Playwright Biographies

On JO ADAMSON’s business card is Alfred Hitchcock’s statement: “Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.” While she is a published poet, short story writer, and essayist, she finds that the writing of plays is the most rewarding, and that creating drama fills life with meaning and purpose. Her plays have been staged in Washington, Oregon, California, Florida, West Virginia and Victoria, B.C. She writes plays with strong women characters, and feels accomplished when something she has written resonates with a member of the audience. She is particularly excited that her full-length satirical play on technology and a dysfunctional family won the James Sunwall Prize for new comedy at the Acrosstown Repertory Theatre in Gainesville (FL), 2002. Her play Doppelganger appears in an anthology entitled Great Short Plays. Volume 5. 2007, from Playscripts, Inc. Over a dozen of her monologues and scenes from her plays have appeared in collections from Smith & Kraus, Inc. Other publishers who have accepted her work are Applause Books, Meriwether Press Ltd, and Heinemann Books. She is listed in Women in American Theatre, Helen Krich Chinoy, Linda Walsh Jenkins (Theatre Communications Group).

DORI APPEL is an award-winning playwright, poet and fiction writer. Seventeen of her full-length plays, plus many one-acts and monologues, have been staged nationally and internationally in full productions and readings. Many have also received awards, including the Oregon Book Award in Drama in 1998, 1999, and 2001. Beth's monologue is part of Mother, Tree, Cat, a play that explores the complex trade-offs involved in giving up the role of "genius,” which won the international Crossing Borders Contest, sponsored by Wharf Rat Productions, Salem (MA). Peter's monologue is part of I'd Know You Anywhere, a bittersweet comedy about a mother-daughter reunion and life's essential unpredictability, which won the New American Comedy contest, sponsored by the Ukiah Players Theatre, Ukiah (CA). Three full-length plays, Girl Talk, Hot Flashes (both co-authored with Carolyn Myers) and Hat Tricks, are published by Samuel French, and a number of monologues are included in anthologies. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, and her collection of poems, Another Rude Awakening was recently published by Cherry Grove Collections. Visit Dori online at www.doriappel.com. 

TAMI CANADAY has been produced by The Changing Scene, The LIDA Project, The New York Fringe Festival, Source Theatre, Buckham Alley Theatre and The Kyoryukam Performance Hall, among others. She is published by Smith & Kraus, Meriwether, and One Act Play Depot. She has been a finalist with the Sonoma County Repertory Theatre New Drama Works, the Colorado Women's Playwright Festival, and the Boulder Acting Group New Play Festival. She was the dramaturg and a contributing writer for Bingo Boyz: Columbine, which received The Denver Post's Ovation Award for best new work.

VICKI CAROLINE CHEATWOOD’s plays have been produced Off-Off-Broadway and throughout the country. Off-Off-Broadway credits include The Risen Chris at Vital Theatre, Fits & Starts: The Sacred Heart at Access Theatre, and 10:10 and The Cowgirl Chronicles, produced by Actors Stock Company\NYC and Six Figures Theater Company. Select regional credits include productions with Journeyman Theatre Ensemble (Washington, DC), Masquer Theatre (Montana), Kentuck Arts Festival (Alabama), and Echo Theatre and Kitchen Dog Theatre (Texas). Honors include the Dallas Theater Critics Forum Award, the Southwest Theater Association’s Best New Play Award, and the Robert Bone Memorial Playwriting Award. She’s been a finalist for the Heideman Award (The Risen Chris), the Julie Harris Playwright Award (An Hour South), and the Eileen Heckart Drama for Seniors Award (Manicures & Monuments). Screenplays honors include the film version of 10:10, a finalist in the 2005 Austin Film Festival, and Air, produced by Escopa Films and recipient of the Special Jury Gold Award for Short Film Dramatic Adaptation in the Houston WorldFest Film Festival. Currently, Vicki’s working with Caliber Media Company (Beverly Hills) on the dark comic film The Road Goes On Forever.  Vicki is a member of The Dramatists' Guild, The International Centre for Women Playwrights and Austin Script Works. She is an artistic associate at Kitchen Dog Theater in Dallas, where she serves as program coordinator for PUP (Playwrights Under Progress) Fest. Vicki's writing career is made possible in part by the ArtsAngels, who provide emotional, spiritual and financial support.

SUZANNE D’CORSEY’s work includes the radio play Storm Chasers, broadcast live by NPR. The Oklahoma Repertory Theatre Company produced the commissioned full-length play Eros; The Goddess Speaks, from which the ‘Lucy’ monologue comes; a ten-minute play Aloha Nui produced during the company’s 24-Hour Play Festival; and Ragnarok, which received an Honorable Mention in the 2001 Jane Chambers Award and inclusion in Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Research Institute’s Sisters: New Work from the International Centre for Women Playwrights. Goddess Speaks was produced again by Moon Goddess Productions. Other ten-minute plays were produced during the Tulsa Experimental Theatre’s 24-Hour Play Festival, and by Theatre Pops Summer-stage. Suzanne also wrote and performed ‘Yoni Redux,’ the women’s monologue for the V-Day production of The Vagina Monologues at Tulsa University. Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference 2003, Suzanne’s other writing includes more than a dozen short stories published in literary journals and on the web, as well as poetry and essays.

SANDRA de HELEN’s Beauty Standards was produced in 2008 and 2006. Her play Blue Roses had a directed reading in January 2008 in Portland (OR). Her one-act Murder at Chez Rouge was performed at the Winterhaven 24-hour Play Festival, May 2008, and her 10-minute play The Thing Is was produced as part of the Spotlight Program at Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland, June 2008. Her libretto Alberta was published in the July 2006 issue of the Oregon Literary Review. de Helen is currently part of a multi-cultural playwriting group in Portland. Visit her online at www.SandradeHelen.com. 

SANDRA DEMPSEY writes complex plays inhabited by articulate, richly drawn and emotional characters. Her work is as instinctive and poignant as it is wide-ranging and authoritative in subject: Flying to Glory, a moving, life-affirming real-time drama about those who flew in WWII; Enigma, with its four women entangled by assisted suicide; Barbie & Ken, an acerbic satire; Armagideon's septuagenarian women navigating a disturbing future – Casualities, Rosa’s Lament, Orders, Wings and a Prayer, Air Apparent, Clap-Trap - these and many more award-winning pieces comprise her theatrical legacy. "Sandra has always been a brilliant and dedicated theatre professional in her performances and her writing." (Anna Fuerstenberg, playwright & filmmaker). Order Dempsey's published plays from any bookstore, or visit her online at www.SandraDempsey.com. 

LINDA EISENSTEIN’s plays and musicals have been produced throughout the U.S., and in England, Australia, Canada, South Africa and the Philippines. She is a three-time recipient of Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowships for Three the Hard Way, and her musicals Star Wares: The Next Generation and Discordia. Other prizes include the Gilmore Creek Award (Three the Hard Way), Sappho’s Symposium Competition (The Names of the Beast), an All-England Festival Prize (Marla’s Devotion), Get to the Point Short Play Contest (Revelation 24:12) and the West Coast Ten-Minute Play Competition (A Rustle of Wings). She has been a finalist for the Jane Chambers Competition (Rehearsing Cyrano), the Heideman Award (Higher), and the Midwest Play Competition (The Last Red Wagon Tent Show in the Land). Her short plays and monologues have been widely anthologized. She is a member of the Cleveland Play House Playwrights’ Unit, the Dramatists Guild of America, Inc., ASCAP, and Literary Managers & Dramaturgs of the Americas. Also a theatre journalist and critic, she has written for angle: a magazine of arts + culture, Cool Cleveland and the Plain Dealer. Visit Linda online at www.lindaeisenstein.com.

DIANE FORREST’s plays Life and How To Avoid It and Magda’s Beauty Secrets have appeared at the Toronto Fringe Festival. She has had numerous performances and readings of her short plays at Alumnae Theatre, including Magda, Tea on New Year’s Eve and Work and How to Enjoy It. In 2002, her one-act ShadowPlay won the Ottawa Little Theatre National Playwriting Competition. The play from which this monologue is taken, China 1938, appeared at the 2001 New Ideas Festival and the Pilot Tavern, and received an honorable mention in Queen’s University’s Herman Voaden National Playwriting Competition. A copywriter, Forrest is also an award-winning magazine journalist, has published several books, and runs the annual Write Now Playwriting Competition at Alumnae Theatre, where she is part of the New Play Development group (NPD).

A teacher of writing, NANCY GALL-CLAYTON has won the Streisand Festival of New Jewish Plays (General Orders No. 11), Heritage Festival (The Colored Door at the Train Depot), and the Eileen Heckart Senior Drama Competition (Felicity's Family Tree). Felicity's Family Tree, which was a Finalist for Actors Theatre of Louisville's National Ten-Minute Play Competition, was included in the traveling 6 Women Turning 60 Festival in 2006. Her work has been on stages coast to coast and in Australia, including Kentucky Repertory Theatre, Thurber Theatre at Ohio State University, Looking Glass Theatre (New York), Camino Real Playhouse (California), the Aronoff Center for the Arts (Ohio), Panoply Festival (Alabama), Mae West Festival (Washington), and the Jewish Community Center (Kentucky). Her work appears in anthologies published by Dramatic Publishing, Meriwether and Smith & Kraus. Nancy's work has been supported by the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the Kentucky Arts Council. Nancy was a Tennessee Williams Scholar at Sewanee Writers Conference and is a member of the Dramatists Guild and the International Centre for Women Playwrights. Visit Nancy online at www.nancygallclayton.net.

LAURA HENRY’s full-length plays have been produced or workshopped at theatres across the country. The monologue in this book is from her play The Six That Fell which has been seen at Centenary Stage Company, Echo Theatre, OpenStage Theatre & Co., Equinox Theatre and the Kitchen Theatre Company (among others). The Six That Fell was a runner-up for the Jane Chambers Award. Laura has received fellowships from Cornerstone Theater Company, the Edward Albee Foundation and the Dramatists Guild. She is a graduate of the MFA playwriting program at the University of California/San Diego and currently teaches playwriting in the New Voices program for Theatre for a New Audience in New York City.

Barbadian writer CLAIRE INCE is a graduate of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She has worked as a freelance writer, story analyst, playwright and screenwriter, whose work has appeared in Calabash, The Caribbean Writer, MaComere and the Waverly Review. She was the 2002 recipient of the Frank Collymore Literary Endowment Award for her short story collection Rehearsal. Most recently she produced Barbados' first adventure reality TV series Run’Bout as well as The Baobab Tree, which was honored as an official selection of the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival, 2006.

One ordinary day, EVIE JONES booted up her old PC to begin the novel that was on her mind. However, she suddenly found herself typing dialogue spoken by new characters as they invaded her computer screen. Obviously "the invisible writer's hand" had taken over the keyboard and had decided that her novel was to be a play. Since then virtually everything she's written is for the stage - drama, comedy, monologue, children's musical, mime. "A mountain of material still sits on the hard drive," she says. Evie was on the features staff of The Boston Herald, and for relaxation she has enjoyed constructing Logic puzzles for Dell magazines. Her best-known play, Not On This Night, has been performed across the country and won numerous recognitions, including Best Original Script at Portsmouth (NH)'s Spotlight on the Arts Awards, 2002. Evie has found membership in the International Centre for Women Playwrights and The Dramatists Guild to be a rewarding experience, especially for writers who are out of the NY-Chicago-LA, etc. loop.

SHIRLEY KING's award-winning plays have been produced or performed as readings by theatre companies around the United States, Canada and England. 2008 productions and readings include Riverside Theatre, Women’s Theatre Project, Love Creek Productions, She Speaks, Universal Theatre, AgeQuake Theatre, Penobscot Theatre, Solano Repertory, Ohio State University, University of Maryland, Brooklyn College and the University of Leeds (UK). Several of her plays and monologues have been published by Meriwether. King is a member of the Dramatists Guild and the International Centre for Women Playwrights.

RACHEL RUBIN LADUTKE’s plays have received notice in national competitions, including Jane Chambers, Long Beach Playhouse New Works Festival, Y.E.S. Festival, Moondance, Pittsburgh New Plays Competition and the Larry Corse Competition. Excerpts have been published in numerous monologue and scene collections from Smith & Kraus, Meriwether and others. Her short play Pool of Tears was published by Brooklyn Publishing. Rachel is a member of the Dramatists Guild, and The Theater Project in Cranford (NJ). From 2001 through 2008, she served on the Board of the International Centre for Women Playwrights (ICWP). She is the Editor of Seasons, the ICWP quarterly newsletter, and of Insight For Playwrights, a monthly marketing newsletter for playwrights. She holds a B.A. from Wheaton College, and an M.A. in Theatre from Hunter College. She also attended the National Theatre Institute program at the O’Neill Theater Center. Her musical Belles of the Mill was a “Best of the Fest” selection with its 2002 workshop in the Midtown International Theatre Festival. She is currently working on a cycle of nine plays exploring the 20th Century Jewish experience.

ROBIN RICE LICHTIG is the author of over 40 plays, seen from Florida to Alaska, Amsterdam to South Africa. Her plays are highly theatrical—such as a messianic wolf determined to rescue humans when Mother Nature lowers the boom, an extended family living on a New Jersey mountain apart from civilization for twelve generations, or children hiding out in an attic from a fearsome mother. Lichtig is a founding member of two developmental script groups in New York City, and has traveled to Mongolia to run a playwriting workshop. Producers include Bailiwick, NJ Rep, New Georges, TADA!, Stockyards, Emerging Artists, Alleyway, HERE, Six Figures, Stepping Stone, 3 Graces, Axial, MadLab, Manhattan Theatre Source, Lincoln Center Directors Lab and Texas A&M (Kennedy Center). Publishers include Dramatic, Bakers, Brooklyn, ArtAge, Smith & Kraus, and JAC Publishing & Promotions. Awards include (winner or finalist): National New Play Network’s Smith Prize, New Millenium, Jane Chambers, Samuel French, Karamu House, Kernodle, Reva Shiner, Perishable, Moondance, Finborough, Reverie, Coe, Drury, Maxim Mazumdar. Residencies: Cleveland Public, The Lark. Lichtig is a member of The Dramatists Guild, League of Professional Theatre Women and Manhattan Oracles. Visit Robin online at www.dramamama.net. 

ELLEN MARGOLIS serves as Chair of Theatre & Dance at Pacific University of Oregon. Her plays include Picking Up the Baby, Late, American Soil, Trying Not To Stare and the award-winning How to Draw Mystical Creatures. They have been produced at Vital Theatre, City Theatre, Theatre Lumina, Mile Square Theatre, and in festivals throughout the United States. Her short play A Little Chatter is forthcoming in a collection from Playscripts, Inc. Ellen is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the International Centre for Women Playwrights and Portland Center Stage’s professional playwrights circle. She is currently collaborating with Manhattan’s Toy Box Theatre on a full-length play about the Abraham and Isaac mythology. She works professionally as a director, dialect coach and voiceover artist.

MARGARET McSEVENEY is a late starter in the creative writing arena. She began writing after a career in teaching and education research was cut short by illness, and has since had several produced plays, published poems and short stories to her credit, some written in the Scots language. In 2001, her first full-length play Thenew was produced at the Nertherbow Theatre, Edinburgh as part of the City of Edinburgh “Quest for Camelot” Exhibition.  In 1998, the highly successful Wallace’s Women (co-written with Elizabeth Roberts) was produced by Theatre Alba at the Netherbow Theatre, Edinburgh. Her one-act Dreams of Glass was produced at the Ramshorn Theatre, Glasgow, and at the Gilded Balloon (Edinburgh Festival Fringe). Margaret’s black comedy monologue ‘Marilyn’ was a finalist in the Playwrights Union of Canada International Monologue Competition (1998) and has been performed in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Athens, Greece and Seattle (WA). She was a member of the Traverse Writers Group, the Traverse Women Writers Group from 1995-99, and Broadside (Women Playwrights in Scotland). Her short story "Doakies and Boolders" was published in Full Strength Angels (New Writing Scotland, 1996). She has had poems published in Chapman 105 (pub. November 2004) and other anthologies.

KARI ANN OWEN earned a Ph.D. from Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union and is a scholar of religion/theology and the arts, as well as a produced playwright, published poet and essayist, modern dancer and singer. She is also a published illustrator and a teacher of therapeutic horseback riding for the handicapped. She has seen her work produced at the Marsh Theatre, Brava Theatre, Dominican University (Marin County Fringe Festival), the Very Special Arts Festival at the Kennedy Center, Washington, the George R. Moscone Center, Fort Mason Center, and the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts.

JAMIE PACHINO is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter with national and international credits. Her plays have been produced and/or developed with such prestigous companies as Steppenwolf, American Conservatory Theatre, Long Wharf, Hartford Stage, Geva, Florida Stage, Northlight and many others. Her plays have been published by Playscripts, Inc., Smith & Kraus and Heinemann, and her work has been featured in new play festivals from New York to Seattle, and internationally in Scotland, Australia and Greece. Jamie’s film work includes features for Disney, DreamWorks, Vanguard Films, Walden Media and Lifetime Television. She currently serves on the faculty of the University of California/Irvine, and has previously taught at Northwestern University (her alma mater), Columbia College and the Chicago Academy for the Arts. She is a proud member of ICWP and the WGA.

An actor, director, Theatre professor and reviewer, JUDITH PRATT’s plays have been produced or read in Austin, Boston, Kansas City, Philadelphia and New York City, as well as in Cape Town South Africa. Her work was accepted at both the 2006 and 2007 Great Plains Theatre Conference, and at the 2007 Last Frontier Theatre Conference. JAC Publishing & Promotions published her full-length The Wright Place in June, 2007. Judith is a founding member of 3rd Floor Productions and a member of the Dramatists Guild and the International Center for Women Playwrights. As Pen-Ultimate, she also works as a free-lance writer for business and higher education.

MONICA RAYMOND won the Gold Medal in the 2006 Clauder Competition and the 2008 Peace Writing Award for The Owl Girl, a magic realist play about two families who both have keys to the same house - and what happens when they try to live in it together. Since she received her MFA from Smith College in 2000, she has had over fifty performances and staged readings of her work, at such venues as the Boston Theater Marathon, the Vital Theatre (NYC), the NYC and Montreal Infringement Festivals, Stage Left, the Subversive Theater and the Samuel French Festival. She is a 2008-2009 Jerome Fellow at the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, and has taught writing at Harvard, the Boston Museum School and Lehman College of CUNY. The full script of Creche is published in the anthology 35 in 10 by Dramatic Publishing.

Yale School of Drama attendee CAROL SCHLANGER’s plays have been produced in both New York and Los Angeles, and include Last Dance, Will You Still Feed Me?, Mouth to Mouth (winner of three L.A. Dramalogue Critics' awards), Valley of the Shadow of Beth, Abbie Hoffman's Last Job Interview and Night Garbage. Her solo pieces Redemption Song and Star Schadenfreude have been performed and recorded for Word Theater and Jersey Girl Productions (KCRW radio).  Schlanger is a Humanitas-nominated television writer for her episode “Comet” for My Talk Show (Imagine Entertainment), and created the sit-com pilots Back to the Garden and Hello Pilgrim for CBS. In 2007, she won First Place in the ALAP Monologue Slam. She is co-author of the screenplay Women In Luck with Jaws scribe Carl Gottliebm and is currently at work on Far Out, a narrative non-fiction hippie memoir. A writer/actress, Carol is a member of the WGAw, SAG, EQUITY, ALAP and ICWP.

KATHLEEN WARNOCK’s work has recently been seen in the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, as well as in the Spring 2006 EATfest (Some Are People) and Fall 2007 EATfest (The Adventures of…), and at Emerging Artist Theatre’s 2006 Triple Threat (Rock the Line). Rock the Line is published by United Stages. Grieving for Genevieve was produced by En Avant Playwrights at the Midtown International Theater Festival. Her work has also been produced regionally and in London. She is the 2006 Winner of the Robert Chesley Award, a member of Emerging Artists Theatre, TOSOS II, Wings Theatre, a founding member of En Avant Playwrights, and a member of the Dramatists Guild. Warnock founded and curates the Drunken! Careening! Writers! Reading series at KGB Bar the third Thursday of every month. Her fiction, non-fiction and interviews have appeared in newspapers, magazines and anthologies including Writer’s Digest, NYPress, BUST, ROCKRGRL, Metal Maidens and Best Lesbian Erotica.

ELIZABETH WHITNEY might have been the original Wonder Girl, but she didn't have an agent at the time—so she dedicated her performance work to popular culture and gender identity. She has toured her performances throughout the U.S. and Canada to colleges, theatre festivals, gallery spaces, including The Kitchen Theatre, Queer @ HERE, The Duplex Cabaret, and SchoolHouse ROXX @ PS 122 (NY), Athica Art Space (GA), Hysteria @ Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (Toronto), The Mae West Fest (WA), Bailiwick Rep and Single File Solo Performance Festival (IL), Living Art Space (OK) and DramaRama (LA). Her awards include Lesbian Theatre Awards from Curve Magazine in 2005 & 2006, “Best Performance” for her solo piece Skinny Isn’t Sexy, or Why I Never Had an Eating Disorder in the 2004 New York City Fresh Fruit Festival, "Best Solo Performance" for Wonder Woman The Musical and “Best Female Solo Performance” for Pop Culture Princess at the 2006 and 2004 Columbus National Gay and Lesbian Theatre Festivals, respectively. She has also performed as part of various collaborative efforts, such as Mouthy (the all girl spoken word group), The Famous Lesbian Comedy Road Show, and with Amanda Grove's Brooklyn-based Inertia 30 Project. She is currently developing a new solo project titled A Day Without Sunshine about growing up in Florida during the Save Our Children campaign, and a collaborative project with Lea Robinson titled Miscegenations, a new media/performance exploring race, gender, and sexuality. She holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies, and is currently a Scholar in Residence in the Institute for Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies at Emerson College in Boston. For more information, visit www.elizabethwhitney.com.

ALLISON WILLIAMS is the author of Hamlette, MMMBeth and Drop Dead Juliet (all published by Theatrefolk) as well as Miss Kentucky (finalist, Heideman Award), Someday (published in The Art of the One Act), the radio plays Dead Men Don’t Carry Handbags and Dead Men Don’t Jaywalk (broadcast on NPR), Seven Wonders and The Tale of Tsuru (with Michiko Kondo). True Story was created from a series of interviews starting from the question, "what's the most important thing you're carrying with you?" and enjoyed a successful North American tour in 2003, supported by a grant from ArtServe Michigan. True Story also won Best Show at the London Fringe Festival. Allison is also a professional aerialist, bullwhip artist and fire eater, and director of the Aerial Angels company. Visit her online at www.angelsintheair.com or www.czuppa.com.

KARIN DIANN WILLIAMS is the author of Justine, winner of the Windmill Playwrights Festival at Texas Tech University; and Australia, winner of the UNM Centennial Playwriting Competition. She is an Associate Artist at New York City’s Looking Glass Theater. Her work has also been produced in New York City by the Gertrude Stein Repertory Theatre Digital Performance Institute, This Woman’s Work Theater Company, Art House Productions, Blue Box Productions, Lamia Ink! and Muse of Fire Theater, and seen in the Midtown International Theatre Festival and the Strawberry One Act Festival. Elsewhere, her plays have been showcased in Boston Theatreworks’ BTW Unbound Festival and the Collaboraction Sketchbook in Chicago. San Diego’s Fritz Theatre – where she served as Playwright-In-Residence from 1992-2001 – staged her plays Australia, Room, Susan Katrina and Jill, The Hatchet, Quiz and The Third Voice of the Nightjar. A member of the International Center for Women Playwrights and The Dramatists Guild, she has an M.A. in Theatre from the University of New Mexico. Her work is available online through Original Works Publishing.

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