Playwrights

Ada A.

Ada A. is an early-career playwright and director who graduated from the University of Chicago with a B.A in anthropology. She was previously the assistant director for Sideshow’s The Ridiculous Darkness and Haven’s Titus Andronicus. As a playwright, her ten-minute play “United Separatism” had a professional reading at the 2020 Fade to Black Festival. Her one-act play The Reverend Dr. Paul(i) Murray had its world premiere at Valiant Theatre through its New Works Festival earlier this year.

Mentors

Naveen Bahar Choudhury

Naveen Bahar Choudhury is a playwright, librettist, and lyricist whose work has been produced, commissioned, and/or developed by Ma-Yi Theater, Prospect Theater, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Second Stage Theatre, New Federal Theatre, Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater, The Lark Play Development Center, New Dramatists, Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse, and more.  She has been a Dramatists Guild Fellow, a LaGuardia Performing Arts Center Playwriting Resident, and a Mellon Creative Research Fellow/Playwriting Resident at the University of Washington. Her play SKIN is published in Plays For Two, an anthology by Vintage Books/Random House, and was broadcast on Northeast Public Radio as part of the Playing On Air series.  She teaches playwriting at Sarah Lawrence College and is the Communications & Advocacy Manager at New Dramatists.  Her short musical on film, Lady Apsara, commissioned by Prospect Theater, and written with composer Kamala Sankaram, will be presented at the 44th Asian American International Film Festival this summer. MFA: New School.

Aris Hines 

Aris Hines (He/Him) is an Explorer, Artist, and Activist. He has been an Actor, Stage Manager, Playwright, and Director in Maryland since 2011. As an African and Native American identifying facilitator and teaching artist, Aris continues to build on his ten-year background in theatre and youth development. He has an AA in Theatre Arts from the Community College of Baltimore County and a BS in Theatre Studies, Film & Media, and Women’s Studies from Towson University. A recently returned Peace Corps Volunteer and a certified TEFL/TESL instructor, Mr. Hines has taught and tutored English as a Second Language to students in the Philippines. His work has also allowed him to train participants on topics such as global citizenship, project management, college readiness, and sexual health. Aris’ credits include Mash, Once Upon a Mattress, an American Theatre Festival, A Midsummer’s Night Dream, Little Shop of Horrors, a Shakespeare Theatre Festival, A Christmas Carol, Aida, All in The Timing, A Raisin In the Sun, Intersections, Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom, House of Macabre, Upstate, Rashomon, Frank Talk, Net Worth, Hamlet: Lost/Found, Exit Pluto, Sally McCoy, Cabaret, Constellations, and a Music Video for City Line Kids. Aris is currently pursuing a master’s degree in International Education and Filipino Cultural Studies at George Washington University.”

Dominic Finocchiaro

Dominic Finocchiaro’s full-length plays include angel’s share, brother brother, brut, complex, The Found Dog Ribbon Dance, Gold Person, how it feels to fall from the sky, The Lucky Ladies, mother’s son, and Trees in their youth. His writing has been produced and developed around the country, including with Roundabout Theatre, the New Group, Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Echo Theater, the Civilians, Clubbed Thumb, the Lark Play Development Center, the National New Play Network, Portland Center Stage, the Flea Theater, the Kennedy Center, PlayPenn, Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, Dixon Place, and the Amoralists. MacDowell and UCross Fellow. BA Reed College, MFA Columbia University, and currently a Lila Acheson Wallace Fellow at the Juilliard School.

lily gonzales

lily gonzales (they/them) is a writer born and raised in San Antonio, 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, Stages, AlterTheater Ensemble, and The Workshop Theater. lily has been a finalist for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Miranda Family ‘Voces Latinx’ Competition, and runner-up for 3 Kennedy Center playwriting awards. 

Kira Obolensky

Kira Obolensky’s plays have been produced Off Broadway, in Los Angeles, in Prague and Terezin, and in such locations as homeless shelters, prisons, tribal colleges, chemical dependency centers and immigrant centers. She has received awards and fellowships for her work, including the Kesselring Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship and most recently a Mellon Foundation National Playwright Fellowship, which put her in residence with the award-winning theater Ten Thousand Things for six years.   She has created a theater program in a maximum security prison, and worked in an interdisciplinary way with scientists, business people through an innovative organization called The Gymnasium. She has co-written a national bestseller about architecture, called The Not So Big House, lectured extensively on her work “Imagining the redistribution of the wealth of theater,” and recently worked with Pandies Theater in New Delhi, India on a tour of their production of Medea.  Her novella, The Anarchists Float to St. Louise, won Quarterly West’s Novella prize.  She attended Juilliard’s Playwriting Program, Williams College and is a core writer at the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis.

Michael Mobley

Michael Mobley writes about the intimate and private lives of Black Americans throughout America’s past, present, and future. Writing about the inner lives of Black Americans allows him to shatter stereotypes and reveal a part of America that has been historically ignored and cast aside. Two of his one-acts were Regional Finalists for the John Cauble Award for Outstanding Short Play. His full-length play, Modern-Day Saints, or the Sanctified Ones was workshopped at Frostburg State University. He was a Finalist for the Greenhouse Residency at SPACE on Ryder Farm and the Many Voices Fellowship at the Playwrights’ Center. His work has been supported by Atlantic Center for the Arts. Michael has also been the Assistant Director on two plays at the Kennedy Center, Theater for Young Audiences: She A Gem and “KIMMY”. He is excited to be a part of the National Young Playwrights in Residence Program at Echo Theater Company! 

Matthew Paul Olmos

Matthew Paul Olmos is a three-time Sundance Institute Fellowship/Residency recipient, Actors’ Theatre of Louisville Humana Festival Commissioned Playwright, New Dramatists Resident Playwright, Center Theatre Group LA Playwright Workshop Writer, Geffen Playhouse Writers Room Playwright, Oregon Shakespeare Festival Black Swan Lab Playwright, Humanitas Play LA Workshop Playwright, Princess Grace Awardee in Playwriting, National Latino Playwriting Awardee, Repertorio Español Miranda Family Nuestra Voces Playwriting Awardee, Cherry Lane Mentor Project playwright as chosen by Taylor Mac, and La MaMa e.t.c.’s Ellen Stewart Emerging Playwright Awardee as selected by Sam Shepard.

He spent two years as a Mabou Mines/SUITE Resident Artist being mentored by Ruth Maleczech and is a former New York Theatre Workshop’s Emerging Artist Fellow, Baryshnikov Arts Center Artist in Residence, Dramatists Guild Fellow, Primary Stages’ Dorothy Strelsin New American Writer, two-time INTAR H.P.R.L Playwright, Echo Theater Company Resident Playwright and an Ensemble Studio Theater lifetime member. He is a proud Kilroys nominator.

His work is produced internationally and nationally, published by Samuel French and No Passport Press; and is taught in university.

He is currently finishing a 3-play cycle about our tumultuous relationship with U.S. presidents, developed through New Dramatists Creativity Fund, and he is collaborating with composer April Dawn Guthrie on a play with music, entitled WE WALK ALONG THE CHRISTMAS BRIDGE, exploring the polarization of the left and right; as developed through Center Theatre Group’s LA Workshop and a play inspired by Samantha Power’s “The Education of An Idealist” for Geffen Playhouse’s Writers Room. www.matthewpaulolmos.com.

Zachariah Ezer

Zachariah Ezer is an M.F.A. Playwriting Candidate at the University of Texas at Austin whose work animates theoretical quandaries through dramaturgical forms. He is a James A. Michener Fellow, a Town Stages Creative Arts Fellow, a BUFU EYEDREAM Resident, a Wesleyan University Olin Fellow, and a member of The Tank’s LIT Council. He is also a dramaturg (for The National Black Theatre and The Workshop Theater, where he is currently in residence), an essayist (published by the University of Texas’ E3W, Gizmodo/io9, HuffPost, and elsewhere), and a performer (in alternative rock band Harper’s Landing). 

Herman Daniel Farrell III

Herman Daniel Farrell III is a University Research Professor and Professor in the Department of Theatre & Dance, College of Fine Arts, University of Kentucky. He received a B.A., cum laude, in Drama from Vassar College, a J.D. from New York University School of Law and an M.F.A. in Playwriting from Columbia University. He is an award-winning playwright/screenwriter and noted Eugene O’Neill scholar. He was co-writer of the award winning (Peabody Award, NAACP Image Award) HBO Film Boycott about Martin Luther King, Jr. His plays received world-premiers at The Flea Theater, Lincoln Center Director’s Lab, New York International Fringe Festival, Echo Theater and workshops at Manhattan Theater Club, Crossroads Theater, Working Theater and Primary Stages. Farrell’s work has been honored by national arts organizations: New Dramatists, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center National Playwrights Conference and the MacDowell Colony. Farrell’s new book, A Playwright’s Journey, is slated to be published by McFarland & Company in 2021. The book is based on the life, work and legacy of Eugene O’Neill. In addition to offering up a playwright’s perspective on the life and work of one of the world’s great dramatists, the book will also weave into the story of O’Neill’s journey, the stories of contemporary American playwrights as they make their way through the ups and downs of a life in the theatre. The following playwrights will be interviewed for the book: Robert Schenkkan (Pulitzer Prize, Tony Award); Doug Wright (Pulitzer Prize, Tony Award); David Lindsay-Abaire (Pulitzer Prize); and Kia Corthron (Windham Campbell Prize). Farrell completed a Travis Bogard Fellowhip at Tao House, the Eugene O’Neill National Historic Site in Danville, California where he developed his new play, Journey. The first act of the play was published in The Eugene O’Neill Review. Farrell’s essay “The Ancient Mariner and O’Neill’s Intertextual Epiphany” was published in the book Intertextuality in American Drama: Critical Essays on Eugene O’Neill. And “A Clannish Pride” – Eugene O’Neill’s Eventual Embrace of His Irish Heritage was presented in 2017 at the 10th Eugene O’Neill International Conference at the National University of Ireland, Galway and was published in 2018 in The Eugene O’Neill Review. And recently, “New Discoveries: The Marriage Certificate of Eugene O’Neill and Carlotta Monterey (July 22, 1929) / Sean O’Casey, Letter to Eugene O’Neill (November 25, 1936)” published in The Eugene O’Neill Review in 2019. Play productions and awards: civilian, 2011 New York International Fringe Festival; Rome, 2004 New York International Fringe Festival; Portrait of a President, 2002 New York International Fringe Festival (Excellence in Playwriting Award); Solo Goya, Lincoln Center’s Director’s Lab at HERE (NY 1998), Bedfellows, The Flea Theater (NY 1997), The Echo Theater Company (LA 1996) (Drama-Logue Award & Critic’s Choice); Precipice, ALLOVERPOLLOCKOVERALL, Solo Goya, The Empty Space (NY 1995). Farrell is a member of the Eugene