Ella Hickson is an award-winning playwright whose work has been performed throughout the UK and abroad. Ella's theatre credits include 'Adult Children' (2021) a VR piece for the Donmar co-created with Sacha Wares and ScanLAB Projects, 'Swive' (2019) at The Globe, 'Anna' (2019) at the National Theatre, 'The Writer' (2018) and 'Oil' (2016) at The Almeida Theatre, and 'Wendy and Peter Pan' (2015) at The Royal Shakespeare Company. She is a member of the Royal Society of Literature, a Thornton Wilder Fellow, and has twice been a MacDowell Colony Fellow, as well as a recipient of The Catherine Johnson Award.
Photo credit: Peter Hickson
Mona Pirnot is an NYC based playwright and songwriter. She is a current member of EST/Youngblood. Plays include I Love You So Much I Could Die (2022 NYTW Dartmouth Residency) and Private (2023 SFBATCO, 2022 Mosaic Theater, 2022 Mirrorbox Theatre, 2019 Kilroys List.) Her work has been produced by or developed with Playwright's
Horizons, New York Theatre Workshop, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Mosaic Theatre, Mirrorbox Theatre, Premiere Stages, Mile Square Theatre, and Hecht Studio Theatre. She was the 2014-15 Literary Fellow at Center Theatre Group and
Williamstown Theatre Festival’s 2019 Playwright in Residence.
Raja Feather Kelly is an Obie-winning choreographer, a director, the artistic director of the feath3r theory, and a Creative Associate at The Juilliard School. In 2020, Kelly made his directorial debut at New York City's Second Stage Theatre with We're Gonna Die. Since 2016, Raja has choreographed extensively for Off-Broadway theatre in New York City, most notably for Signature Theatre, Soho Rep, New York Theatre Workshop, and Playwrights Horizons Frequent collaborators include: Lileana Blain-Cruz, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Sarah Benson, and Lila Neugebauer. Other theatre credits include choreography for Skittles Commercial: The Musical (Town Hall), The Chronicles of Cardigan and Khente (SohoRep), Everyday Afroplay (JACK), GURLS (Princeton University, Yale Repertory Theatre), Electric Lucifer (The Kitchen), Lempicka (Williamstown Theatre Festival), The House That Will Not Stand (New York Theatre Workshop), Fireflies (Atlantic Theatre Company), If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka (Playwrights Horizons, nominated for the 2019 Lucille Lortel Award and the 2019 Chita Rivera Award for Outstanding Choreography), The Good Swimmer (BAM), and Faust (Opera Omaha). Most recent work: Fairview (SDCF Joe A. Callaway Award finalist for choreography; Soho Rep, Berkeley Rep, TFANA, and winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama), A Strange Loop (Obie Award winner and SDCF Callaway finalist for choreography; Playwrights Horizons, winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Drama).
Theatre includes: FRAGMENTS (Young Vic, 2019); HEDDA TESMAN (Headlong Theatre, Chichester Festival Theatre and The Lowry, Manchester, 2019); THREE SISTERS (Almeida Theatre, 2019); ONE FOR SORROW (Royal Court Theatre, 2018); CONFESSIONS (Theatre Uncut, Traverse Theatre and Bristol Old Vic, 2018); BEST SERVED COLD (Vault Festival 2016); LELA & CO (Royal Court Theatre, 2015).
Opera, Vocal and Choral work includes: HOUSES SLIDE (London Sinfonietta, Southbank Centre, 2021); A PHOTOGRAPH (Oxford Lieder Festival, 2020); HEAVE (IRCAM, Festival de Royaumont, 2018); MIRANDA (Opera Comique, 2017); YOU'LL DROWN DEAR (IRCAM, Manifeste, Paris, 2017).
Other Awards Include: Fedora Opera Prize (2021, with composer Sivan Eldar); Harold Pinter Commission (2018); Jerwood New Playwright Commission (2015).
Cordelia's LOVE AND OTHER ACTS OF VIOLENCE, her Berwin Lee award commission, will open at the Donmar Warehouse in 2021. Her Fedora Prize winning opera LIKE FLESH will have its world premiere at Opéra National de Lille in January 2022 before touring in Europe, and AFTER ARETHUSA, composed by Sivan Eldar, will open at the Venice Biennale in 2021.
Cordelia is represented by Kirsten Foster at Casarotto Ramsay & Associates Ltd.
Miranda Rose Hall is a playwright from Baltimore, MD. Her plays include Plot Points in Our Sexual Development(LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater, finalist for the 2019 Lambda Literary Award in Drama), The Hour of Great Mercy (Diversionary Theater), and Best Lesbian Erotica 1995 (upcoming Provincetown Theater). She is currently under commission from LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater, Yale Repertory Theater, and Trinity Repertory Company. She has developed her work with Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, The Playwright's Realm, New York Theater Workshop, Baltimore Center Stage, Woolly Mammoth, NNPN, the Kennedy Center, Orlando Shakespeare Theater, EnGarde Arts, Provincetown Theater, Two River Theater, and the Orchard Project. She a founding member and Resident Playwright and ensemble member with LubDub Theatre, a New York-based physical theater company.
Miranda was the 2013-2014 Hot Desk Playwright in Residence at Baltimore Center Stage, where she helped launch the program Wright Right Now. She has taught at Georgetown and Wesleyan University, and as a teaching artist with Baltimore Center Stage and Arena Stage. Miranda spent two years with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps Northwest, serving marginalized populations in Anchorage, AK and Missoula, MT. She graduated with her BA from Georgetown University and her MFA from the Yale School of Drama.
Plays include Marys Seacole, Fairview (2019 Pulitzer Prize), We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915, Really, and Social Creatures. The presenters of her plays include Lincoln Center Theatre, Soho Rep, New York City Players & Abrons Arts Center, Victory Gardens, Trinity Rep, Matrix Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, Undermain Theatre, InterAct Theatre, Actors Theater of Louisville, Available Light, Company One, and The Bush Theatre in London. Drury has developed her work at Sundance, The Bellagio Center, The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, A.C.T., The Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, New York Theatre Workshop, PRELUDE.11&14, The Civilians, The Bushwick Starr, The LARK, The Magic Theatre, The Bay Area Playwrights Festival and The MacDowell Colony. She was a dramaturg for Zero Cost House by Pig Iron Theatre Company & Toshiki Okada, The Garden by Nichole Canuso Dance Company, and Futurity by César Alvarez & The Lisps. She has received a Jerome Fellowship at The LARK, a Helen Merrill Playwrighting Award, and a Windham-Campbell Literary Prize in Drama She is a United States Artists Gracie Fellow and a NYTW Usual Suspect.
Theatre includes: Anatomy of a Suicide, Ophelia’s Zimmer, Revolt. She said. Revolt again (Royal Court Theatre); We Want You To Watch (National Theatre); The Lone Pine Club(Pentabus); Little Light (Orange Tree); Little on the inside (Almeida/Clean Break); Salt (Comedie de Valence); Many Moons (Theatre503).
Film includes: Lady Macbeth (Nominated Outstanding Debut & Best British Feature BAFTA 2018, Nominated Best International Film Spirit Awards 2018, Winner 5 British Independent Film Awards 2017 including Best Screenplay, Winner Discovery Award European Film Awards 2017, Winner International Critic's Prize (FIPRESCI Prize) at San Sebastian International Film Festival 2016, Winner Critic's Choice Award for Best First Feature at Zurich Film Festival 2016, Winner Best Screenplay at Turin Film Festival).
Other Awards include: George Devine Award (Revolt. She said. Revolt again); Arts Foundation Award for Playwriting. Alice has been a finalist in the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize 2018, 2015 and 2012. In 2016, Alice was selected as one of the Creative England 50, a shortlist of individuals and companies judged to be the country’s most inventive, innovative and creative minds. In 2015 Alice was nominated for Friedrich Luft Prize.
Alice is currently under commission to Paines Plough, The National Theatre, The Royal Court, The Almeida and Clean Break. She is writing a TV adaptation of Love & Capital for James Schamus & Potboiler and an original pilot for HBO. Her second feature will be an adaptation of the Graham Swift novel Mothering Sunday for Number 9 Films and Film 4.
Alice is represented by Giles Smart at United Agents in the UK and by Rachel Viola and Geoff Morley at UTA in the US.
ROBERT O’HARA has received the NAACP Best Director Award, the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding New Play, 2 OBIEs and the Oppenheimer Award. He directed the World Premieres of Nikkole Salter and Dania Guiria’s In the Continuum, Tarell McCraney’s The Brother/Sister Plays (Part 2), Colman Domingo’s Wild with Happy as well as his own plays, BootyCandy and Insurrection: Holding History. His new plays Zombie: The American and Barbecue, world premiered at Woolly Mammoth Theater and New York Shakespeare Festival, respectively. He is currently directing a new musical, Uni/son inspired from the poetry of August Wilson at Oregon Shakespeare Festival and a new musical, Bella by Kirsten Childs at Playwrights Horizons. He will direct the world premiere of his play, Mankind, at Playwrights Horizons this fall.
Penelope's newest play, THE RUINS OF CIVILISATION will premiere in 2016 at the Manhattan Theater Club.
Penelope's play, THE VILLAGE BIKE, played a sell-out run at the Royal Court in the summer of 2011 where it received rave reviews and was twice extended. The play won the 2011 George Devine Award, the Charles Wintour Most Promising Playwright at the 2011 Evening Standard Theatre Awards and was nominated at the 2012 Olivier Awards for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre. It also had a rehearsed reading at the Manhattan Theatre Club as part of their 7@7 series of readings and received its regional premiere at the Sheffield Crucible Studio in September 2012.
It was revived in New York in 2014 by the MCC Theater at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (off-Broadway), directed by Sam Gold and starring Greta Gerwig as 'Becky'.
Penelope's first play, FUCKED, opened at the Old Red Lion in 2008, was a sell-out smash hit and Critics' Choice in TIME OUT. The play made a triumphant return to the 2009 Edinburgh Festival.
EIGENGRAU played at the Bush Theatre in the Spring of 2010 to critical acclaim and was longlisted for the ES’s Most Promising Playwright Award.
THE SOUND OF HEAVY RAIN played at the Sheffield Crucible Studio at the end of November 2011, in a co-production with Paines Plough and subsequently transferred to Shoreditch Town Hall in the autumn of 2012.
FRED'S DINER, played in the summer of 2012 at the Chichester Festival Theatre's Theatre on the Fly performance space (created especially for their 50th Anniversary celebrations).
In 2015 LINDA opened at London’s Royal Court theatre and played a sell-out run. It starred West End favourite Noma Dumezweni in the title role and received rave reviews.
Her first graphic novel, BRIONY HATCH, co-written with her sister, Ginny Skinner, has been published by Limehouse Books.
Penelope has also written episodes for all four series of FRESH MEAT, the Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong comedy for Objective Productions / Channel 4.
In 2016, Penelope completed her first short film, THE UNICORN, which she wrote and directed.
Penelope is currently under commission to Headlong Theatre and her newest play, THE RUINS OF CIVILISATION will premiere in 2016 at the Manhattan Theater Club.
Zinnie Harris is a playwright, screenwriter and theatre director. Her plays include THIS RESTLESS HOUSE (Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, 2016); HOW TO HOLD YOUR BREATH (Royal Court Theatre, 2015, winner of the Berwin Lee Award 2015); THE MESSAGE and ON THE WATCH (Tricycle Theatre, London, 2012), THE WHEEL (National Theatre of Scotland, 2011) joint winner of the 2011 Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award and a Fringe First, short-listed for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award; THE PANEL (Tricycle Theatre, London 2010); THE GARDEN (Traverse Theatre, 2009); FALL (Traverse Theatre, 2008) SOLSTICE (RSC, 2005); MIDWINTER (RSC, 2004) winner of an Arts Foundation Fellowship Award for playwriting, and short-listed for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award; NIGHTINGALE AND CHASE (Royal Court, 2001); and FURTHER THAN THE FURTHEST THING (Royal National Theatre/Tron Theatre, 2000/1), which was winner of the Peggy Ramsay Playwriting Award, the John Whiting Award and a Fringe First award as well as being specially commended by the Susan Smith Blackburn Award and short-listed for the Evening Standard Most Promising Playwright, BY MANY WOUNDS (Hampstead Theatre 1999) shortlisted for the Allied Domecq Award and the Meyer Whitworth Award. Adaptations include A DOLL’S HOUSE (Donmar Warehouse, 2009) and MISS JULIE (National Theatre of Scotland, 2006).
Zinnie has also written for television and radio, with two 90 minute dramas for Channel 4 called BORN WITH TWO MOTHERS and RICHARD IS MY BOYFRIEND and episodes for the BBC One Drama Series SPOOKS. She was lead writer on the series PARTNERS IN CRIME for Endor / BBC 1 (broadcast in 2015), starring Jessica Raine and David Walliams and which was based on the Agatha Christie novels TOMMY AND TUPPENCE.
Zinnie is currently under commission to the Royal Court, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre. She has been Associate Director at the Traverse Theatre since Spring 2015.
Stephen Karam is the author of The Humans (Drama Critics Circle Award, finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize) and Sons of the Prophet, (Drama Critics Circle Award, finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize). Other plays include Speech & Debate, the inaugural production of Roundabout Underground; and columbinus (New York Theatre Workshop). He wrote the libretto for Dark Sisters, an original chamber opera with composer Nico Muhly.
For film, Stephen has written screenplay adaptations of Chekhov’s The Seagull (starring Annette Bening, Elisabeth Moss, Corey Stoll and Saoirse Ronan), and Speech & Debate.
Stephen is a MacDowell Colony fellow, and the recipient of the inaugural Sam Norkin Off-Broadway Drama Desk Award. He teaches playwriting at The New School.
A graduate of Brown University, Stephen was born and raised in Scranton, PA.
Doran grew up in London and studied at Cambridge University. She was a contemporary of Robert Webb and David Mitchell and her first job as a professional writer was comedy sketch writing for their BBC2 show Bruiser. After that she worked for several years as a comedy writer writing for shows like Smack the Pony and TV to Go. In 2000 she moved to the United States on a Fulbright. She received her M.F.A. from Columbia University, and went on to become a playwriting fellow at Juilliard School.
Doran’s work has been developed by the O’Neill Playwriting Center, Lincoln Center, Manhattan Theatre Club and Sundance Theatre Lab, among others. She helped Lear deBessonet with her play "Sick With God". She is currently under commission from Atlantic Theater Company and Playwrights Horizons.
Doran says she fell in love with theater when she found Peter Pan's shadow in the backstage at a theater when she was a little girl and realized that it was made of pantyhose.
Ms. Doran's latest play Kin, described as "exquisitely wrought" by the New York Times, premiered at off-Broadway's Playwrights Horizons from February 25-April 3, 2011 under the direction of Sam Gold.
She was nominated for a 2012 Writers Guild Award for her work on the HBO series Boardwalk Empire., She is currently adapting The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency as a feature for HBO Films and is writing on season 2 of the NBC show Smash.
Awards:
- 2009 recipient of the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award
- Cherry Lane Mentor Project fellow
- three Lecomte du Nouy Lincoln Center playwriting awards
- 2005-06 Susan Smith Blackburn Awards finalist
- Liberace Playwriting Fellowship
- Howard Stein Scholarship
- Lecomte de Nouy playwriting award
Reviews:
New York Times
The Chicago Tribune
Time Out
http://www.timeout.com/newyork/theater/preview-kin-off-broadway
In 2005 Lucy Kirkwood wrote and
starred in her first play, Grady Hot
Potato, at the Bedlam
Theatre in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was also selected for the National
Student Drama Festival. The following year she took two productions
of her second play, Geronimo to the Edinburgh
Fringe, under the title The
Umbilical Project. The two plays, Cut and Uncut, were an experiment in
cutting the cord between writer and production. Uncut was directed by Lucy
herself and Cut by a completely separate company under the direction of Matt
Addicott. No contact was made between the two companies during the rehearsal
period, prompting the tag line "Two casts, two crews, two directors, two
venues, one new play... no communication" Her third play Guns or Butter, about soldiers being
overcome by the horror of war, was written for the Terror 2007
Festival at the Union Theatre,
London. Tinderbox, a dark comedy set in a
fictional 21st Century England,
premiered at the Bush Theatre
in 2008. It starred Jamie Foreman
and Sheridan
Smith. In the same year she also contributed to the Bush's 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover. Her version
of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, entitled Hedda, premiered at London's Gate Theatre in
2008 to favorable reviews. Kirkwood's promenade play about sex trafficking, It Felt Empty When The Heart Went At First
But It Is Alright Now, was produced by Clean Break Theatre at the Arcola
theatre. Her short horror piece Psychogeography
premiered at the Bush in 2008 and was revived at Southwark Playhouse.
She is under commission to the Manhattan Theatre Club to write a science play.
Her play NSFW premiered at the Royal Court Theatre,
starring Janie Dee
and Julian
Barrett and directed by Simon Godwin, in October
2012.
