Due to the cancellation of the 2020 Pipeline Festival, we will be highlighting each of the five Pipeline Festival creative teams each week, and the projects they were planning to share onstage in a social effort titled #PipelineOnline from March 26-April 25.
Don’t miss this unique opportunity to get up close and personal with the 5 writer/director/producer collaborators of the Pipeline Festival! Follow us to meet the next generation of incredible woman+ theatermakers—you don’t want to miss these superstars! Click here to see more on #PipelineOnline!
About the 2020 Pipeline Festival
Want to catch the best new work by the most exciting new artists in town? Wondering where to meet the next generation of incredible women+ theatermakers? Don’t miss WP’s Pipeline Festival, a unique opportunity to see 5 new plays, created by 5 collaborative teams from WP Theater’s celebrated two-year Lab residency.
WEEK 1: March 26 – March 28, 2020
PHASES OF THE MOON
By Bryna Turner
Directed by Rebecca Martínez
Produced by Stephanie Rolland
Before she mastered the art of losing, the poet Elizabeth Bishop was a socialist vegetarian in a peacoat at Vassar College during the Great Depression. Following “Bishie” and her friends over a single lunar cycle during their senior year, Phases of the Moon begins with a ritual gone awry and asks us to consider what’s real under all the pretending.
WEEK 2: April 2 – April 4, 2020
SANDBLASTED
By Charly Evon Simpson
Directed by Victoria Collado
Produced by Ilana Becker
Angela and Odessa are struggling for survival in a dark present that’s being overtaken by an epidemic affecting only black women. A fabulous wellness celebrity emerges as one who could guide them—if only they trust her and follow her into the shifting sands. Will they find a cure? Can a cure even be found? sandblasted is by turns poetic and absurd; a story of waiting and hoping, and of the meaning of touch.
WEEK 3: April 9 – April 11, 2020
TOBIAS: A NOVEL IN PERFORMANCE
By C. Quintana
Directed by Arpita Mukherjee
Produced by Marie Cisco
Tobias was a real person; far more than just a footnote in one of North America’s earliest-known scandals. TOBIAS: A Novel in Performance is a hybrid theatrical experience, melding the forms of narrative-fiction and playwriting to explore a distinct connection across three backgrounds: Mohawk, African, and Dutch. Tobias, as narrator, leads the audience though a gripping examination of the often-complicated lines between power, sex, and love: both then and now.
WEEK 4: April 16 – April 18, 2020
GRACE, SPONSORED BY MONTEVERDE
By Vanessa Garcia
Directed by Sarah Hughes
Produced by Alyssa Simmons
Catherine is searching for something authentic. Frustrated by her life’s direction and haunted by her annoying ex-husband, she embarks with her f*ckbuddy, Lewis, on a Lewis-and-Clark-esque trip across America sponsored by Monteverde Moonshine. But as Catherine travels the country, posting photos and interviews of people she meets—an immigrant worker, a wayward nun, a queer homeschooled teen—she inadvertently raises more questions than answers: about “the real America,” about her own identity, and about what “authenticity” even means anymore. #ManifestYourDestiny #GraceSponsoredByMonteverde #DrinkandRideResponsibly
WEEK 5: April 23 – April 25, 2020
MY BABY
By Sukari Jones
Directed by Candis C. Jones
Produced by Lucy Jackson
Estelle discovers she cannot be a bone marrow donor for her mother Gladys, who has been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. Meanwhile, Tinesha is tirelessly searching the universe for her stolen baby. A complicated family drama about mothers, daughters, and the cosmic quests we undertake for the ones we love.
Genevieve Ortiz
(STAGE MANAGER, she/her/hers): Recent credits include WHAT TO SEND UP WHEN IT GOES DOWN East Coast Tour (Wooly Mammoth Theatre Company; A.R.T. Cambridge; The Public Theater); PUBLIC WORKS’ HERCULES (The Public Theater); LOCKDOWN (Rattlestick Theater); RECENT ALIEN ABDUCTIONS (The Play Company); WHAT TO SEND UP WHEN IT GOES DOWN (The Movement Theatre Company); THE REVOLVING CYCLES TRULY AND STEADILY ROLL’D (The Playwright’s Realm); IS GOD IS (Soho Rep); THE CHRISTIANS (Baltimore Center Stage).
Bryna Turner
Bryna Turner’s plays include: Bull in a China Shop (LCT3, About Face, Aurora, Diversionary, The National Theatre); At the Wedding (Kilroy’s 2019 Honorable Mention; Development: A.C.T., Arkansas New Play Festival); RATS! (Clubbed Thumb Winterworks Festival); How to Separate Your Soul from your Body (in ten easy steps!) (Mason Gross School of the Arts). Indebted to: Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writer’s Group; WP’s 2018-2020 Lab. Recipient of: a MacDowell Colony Fellowship; Lincoln Center Theater’s Emerging Artist Award of 2018. MFA: Rutgers University. www.brynaturner.com
Rebecca Martínez
Rebecca Martinez is an NYC-based director, choreographer, deviser, and ensemble member of Sojourn Theatre. Upcoming projects: Songs About Trains (New Ohio Theatre, world premiere), DON’T GO (Sojourn Theatre, world premiere). Recent projects: I Am My Own Wife (Long Wharf Theatre); Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles (Repertory Theatre of St. Louis), Miss You Like Hell (Baltimore Center Stage), Wolf at the Door (Milagro Theatre, NNPN rolling world premiere), Anna in the Tropics (Fine Arts Center, Colorado Springs, Henry Award for Outstanding Direction), Tomás and the Library Lady (Oregon Children’s Theatre). Rebecca has worked with INTAR, Working Theater, Signature Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, the Lark, The Playwrights Realm, New Dramatists, the 52nd Street Project, Radical Evolution among others. Member of: Sol Project Collective, Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, INTAR’s Unit52, SDCF Observer, Latinx Theatre Commons Advisory Committee, 2019 Audrey Resident, New Georges Affiliated Artist, 2018-2020 WP Lab, 2017 Drama League Directing Fellow, Member of SDC. Awards: four Portland, Oregon Drammy Awards; Lilla Jewel Award. Rebeccamartinez.org
Stephanie Rolland
Stephanie Rolland is an NYC/NJ based creative producer and arts administrator. Her work as an artist is fueled by connection, experimentation and laughter. She finds her joy in bringing multi-faceted, swirling, human universes together in space to make magic. She is currently the Director of Theatre Operations at Theatre Row in Midtown. She co-founded Interfest, an *arts and ideas* festival focused on intersectionality and mutual liberation (www.interfestnyc.org). She was chosen as a member of Theater Communication Group (TCG)’s inaugural Rising Leaders of Color cohort in 2016 and the Americans for the Arts inaugural Diversity in Arts Leadership Lab in 2018. Stephanie also served on TCG’s National Awards Committee and the League of Resident Theater’s Diversity Committee. She holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and an MFA in Theater Management from Yale School of Drama.
Charly Evon Simpson
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
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
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)
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
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 Cisco
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
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
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
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
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
Candis C. Jones
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
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
