workshop intensive SPRING 2023

Javier Rivera DeBruin

(they/them) is a playwright and impact producer whose work explores queerness, gender, race, diaspora, and family. Their play LUCIÉRNAGAS was a NY Times Critic’s Pick during its World Premiere with National Queer Theater at the 14th St Y and is streaming as part of season 5 of The Parsnip Ship podcast. Luciérnagas was a semifinalist for the 2019 New Dramatists Princess Grace Award. Javi is a co-writer on a six-part podcast play THIS IS WHERE WE GO (MCC Theater/The Parsnip Ship) and a member of the Parsnip Ship’s inaugural Radio Roots Writers Group where their play HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANGEL DEAREST will stream soon. As an Impact Producer they have helped develop community engagement strategies with award-winning documentaries including DISCLOSURE (Netflix), PHILLY D.A. (PBS/Topic) TRANS IN TRUMPLAND (Topic), BEDLAM (PBS), and ROLL RED ROLL (Netflix).

Brandon Rumaker

is a Non-Binary, Queer playwright based in New York City, born and raised in the Hudson Valley. Their work explores how to make the epic intimate and the intimate epic, often touching on themes of harm & healing, mental health, relationships, and reckoning with the past. They have developed work as part of the DTA Draft One Festival (2022), Exquisite Corpse Company’s Writing Lab (2022) and Broadviews on Broadway (2019). Recipient of the Stillwright Retreat (2022). Their work has been shown at Prime Produce, The Rochester Fringe, and the historic leather bar, The Eagle, produced by National Queer Theatre. FORGE Fellow (2023). Semi-finalist: Pipeline PlayLab (2022). Beyond writing, Brandon can be found reading tarot or volunteering as a peer counselor for Identity House, a service for LGBTQIA2S+ peoples. Proud member of the Dramatists Guild of America.

Donna Hoke

Her work has been seen in 48 states and on five continents, including at Barrington Stage, Barrow Group, Celebration Theatre, Gulfshore Theatre, Queens Theatre, Lake Dillon Theatre Company, Theatre Aspen, The Road, Phoenix Theatre, Atlantic Stage, Purple Rose, Skylight, Pride Films and Plays, New Jersey Rep, Hens and Chickens (London), The Galway Fringe Festival, and Actors Repertory Theatre of Luxembourg. Plays include BRILLIANT WORKS OF ART (Kilroys List), ELEVATOR GIRL (O’Neill, Princess Grace, and Austin Film Festival finalist), SAFE (winner of the Todd McNerney, Naatak, and Great Gay Play and Musical Contests), and TEACH (Gulfshore New Works, O'Neill semifinalist). She has been nominated for the Primus, Blackburn, and Laura Pels prizes, and is a three-time winner of the Emanuel Fried Award for Outstanding New Play (SEEDS, SONS & LOVERS, ONCE IN MY LIFETIME). She has also twice received Individual Artist Awards from the New York State Council on the Arts to develop HEARTS OF STONE and CANALSIDE, and, in its final three years, Artvoice named her Buffalo's Best Writer—the only woman to ever receive the designation. Donna also has been serving the Dramatists Guild in various capacities since 2012, is an ensemble playwright at Road Less Traveled Productions, blogger, former moderator of the 13,500+-member Official Playwrights of Facebook, New York Times-published crossword puzzle constructor; children's and trivia book author; and founder/co-curator of BUA Takes 10: GLBT Short Stories. Speaking engagements include Citywrights, Kenyon Playwrights Conference, the Dramatists Guild National Conference, Chicago Dramatists, the Austin Film Festival, and a live Dramatists Guild webinar. Her commentary has been seen on #2amt, howlround, The Dramatist, the Official Playwrights of Facebook, Workshopping the New Play (Applause, 2017), and at donnahoke.com.

Alicia Carroll

is a playwright and T.V. writer hailing from the DMV. Her recent writing credits include BUMPER IN BERLIN (Peacock), THE WATCHFUL EYE (Freeform), ZOEY'S EXTRAORDINARY PLAYLIST (NBC), and Crooked Media's comedic live show and podcast, LOVETT OR LEAVE IT. Alicia is an advocate for consent-aware entertainment, which she discussed in her 2016 talk at TEDxBeaconstreet in Boston. She has participated in several fellowships and labs, including Film Independent's Project Involve, Women In Film: Insight, and the IAMA Theatre's Under 30 Playwrights Lab, and Ensemble Studio Theater LA’s Ignite Project. When she's not writing, Alicia produces independent theater and runs See What Sticks, a staged workshop series in Los Angeles. Previous producing credits include RABBIT HOLE by David Lindsay-Abaire, DARK PLAY or STORIES FOR BOYS by Carlos Murillo, BLACK N BLUE BOYS/ BROKEN MEN by Dael Orlandersmith, JULIUS CAESAR by William Shakespeare, 30-30-30: A Short Play Festival, and a workshop production of DETOUR by Diana Dinerman. Alicia is a graduate of Emerson College and currently teaches at The Writing Pad. aliciadcarroll.com | @aliciadcarroll

Esmé Maria Ng

(they/she/he) is an early-career, NYC-based playwright, dramaturg, and actor of Cantonese and Scottish descent, whose work focuses on the complexities of Asian American history, queerness and family. Through writing plays, Esmé seeks to embody the phenomenon of laughing at/through the pain, finding joy in inappropriate moments, with often-understated aesthetics and complicated characters. As a script reader, Esmé has advocated for new plays by underrepresented artists at Manhattan Theatre Club, Breaking the Binary Theatre, and Playwrights Realm. Their plays have been presented by the Snug Harbor Porch Plays Festival, the Women’s Playwrights Collective, Staten Island Shakespeare Theater Company, and Wesleyan University Writers Circle. Plays include: Pearl Dust from a Gun (Eugene O’Neill Semi-Finalist, Wesleyan University Honors in American Studies), In Loving Memory (Wesleyan Writers Circle), F*cking Harold (WPC Not Forgotten Play Festival, Wesleyan Writers Circle), and First Day (Snug Harbor Porch Plays Festival). Esmé is currently the Paul A. Kaplan Literary Trainee at Manhattan Theatre Club and a member of Theater Producer’s of Color Producing 101 Cohort. A selection of Esmé’s plays are available to read on New Play Exchange. IG: @esmemariang Website: esmemariang.com

M. D. Schaffer

(He/They) is a queer, Non-Binary, African American writer, choreographer, librettist, and lyricist born in Houston, Texas, and currently residing in New York City. Their previous works include Southern Seeds: An Americana Story with the Ensemble Theatre’s New Voices Fest, The Last Days of Victor Greymore with Emerging Artist Festival, A Rodeo Clown with the Obsidian Theatre Festival, & Drapteomania: A Negro Carol with the We Will Dream Festival. Additionally, they are a 2023 recipient for the Pine Meadow Ranch for Arts & Agriculture Residency program with Roundhouse Foundation. They are a proud alumni of the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program at New York University - Tisch. Their works examine the relationship between Americana historical romanticism and contemporary American reality.

Katie Walenta

(she/they) is a Nebraska-raised, Brooklyn-based writer whose artistic interests include evangelical purity culture, inheritance, the class dynamics of the Midwest, and creepy prairie happenings. Her theatrical work has been read at The Tank (2019) and her pilot, Backwash, was a quarterfinalist for both the Filmmatic Comedy Screenplay Awards (2022) and the Script Lab Free Screenplay Contest (2023). Other theater credits include Greg Kotis’s I Am Nobody (line producer, 2020). Katie graduated from NYU’s Tisch Department of Dramatic Writing in 2020.

Riley Elton McCarthy

(they/them) is an internationally produced and published playwright, director, and performer. They were a featured artist and resident playwright with International World Pride 2021 in Copenhagen, Denmark, Art House Productions, Common Ground Theatre Company, Playdate at Pete’s, and Elephant Room Productions. Major production credits include  Ivories at Edinburgh Fringe, 59E59, Yale, and The Brick, The Lesbian Play off-broadway at The Triad Theater, and Take Me Down to the Levee at The Tank. Sharon and Melina is currently a semi-finalist for the 2023 Eugene O’Neill National Playwriting Conference. Their plays Ragweeds and Sharon and Melina were nominated for 2022 BroadwayWorld Off-Broadway awards for Best New Play. MFA Playwriting: Rutgers '25.

Diane Davis

is a playwright and the Artistic Director for Eden Theater Company (ETC). She is currently a Writer-in-Resident at Theatre East, and the facilitator for the ETC PlayLab of new play development. Her plays have been developed or produced by The New Ohio Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW), Primary Stages, Eden Theater Company (ETC), HOWL Playwrights, AMIOS, the Barrow Group, HB Studios, and Goddard College. Her full-length play Complicity (New Ohio) received an HB Studio Residency Award for development. Diane’s most recent one act plays include Broken Arpeggio, The Memorial Tree (published in the Pitkin Review Journal), What's What and The Night Becomes Morning with staged readings/workshops in New York City. Diane also produced and directed The Room Series (Eden Theater Company) – with each room as the theme for an evening of three short plays (the Bedroom, Livingroom, Bathroom and Kitchen) on zoom throughout the quarantine, with proceeds going to the Equal Justice Initiative. Prior to quarantine, she produced Scrambled Porn (Flea Theater), and FlipSide (Flea Theater). Diane earned a BA in theater from Bennington College and is currently working on an MFA in Playwriting at Columbia University. She has also served as a Board Director for the Amoralist Theatre Company, and currently for the League of Professional Theater Women.

Serena Norr

is a writer, playwright, and founder of Let’s Make a Play, a playwriting program for kids and adults. Her plays have been performed at the Omaha Fringe Festival, White Plains Performing Arts Center, the New Deal Creative Arts Center, Westchester Collaborative Theater, The Players Theater with the Rogue Theater Festival and the NYC Short Play Festival, The Tank, The Flea, the University of Alabama as well as various productions over Zoom. She is a recent second-rounder at the Austin Film Festival for her full-length play, “Agency for the Lost.” Her play “OTHER” was published in Theatre Unbound’s “Bittersweet” Monologue Collection and “Zoom Like No One is Watching” was published in the “UNTITLED COVID SHORT PLAY ANTHOLOGY” by Flower Song Press. "Cut Out Fam" will be published in “ellipsis... literature & art Drama” in April 2023 and “Stocked” will be published in the “Stonecoast Review” in June 2023. During COVID, 15 of her plays received a Zoom production, such as “The Dividing Demons” performed with Primary Stages, “The Bookstore” performed with Westchester Collaborative Theater, “Zoom Like No One is Watching” performed with Sister Shakes for the Show Must Go Online Play festival and B Street Theatre’s New Play Brunch, to name a few productions. Her monologues, “It’s the Michelle Jennings Show,” “Waiting and Wanting, “Mama, Can You Hear Me? “Deep in Night Thoughts,” “Behind the Bars” and “Zoom-A-Ference 2022′′ was performed with Vintage Soul Productions. Recently, her short “Secrets & Lies” was a part of The Queans Theatre REPRESENT festival, her full-length “The Demise of Baby Johnson” was showcased through the Dramatists Guild’s DG Footlights Series, “Purdy’s” was a part of the Omaha Fringe Festival, and her plays “Morning Ritual” “Zoom Like No One is Watching” was performed as a part of Rogue Theater Festival. Additionally, “$5 dollah, $5 dollah” was performed at the Short Play Festival and “The Rainbow Method” was performed with the New Deal Creative Arts Center. She is also a member of the Dramatists Guild, Westchester Collaborative Theatre, Cut Edge Collective, and participant in the 2021 Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive and National Women’s Theatre Festival (WTF) Directing Program (2022) and Producing/Directing Program (2023). For more information, visit http://www.serenanorr.com/

Tina Esper

(she/her) is a first-generation American playwright of Lebanese-Brazilian and Portuguese descent. Her multi-cultural background informs her storytelling and underscores themes of dislocation, assimilation and the pursuit of personal freedom. Her play, Neighbor Jane is the co-recipient of the 2023 National Partners of the American Theatre’s Julie Jensen Playwriting Award. Neighbor Jane was also selected for the 2022 Great Plains Theatre Conference and was developed at The Workshop Theater's Spring Intensive 2021 and the Sewanee Writers Conference 2021. Her play Fireflies was a 2021 Woodward/Newman Drama Award Finalist as well as a 2020 O’Neill Semifinalist, a 2022 Athena Project Semifinalist, a 2021 Garry Marshall New Works Festival Semifinalist and a 2021 Cimientos Semifinalist. Tina, originally from New Jersey, is currently living in Cambridge, Massachusetts where she’s pursuing her MFA in Playwriting at Boston University.

Peter Pasco

is an actor from the Boogie Down who took up playwriting during the lockdown of 2020.  He’s had a play reach the semifinals of the O’Neill and the Blue Ink Award.  Thomas Cote, the artistic director of the Workshop Theater, once referred to Peter as “supremely talented AND insanely handsome.”  True story.  Peter is a big fan of IHOPs, free food, and leftovers in the fridge.  He is also a lover of free towels, free parking, and free drinks.  Noticing a theme?  He’d write more about the free stuff he likes, but he has to put together a self tape for a short film.  If you don’t believe him look at the screen shot he used from his slate.  The struggle is all too real. You can find him on twitter: @petepasco IG: @dramallama247 or stuck at a light singing in his car.

Ledia Xhoga

was born and raised in Tirana, Albania and currently lives in Brooklyn. Her plays have been produced by the Eclectic Podcast Network, Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse, Downtown Urban Arts Festival in Manhattan, and others. She’s a past participant in Kennedy Center’s Playwriting Intensive and a member of the Dramatist Guild. She’s also a fiction writer. Her upcoming novel Misinterpretation was recently selected a finalist for the DeGroot Foundation's 2023 Lando award for migration, immigration, and refugee writing.

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Al Parker

(they/them) is a creative producer, dramaturg, and audience services manager based in New York City. Hailing from South Dakota, they completed their studies in Dramatic Literature and Creative Writing at New York University, and now enjoy playing with and expanding the boundaries of intersectional storytelling in theater. Al is the Associate Artistic Director of the Brooklyn-based podcast play company The Parsnip Ship, where they produce audio theatre, dramaturg new plays in development and run the Radio Roots audio play commission program with a Writers’ Group and Fellowship. Al has also worked in artistic, administrative, and audience services roles at Breaking the Binary Theatre, Signature Theatre Company, Ars Nova, MCC Theater, Rattlestick Theater, Page 73, Chelsea Factory, Colt Coeur, and the Billie Holiday Theatre, among others. They are a proud member of National Queer Theater’s Artistic Collective.

Utkarsh Rajawat

is a writer/performer who likes theater and TV a bunch! Their work often explores the intersections of gender, race, and performance with jokes, participation, and lots of caps lock. They started their theater career in Baltimore, and have since been a Princess Grace Award Finalist for playwriting, a Sesame Street Writers’ Room Fellow, a Pipeline PlayLab Member, and a Eugene O’Neill NPC Semifinalist. They’re currently a Story Pirate, Story Pirates Podcast contributor, and MFA candidate in Playwriting at Brooklyn College. Keep an eye out for their episodes of Alma’s Way on PBS!

Hortense Gerardo

is a playwright and anthropologist. Her works have been performed nationally and internationally, including: LaMama Experimental Theatre, the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Boston, the International Performance Art Festival, and the Nuit Blanche Festival, Toronto. She is a co-founder of the Asian American Playwright Collective (AAPC) and serves as Head of Screenwriting on the Board of the Woods Hole Film Festival. Her feature-length documentary on climate change, Small Steps: Dances of Resilience, won juried awards for Best Environmental Film at the Vancouver Film Festival and Best Dance Film in the Rome International Film Festival. She is the Director of the Anthropology, Performance, and Technology (APT) Program at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), received a 2021 Artist Fellowship from the Mass Cultural Council in Dramatic Writing, and has been selected as a Teaching + Learning Commons Changemaker Anti-Racist Pedagogy Learning Community Fellow for the 2023-2024 academic year at UCSD. Her play Middleton Heights had its world premiere at Umbrella Stage on March 31 – April 23, 2023. Her new media audience interactive commissioned work, Glacial Incantations, will be presented in April as part of the 2023 Without Walls Festival (WoW) produced by La Jolla Playhouse. For more information go to: www.hortensegerardo.com

Ella Baldwin

(she/her) is a Brooklyn-based playwright, actor, and director. Her work comes with a focus on devising, comedy, and the wackiness of “womanhood”. A Bard College graduate of both Theater & Performance and Written Arts, she has taught across writing and theater, and studied classical acting at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. Works include Suburban Panic at Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, Sea Lily at En Garde Arts, and her most recent play Crinoidea at the Lounge was featured in the 2023 Mid-America Theatre Conference Playwriting Symposium. She is a founder of Lumina Theatre Co., and recipient of the Brooklyn Public Library Community Incubator Grant for a comedy workshop series with the Red Hook Initiative. Most recently she made her Off-Off Broadway debut in Bliss Street at Theater For the New City.

Max Keane

is a Brooklyn-based playwright building worlds that are rooted in Gothic or sci-fi traditions, often using monstrosity as a palette to investigate and liberate alternate queer pasts, presents, and futures. Select credits include: Break Room (The Wild Project), Goodnight, Sweet Polonius (Shakespeare on the Sound), and Keynote at Necro-Con (The Brick Theater). He holds a BA from Muhlenberg College, and is currently pursuing an MFA in Playwriting at Brooklyn College.

Jordan Powell

is a Jamaican American director, writer, filmmaker, designer, and educator. She has recently written and directed a film, Cutie, that was developed in the Nine Muses Lab taught by Bryce Dallas Howard. She has recently directed a devised performance, alone in my room, at Playwrights Horizon Downtown about black women shedding the expectation from the boxes placed on them and becoming their own mirror. Her works center around the legacy of black women and working as an archivist and excavator, whether that is digging in the past to find untold stories or capturing the present to pass down to later generations. She studied Drama and Applied Theater at New York University and graduated May 2022.

Thalia Sablon

was born in Haiti and raised in Queens. She has spent most of her life running around New York trying not to wreak havoc. She recently graduated from Rutgers University with an MFA in Playwriting and is currently serving as the artistic admin fellow at New York Theatre Workshop. As a writer, she strives to bridge the gap between the personal and the political, exploring the intersections of interpersonal relationships and larger socio-political systems. Her work focuses primarily on the experiences of black people and queer femmes, envisioning worlds beyond the constraints of societal norms. Through her writing, she aims to showcase the struggle to live a full life, highlighting the unique challenges faced by individuals from different walks of life. She is passionate about creating work that expands our understanding of the human experience.

Zhen Yu (ZY) Yao

[he/they] is a Chinese writer, director & scholar based in NYC. He is super excited to be back at the Workshop, after workshopping the desert is not a circle with the Writer's Intensive last year. ZY is the winner of the 2022 NFFTY Editing Challenge, and a recipient of NYFA City Artist Corps, Creatives Rebuild New York and LMCC Creative Engagement grant programs. 4/4/4, previously THE White Pretender(S), was a Finalist for Soho Rep’s Writer/Director Lab and recently presented at the JACK Radical Acts Festival. He made his Mandarin playwriting debut with Ripples from a Lost Song (Rattlestick). His projects have also been seen at PlayStation Theatre, NYU Tisch, WOW Café Theatre, Shanghai Theatre Academy, East China Normal University, and more. He holds a MA in Arts Politics and a BFA in Drama from NYU Tisch. Website: vyao.co

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Ashley Lauren Rogers

Award-winning writer, and trans rights activist. Ashley has been a playwright for 2 separate Workshop Theatre Playwright intensives and was invited to create material for The Workshop Theatre’s annual Out of The Hat Event in 2021 and 2022.  A Eugene O’Neill Theatre National Playwrights Conference Semifinalist 2021, Literary Director for Step1 Theatre Project, Oddity received an honorable mention on The Kilroys “The List,” 2020. Her play Becky’s Xmas Wish, and a monologue from Chasing The Ghost are featured in Smith and Krauss’s 2021 Best Short Scene and 2021 Best Women’s Monologues compilations.  A Trans Theatre Lab fellow 2019, artist in residence at Middlesex County Vocational-Technical School 2018-2019. Took part in the two week summer playwriting intensive at the Kennedy Center, Washington DC. Works performed at Dixon Place, MITF, the Brick, Joe’s Pub, and others. Becky’s Xmas Wish was a finalist for the City Theatre National Short Play Award, Miami. Work has been produced in Wisconsin, Cincinnati, Maine, Iowa, New Jersey, Detroit, and Minneapolis.  Featured on Fusion TV’s Peabody Award Nominated Sex.Right.Now, panels for Revry.TV.  Creator of The Is It Transphobic and The Right to Play Podcasts.  Her play Chasing the Ghost is now available for purchase and performance rights are handled through Next Stage Press. Her ten minute play Julie-Esque is set to premiere as part of Schreiber Shorts June 2022 on Theatre Row.