workshop intensive WINTEr 2021
The Workshop Intensive is a weekly writer’s group that runs for 8 weeks, with a group of writers, and two facilitators/dramaturges. Writers submit an unproduced play, along with a statement of rewrite goals, and are then selected by the artistic staff. The script can be a first draft, or only partially finished, or something that has been worked on many times. We are agnostic as to form and content.
AARON COLEMAN
is a New York City-based playwright and current Playwright-in-Residence at Circle in the Square Theater School. His play UNCLE REMUS, HIS LIFE AND TIMES, AS TOLD TO AARON COLEMAN was chosen for Primary Stages’ 2019 Drills reading series. Recent Finalist for NYTW's 2050 Fellowship, The Civilians’ R&D Group, and the DGF Fellowship. Semi-Finalist for the Jerome Fellowship at The Playwrights' Center. Select Work: Lyricist for the Off-Broadway musical IMELDA (East West Players and Pan Asian Rep), Co-book writer for STAY FOREVER: THE LIFE AND MUSIC OF DUSTY SPRINGFIELD (Renberg Theatre). MFA in Writing for Screen and Television, USC School of Cinematic Arts. www.AaronColemanWrites.com
Ashley Lauren Rogers
award-winning writer, and trans rights activist. Her play Becky’s Xmas Wish, and a monologue from Chasing The Ghost will be appearing in Smith and Krauss’s “Best Short Scene and Women’s Monologues compilations. Recently a Trans Theatre Lab fellow 2019, the Literary Director for Step1 Theatre Project, artist in residence at Middlesex County Vocational-Technical School 2018-2019. 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 The Is It Transphobic and The Right to Play Podcasts.
ALI KELLER
Ali’s a Writer, Producer & Dramaturg based in NYC. She’s committed to telling stories with complex female characters. Select Writing credits: Bandit (Semi-finalist in the Shoot Your Short Emerging Screenwriter Competition), Seven Fishes (Second Rounder Austin Film Festival Short Screenplay Competition 2019), Standards (Semis-finalist for The Mitten Lab Residency 2018, The Dramatists Guild), For Goodness Sake (4th Street Theatre @ New York Theatre Workshop), and (un)conditional (Semi-finalist for SPACE on Ryder Farm Residency 2018, Second Rounder at the 2020 Austin Film Festival Play Competition)). Her song cycle …The F*ck Am I Doing? which she wrote with Emily Rose Simons was a part of the New York Musical Festival’s final Cabaret Season. Select Film Credits: Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened (Production Assistant), Zero Issue (Producer), Going (Producer). Select Associate/Assistant Director credits: Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill (Broadway), the 2012 Oscar Hammerstein Award, and Live From Lincoln Center: Sweeney Todd, and Rob Fischer Celebrates Kander & Ebb. She was the Script Assistant for the Broadway Does Mothers’ Day Fundraiser in 2020. She was a teaching assistant and Rockwell Scholar at ESPA at Primary Stages. She received her B.A. in theater from Bucknell University. She’s an Affiliate Dramaturg with Beehive Dramaturgy, a Member of Stillwater Writers Group and the Dramatists Guild of America. www.alikellerplaywright.com
Jessica Durdock Moreno
is currently an MFA candidate in the Department of Dramatic Writing at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her first play “To Richard!” premiered at the 2019 Hollywood Fringe Festival, where it won the Encore Producers Award and was nominated for the Inkwell Theater Playwright’s Promise Award. She began her writing training at Los Angeles City College, where she won the 2019 Cinema and Television Department’s Best Screenplay Award for her television pilot “Filly.” She was selected as a finalist for the Theater Masters Take Ten 2020 Festival for her play “Shooting Stars,” and as a semifinalist for the Athena Project’s 2020 Plays in Progress Series for her play “Georgie D.” She recently participated in the Workshop Theater Fall 2020 Playwriting Intensive, also with “Georgie D,” which she will continue to develop in the 2021 Chain Theatre Playwriting Lab. This February, she will participate in the Full Circle Theatre Collaborative’s New Works Festival with her plays “Shooting Stars” and “Funeral.” She graduated magna cum laude from Columbia University with a B.A. in Socio-Cultural Anthropology (focus on North American Settler Colonialism).
Alyssa Haddad
(she/her) is a Brooklyn-based, award-winning playwright of Lebanese and Italian descent. Her plays have been presented at the Capital Repertory Theatre, Centenary Stage Company, The Secret Theatre, Theater for the New City, Kraine Theatre, and The Midtown International Theatre Festival where she was the recipient of the Playwright’s Award. She is an alumna of Living Room Theater’s New Play Incubator Lab, New Perspectives Theatre Company’s Women’s Work Short Play Lab and a 2019 Artist-In-Residence and Guest Lecturer at Adams State University’s Rare A.I.R program. She was a 2019-2020 member of Art House Productions INKubator Play Lab and a winner of Athena Project Arts’ upcoming 2021 Plays in Progress series. She holds a BA in History and Writing from The College of Saint Rose and an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild of America. More at alyssahaddad.com
Katarzyna Müller
was born in Poland and grew up in functional poverty on the South Side of Chicago. English is her second language. As an emerging playwright, she writes and workshops plays in Chicago and New York. Kathy also consults on other people’s scripts across various media, including award-winning short films (New York City International Film Festival, Berlin Independent Film Festival, and her favorite – Coney Island Film Festival, among others). Recently published in “2020: Good Writing from a Bad Year,” Gordon Haber, ed. Proud member of the Dramatists Guild and Chicago Dramatists. BA, PhD, in departments no one’s heard of, University of Chicago.
Shy Godzilla
(they/them) is a Queer Japanese-American writer, performer and teaching artist based out of New York City. Written works include American Spies and Other Homegrown Fables, BANANA and Supposed Home. Sam’s work has been produced and/or developed by John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, National Queer Theater, the Hub Theatre, and Seattle Public Theater among others. Awards include the Emerald Prize, the Roy W. Cowden Fellowship, the Dennis McIntyre Prize, Kennedy Center Undergraduate Playwrights’ Workshop, and the coveted Hopwood Award in Drama at the University of Michigan. Previous credits include Pacific Overtures (Manjiro) Lyric Stage Company of Boston, Girlfriend (Mike) Detroit Public Theatre and Vietgone (U/S Nhan) Studio Theatre. Member of Actors’ Equity Association and The Dramatists Guild. Hamashima holds a BFA in Musical Theatre from the University of Michigan. For their real name, head over to samhamashima.com. @shygodzilla
Genie Pflum
aka Jean Pflum aka "Pants" is a 23 year old art school grad living in New York. They just got a shipment of girl scout cookies and are muchin' away while thinking about gender, lamps, and the efficiency of bluntness. They are so excited to have found people that support their antics at the Workshop Theater. To see all the said antics you can find them on Instagram @lava_lamp_princess
CHARLES GERSHMAN
(he/they) is a queer playwright/TV writer, a Dramatists Guild Foundation Playwriting Fellow, a 2019 Chesley/Bumbalo Playwriting Award winner, and a 2019 Relentless Award Semifinalist. Recent work has been produced or developed with The New Group, All For One, 59E59 Theaters, Theatre503, and the American Playwriting Foundation and published by Oberon Books. They are a member of the BMI musical theater workshop and received their MFA from NYU-Tisch in 2018. Charlesgershman.com
lily gonzales
(they/them) is a playwright from Texas who graduated from UT Austin with a Bachelor's in Theater & Dance / English. Their work has been developed or read at The John F. Kennedy Center, Teatro Vivo, Repertorio Español, AlterLab First Acts, and Stages Theater. lily loves formal readings of films, nopales, and learning how to dj.
Megan Tabaque
Megan is a multi-ethnic Filipina-Canadian playwright, performer, and teacher. Her work has been developed by Salvage Vanguard Theater, Tofte Lake Center, Paper Chairs, and Egg and Spoon Theatre Collective, among others. She is a James A. Michener Fellow, Kundiman Fiction Fellow, Sewanee Writers' Conference Scholar, Seattle Public Theater Emerald Prize finalist, and a Playwrights' Realm Scratchpad Series semi-finalist. Megan earned her MFA in Playwriting and Fiction from the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, TX. She is currently a visiting faculty member in playwriting at Bennington College.
Madeline Dennis-Yates
(she/her) is a playwright and screenwriter originally from New Jersey. She’s a current member of Art House Productions’ INKubator playwrights cohort, where she’s developing a new piece (We're Just Redoing the Kitchen) about a young woman/pro athlete dealing with massive disappointment and a literally crumbling family home. Her other most recent project, this is not the reunion, was commissioned by Stagefemmes at Kenyon College and nearly made it to its March 2020 production. Her plays and screenplays have been produced, read, and awarded in New York and Washington, D.C. (New Short Play Festival, Source Festival, D.C. Shorts Film Festival, and others). She studied playwriting at the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, and she returned to the O'Neill for a summer as a literary intern. Madeline has also studied comedy writing at Upright Citizens Brigade and Second City. She attended George Washington University in D.C., where she was an art history major and captain of the equestrian team. (She likes horses.)