Blog
Year: 2003-2004
Janice Lowe
Janice is a poet and composer. Her writing has been published in numerous journals and anthologies including Callaloo, The Hat, In the Tradition, andAmerican Poetry Review. Her articles on teaching fun and innovative creative writing lessons have appeared in Teachers & Writers Collaborative publications, including From Medusa to the Sky, Sing the Sun Up, and Old Faithful.
Janice is passionate about new musical theatre and mentoring young writers. She co-designed White Bird Production’s popular Summer Musical Theatre Workshop for youth in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, now in its ninth year. With playwright Melanie Maria Goodreaux and fourth-graders at Brooklyn’s PS 156, Janice composed I’m Searching the Universe for a New Friend, a new musical set in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and fusing the R&B, reggaeton, hip-hop and dancehall sounds of the neighborhood.
Janice has taught creative writing and music workshops in numerous schools, public libraries, and community programs. She is ever inspired by the boundless creativity of New York City youth and the stories they are bursting to tell.
Janice holds an MFA in composition from NYU’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program and was a recipient of the Dramatist Guild’s Jonathan Larson Memorial Musical Theater Fellowship. She is a co-founder of The Dark Room Collective.
Daniel Levind
Recent credits include the monologue Alt-Visions at Nuyorican Poets Cafe (to be published BEST AMERICAN SHORT PLAYS 2013-2014), Spandex the Musical (Off-Broadway, 777 Theatre), and a staged reading of To Paint the Earth (New Jersey Rep). Daniel is the recipient of the Richard Rodgers Development Award for New Musicals. www.levintheatricals.com
CREDITS
PUBLISHED WORKS
Alt-Visions, The Best American Short Plays: 2013-2014, Applause Books (forthcoming)
Performed Nuyorican Poets Cafe (April 2014)
What Really Happened: starring Abraham Lincoln, The Best American Short Plays: 2009-2010, Applause Books.
The truth is hard to uncover when witnessed through terrible historical reenactments.
Performed at Dixon Place, NYC (March 2010)
A Glorious Evening, The Best American Short Plays: 2007-2008, Applause Books.
A narcissist tries to focus on his date.
13th Street Repertory Theatre, NYC (April 2007)
Nothing Special Blog, nothingspecialspot.wordpress.com
What happens when you realize you’re not as special as your parents and teachers told you you were.
Osnat’s Story, frontpsych.com, Editor’s Pick Best of FP, 2010
An expose of one of the darkest and most opaque of teen experiences: the Israeli teen tour
Fiddler in the Rough, serialized in frontpsych.com, 2010
An expose of one of the darkest and most opaque of adult experiences: directing “Fiddler” at sleepaway camp.
PRODUCTIONS
Spandex the Musical, book, music and lyrics, (with Julian Blackmore and Annie Grunow)
Nothing can keep you down. No man. No woman. Not even a mulleted fitness instructor who feeds you diet pills and says you’ll always be a loser.
777 Theatre, NYC (May 2013)
Hee-Haw: It’s a Wonderful Li_e, full-length play with music
A counter-telling of “It’s a Wonderful Life” told from the perspective of Sam Wainwright: funny-man, plastics mogul, and forever runner-up to George Bailey.
Nuyorican Poets Café, NYC (December 2009)
To Paint the Earth, book and lyrics, full-length musical
Using characters inspired by citizens of the Warsaw Ghetto, the piece tells of the hundreds of tiny acts of resistance up through to the great 1943 Uprising. Winner of the 2004 Richard Rodgers Development Award.
37 Arts, New York Musical Theatre Festival, NYC (October 2008)
Going to Belize, one-act play
Doug comes across the name of his college love while phone banking.
Long Wharf Theatre, New Works/NH, New Haven, CT (February 2007)
Luna Park, book, full-length musical
Commissioned by SUNY Cortland, the musical traces the rise and fall of two people
who dreamed up a park they couldn’t leave.
SUNY Cortland, Cortland, NY (October/November 2008)
The Waiter…always the waiter, full-length play
Male and Female meet, order eggs, decide to fall in love and get married. There’s only one problem…the waiter.
Reading: 92nd Street Y’s Makor/Steinhardt Center, New York City (July 2006)
Website: http://www.levintheatricals.com/
Facebook: Facebook
Amy Kohn
Amy Kohn is applauded by some of the top composer/producers in modern song: Van Dyke Parks says she’s “Brimming with such talent!” and the late, legendary Producer Arif Mardin dubbed Amy a“Musical Devil in a Red Dress” and featured her on his final recording, All My Friends Are Here, along with performers such as Norah Jones, Chaka Khan, and Carly Simon. Amy always seeks sounds she’s never heard, and it comes through in the “oddly structured beauty” (Scottish Herald) of her highly arranged, cinematic music.
Amy’s compositions have been performed in many experimental festivals such as the New York’s Women’s Work Concert Series, the Tribeca New Music Festival, and the Flea Theater’s Music with a View Series curated by Pianist Kathleen Supove (piece for breakdancer, baroque harp and drums). Her music-theater work 1 Plum Sq. was produced and broadcast on WNYC as part of their American Music Festival and re-broadcast in a two-hour special on Amy’s music. The first movement of her piece Cereza commissioned by New York’s adventurous string quartet ETHEL premiered at the Winter Garden, and her 60-second piece Corset premiered in Paris as part of pianist Guy Livingston’s DVD One Minute More, accompanied by a short video by Nelleke Koop filmed twelve feet below sea level on a moving piano. Amy’s degrees from Oberlin Conservatory and the NYU Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program ground her imaginings in compositional technique.
Website: http://www.amykohn.com/
Marjorie Duffield
Marjorie Duffield is a New York based librettist, playwright and lyricist. Off-Broadway and regional credits include: Ice Island: The Wait for the Shackleton (The Melting Pot Theatre Company and Belhaven University), Sit-in at the Five & Dime with composer Janice Lowe (New Harmony Project, Voice & Vision), In a Lake of Fire (Williamstheatre – winner of the Moss Hart Award and Finalist for the Richard Rodgers Awards) with composer Greg Pliska, and Cyber-Alice with composer Sunmee Cho (Lincoln Center Directors Lab at HERE). She is a graduate of Williams College and the NYU/Tisch Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program.
UPCOMING WORKS
Additional works in development: SOMEDAY (lyrics by Marjorie Duffield, music by Chris Curtis and book by Liz Curtis and Peilin Chou.)
CREDITS
Plays:
Ice Island: The Wait for Shackleton
Librettos:
Sit-in at the Five & Dime (in development) with composer Janice Lowe
In a Lake of Fire and Tit Tales with composer Greg Pliska
Cyber-Alice with composer Sunmee Cho
Lucky Hans with composer Danny Ashkenasi
Website: http://marjorieduffield.com/
Ed Valentine
Ed Valentine is a 3-time Daytime Emmy winner for “Outstanding Writing in a Children’s Series” for Sesame Street. He has been a staff writer on Sesame Street, Nickelodeon’s The Fairly OddParents (2010 Daytime Emmy nomination, “Outstanding Writing in Animation”), and Disney Jr.’s Doc McStuffins. Ed also has written episodes of Ultimate Spiderman, Avengers Assemble, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and Astroblast, among many other shows. He was named a 2007-08 Nickelodeon Writing Fellowship, and has been a story editor and writing workshop leader for Sesame Workshop’s International co-productions in Bangladesh and India.
Before starting his TV career, Ed was named one of “50 Playwrights to Watch” in the July ’07 issue of The Dramatist magazine; his plays have been performed in New York and across the United States. Ed is the two-time winner of the “Best Full-Length Play in the Northeast” award from the Kennedy Center / American College Theater Festival for Lizzie, or: Hatchet Hour (2005) and Betsy Ross Lies! (2007). Ed was also awarded Hunter College’s Zarkower Award for promising playwrights in three consecutive years: 2001 (for Bunyan’s Body), 2002 (Arizona Iliad) and 2003 (Lizzie). A proud member of the Dramatists Guild, Ed held a 2003-2004 Dramatists Guild Fellowship.
CREDITS
27 Pigs
Betsy Ross Lies!
Bunyan’s Body
Lizzie, or: Hatchet Hour
Website: http://www.edvalentine.com/
Twitter: @eddyval
Sylvan Oswald
Sylvan Oswald is a trans interdisciplinary playwright and assistant professor of playwriting at UCLA’s Theater Department. His work has been produced/developed at Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, Soho Rep, St. Ann’s Warehouse, About Face Theatre, and Undermain Theater among others. Sylvan recently created the web series Outtakes. He is a resident playwright at New Dramatists.
UPCOMING WORKS
About to launch the second season of the web series, Outtake.
A musical with composer David Sisco about a community’s response to a hate crime.
An artist’s book about insomnia with graphic designer Jessica Fleischmann.
CREDITS
Sex Play
Cleopatra
Profanity
Nightlands
Sun Ra
Pony
Vendetta Chrome
Painful Adventures
Website: http://www.sylvanoswald.com
Roberto Marinas
ROBERTO MARINAS: Roberto has a BA in Film from the University of British Columbia. He holds an M.F.A. in Playwriting from the Actors Studio Drama School at New School University. He is a 2003-2004 Dramatists Guild Playwriting Fellow and was short-listed for the 1996 Praxis Bi-Annual screenplay contest award. His one-act play LOADER #26 has received readings at The Kennedy Center’s PAGE TO STAGE festival in Washington D.C. and Ensemble Studio Theatre in NYC. Roberto’s feature-length screenplay LAST ROAD HOME was selected for the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival – Tribeca All Access and won Honorable Mention for Screenplay at the 2007 Tribeca All Access Creative Promise Awards.
Roberto was a recipient of the Walt Disney Studios 2008 Screenwriting Fellowship. He has two produced feature screenwriting credits for the films HEADGAME and LASSO.
As an educator, Roberto has taught or lectured on writing at Champlain College, Ramapo College, New School University, Vancouver Film School, San Diego State University, National University and California State University Los Angeles.
Andrea Lepcio
Andrea Lepcio is best known for Looking for the Pony a finalist for the Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Award and for the NEA Outstanding New American Play Award. It was presented in a “Rolling World Premiere” Off-Broadway at Vital Theatre Company in New York and Synchronicity Performance Group in Atlanta and subsequent productions. Plays under development: The World Avoided (EST/Sloan), Strait of Gibraltar and Lf&Tms. Andrea is the Dramatists Guild Fellows Program Director. M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing, Carnegie Mellon University. B.A. Human Ecology, College of the Atlantic.
UPCOMING WORKS
World Avoided EST/Sloan Commission. Under development at Lark Play Development Center.
Tunnel Vision – Off the Wall – October 2015
CREDITS
Strait of Gibraltar
Me You Us Them
Dinner at Home Between Deaths
Tunnel Vision
Looking for the Pony
One Nation Under
Eclipse
Bottom of Nine
Hook & Eye
Website: http://www.andrealepcio.com/
Vishakan Jeyakumar
Born in Sri Lanka, raised in New Zealand and trained in New York City. BA(Hons) from the University of Auckland and an MFA from New York University’s Tisch School of Arts.
CREDITS
Arranged Marriage
– (one-act play) produced in the Festival of New Works (2002), Goldberg Theatre, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU.
– published by One Act Play Depot (www.oneactplays.net)
Amritsar
– (full-length play) winner of the Goldberg Award for Playwriting (2002)
– staged reading in the Goldberg Theatre (March 2003)
Broke
– (full-length play) produced in the Festival of New Works (April 2003), Goldberg Theatre, Tisch.
– produced as part of the Performing Ethnicity International Conference and Arts Festival (by Desipina Productions and Ma-Yi Theatre Company) at Club LaMama, New York City (October 21-24, 2004)
– produced at the HERE Arts Center, NYC (November 10-21, 2004)
‘lac
– (monologue) published in the anthology Monologues for Men by Men – Volume 2, edited by Michael Wright and Gary Garrison (Heinemann Press, 2003)
Raj Against The Machine
– (ten-minute play) produced by Desipina Productions in an evening of short plays at the Tenement Museum Theatre, NYC (April 1-19, 2004)
– produced by Desipina Productions at Center Stage, NYC (2009)
Jaffna Mangoes
– (ten-minute play) produced by Desipina Productions in an evening of short plays at the Kraine Theater, NYC (March 30-April 23rd 2006)
Café Ceilao
– (ten-minute play) produced by Desipina Productions in an evening of short plays at the Abrons Art Center, NYC (March 29-April 14th 2007)
99 Problems
– (ten-minute play) produced by Desipina Productions in an evening of short plays at Richmond Shepard Theatre, NYC (2008)