is a woman of two cities: her hometown of Los Angeles and her adopted city of New York. Alyssa holds a BA in Theater Studies and International Studies from Yale University and a MFA in Theater Management from Yale School of Drama. She is a member of the 2018-2020 WP Theater Producers Lab, a member of Round 4 of Theatre Communication Group’s Rising Leaders of Color program, and a member of the 2018 Producer Farm cohort. Recent credits include serving as the producer on the 2018 Prelude Festival, the Associate Producer on Toshi Reagon and Bernice Johnson Reagon’s opera Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, and producer on freelance projects around the city.
Sukari Jones is a playwright and musical theater lyricist most interested in the intersection of race and power in the United States as seen through a magical or sci-fi lens, creating impossible theater that necessarily centers people of color–in particular Black femmes. B.A. Vassar College, M.F.A. NYU Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program. Memberships: WP Lab, BMI Musical Theater Workshop, The Public Theater’s Emerging Writers Group. Productions/Development: 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. www.sukarijones.com
Upcoming: Cullud Wattah (The Public Theater) Selected Credits: 53% OF (The Alliance Theater), Trapt (Joe’s Pub), House of the Negro Insane (Bay Area Playwrights Festival), Pipeline (Detroit Public Theater), shadow/land (Faultline Theater), Nike (A.C.T. New Strands Festival), Gloria (AADA), The Wolves (AADA), Brother Rabbit (New Black Fest), Name Calling (Kennedy Center), New Shoes (The Drama League), Morning in America (Primary Stages), TEMBO! (Zanzibar International Film Fest). Awards and Fellowships: Lilly Award, WP Theater’s 2018-2020 Lab, Drama League Alumni. www.candiscjones.com
Lucy Jackson is an independent performing arts producer. Originally from London, UK, she now lives and works in New York City, USA, supporting playwrights and multidisciplinary artists to develop, produce and tour new work. She is Producer for Rachel Mars (Our Carnal Hearts: Fusebox Festival; Oberon A.R.T.; On the Boards; Melbourne & Brisbane Fringes) and Salty Brine’s Living Record Collection (with Exec Producer Renee Blinkwolt; Pangea & Joe’s Pub). Recent productions include the world premieres of Intelligence by Helen Banner (NYTW Next Door), and Heather Christian’s Animal Wisdom (The Bushwick Starr). Line Producing includes Andrew Schneider’s NERVOUS/SYSTEM (BAM Next Wave) and Amir Nizar Zuabi’s Oh My Sweet Land (The Play Company). She works with Los Angeles Performance Practice as their New York Producer, and has been Producing Director for The Assembly, Development Director for the New Ohio Theatre, and General Manager/Touring Producer for the TEAM. She teaches Creative Producing & Production Management as part of The New School’s MA in Artistic Entrepreneurship. www.lsajackson.com
(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
