Kit Yan

Kit Yan (Playwright/Poet/Lyricist/Performer) is a Yellow American New York based artist, born in Enping, China, and raised in the Kingdom of Hawaii.

Their work has been produced by the American Repertory Theater, the Smithsonian, Musical Theater Factory, the New York Musical Festival, and Dixon Place. They have been a resident at the Civilians, Mitten Lab, 5th Avenue Theater, the Village Theater, a WP/Public theater translab fellow, and are a 2018-19 Dramatists Guild Fellow. Their musical INTERSTATE, written with collaborator Melissa Li, won best lyrics at the 2018 New York Musical Festival and their show QUEER HEARTACHE has won 5 awards at the Chicago and SF Fringes.

“My work is a dreamspace where queer and transgender folx can time travel in order to witness, remember, and heal our herstories. I hold writing as a spaceship into the borderless ancestral past, the puzzle pieces of an imagined queertureverse, and a lifeline back onto this earth. Here, we can ground, explore, and discover stories on our own terms—messy, ugly, and wholly beautiful. My dreams lead me to write about the fractures in my life and in this world, times I fucked up, times I was held accountable by my family and communities, and times of collective struggle on a path towards collective liberation. Above all else, I write about queer love smashing racism, patriarchy, and systemic oppressions.”

Jay Adana

Jay is a Los Angeles transplant, 2018 Jonathan Larson Grant Recipient, and 2019 Dramatist Guild Foundation Fellow. She met Zeniba Britt at the #BARS workshop at The Public Theater founded by Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs, where they developed an adaptation of Toni Morrison’s Beloved. They became residency writers there under the supervision of Jeanie O’Hare developing The Loophole, an American Civil War musical. They were commissioned to present part of it at the Public Theater as part of the 50th Anniversary of Hair celebration. She also wrote the lyrics for The Woodsman (New World Stages) and contributed music and lyrics to Jeff Augustin’s The Last Tiger in Haiti (Berkeley Rep/La Jolla Playhouse). BFA Acting Conservatory of Theatre Arts and Film at SUNY Purchase.

Mathilde Dratwa

Mathilde Dratwa is a member of Dorset Theater Festival’s Women Artists Writing Group, a former member of New York Foundation for the Arts’ Immigrant Artist Program and a two-time Pulitzer Center Grant recipient. Her theater credits include Milk and Gall (Great Plains Theater Conference, Jane Chambers award finalist, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference Semi-Finalist) and Escape from Garden Grove (Last Frontier Theater Conference, Maxim Mazumdar New Play Competition Finalist). Her plays have been workshopped and presented by LAByrinth Theater Company (Barn Series) and InProximity Theatre. She wrote and directed the short films PETA PAN (starring Independent Spirit Award Nominee Nisreen Faour) and ESCAPE FROM GARDEN GROVE (Sundance Channel Contest Finalist). A seasoned educator, Mathilde is a Master Teaching Artist for Roundabout Theatre Company, the New Victory, the Shakespeare Society and the School of The New York Times. She is the co-founder of Moms-in-Film.

Erika Dickerson-Despenza

Erika Dickerson-Despenza is a Blk feminist poet-playwright, cultural worker, educator and grassroots organizer from Chicago, Illinois. She’s the recipient of the 2019 Princess Grace Award in Playwriting/Fellowship at New Dramatists and was a 2018 Relentless Award Semifinalist. Erika is a National Arts & Culture Delegate for the U.S. Water Alliance’s One Water Summit 2019. She’s the 2019-2020 Tow Playwright-in-Residence at the Public Theater, a 2019 Writers’ Gathering Jerusalem Writer-in-Residence, a 2019 New York Stage and Film Fellow-in-Residence, a 2019 New Harmony Project Writer-in-Residence, a 2018-2019 Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellow and was The Lark’s 2018 Van Lier New Voices Fellow. Erika is a 2019-2020 member of Ars Nova Play Group and a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Obie-winning Youngblood collective. Her work has been developed at The Lark, Vineyard Arts Project, New York Stage and Film, Public Theater, Victory Gardens Theater, Fault Line Theatre and Jackalope Theatre. Current plays in development include: ocean’s lip/ heavn’s shore, took/tied, hung/split, shadow/land, and cullud wattah (2019 Kilroys List; Public Theater, 2020). In addition to this water tetralogy, Erika is developing a 10-play Katrina Cycle, including [hieroglyph] (2019 Kilroys List), focused on the effects of Hurricane Katrina and its state-sanctioned man-made disaster.

Melissa Li

Melissa Li is a composer, lyricist, performer, and writer. She is a recipient of the Jonathan Larson Award, a 2018-19 Dramatists Guild Foundation Musical Theatre Fellow, a 2018-19 Lincoln Center Theater Writer in Residence, and a former Queer|Art|Mentorship Fellow. Musicals include Interstate (New York Musical Festival, Winner “Outstanding Lyrics”), Surviving the Nian (The Theater Offensive, IRNE Award Winner for “Best New Play” 2007), and 99% Stone (The Theater Offensive). Her works have received support from the National Performance Network, New England Foundation for the Arts, Dixon Place, terraNOVA Collective, The Village Theater, 5th Avenue Theatre, and Musical Theater Factory, among others. Melissa has released music as a solo artist and collaboratively, including 2 Seconds Away, Drive Away Home (as Good Asian Drivers), and The Beginning (as Melissa Li & The Barely Theirs). She is proud to be from Boston, and proud to be based in NYC and Baltimore.

Charles Gershman

Charles Gershman is a playwright and screenwriter. His play Free & Proud recently ran in the UK, selling out London’s Theatre503 and playing at Assembly Festival (Edinburgh Fringe) and the King’s Head Theatre (Off-West End, London). It was published by Oberon Books. His award-winning play The Waiting Game premieres in NYC at 59E59 Theaters in February 2019. Other work has been produced or developed by The Lark, The Playwrights’ Center, PlayPenn, the Kennedy Center, Theatre for the New City, LaMaMa ETC, Primary Stages, FringeNYC, NYU-Tisch School of the Arts, and the University of Central Florida, among others. He has been a teaching artist at the New School’s Eugene Lang College and at Davidson College. MFA: NYU-Tisch (Chair’s Award for Excellence in Dramatic Writing).

Nambi Kelley

Kelley has performed on regional stages across the country, internationally, including many shows at the Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, and has been seen on several television shows, including Elementary, Person of Interest, Madam Secretary, Chicago PD, and most recently guest starred on NBC’s Chicago Justice. Also an accomplished playwright, Nambi has penned plays for Steppenwolf and Goodman Theatre in Chicago, Lincoln Center (Director’s Fest) in New York, and internationally. Kelley is in residence at New Victory for 2018-19, was a finalist for the Francesca Primus Award, The Kevin Spacey Foundation Award, and is working on an adaptation of Toni Morrison’s Jazz which is slated for several regional productions in coming seasons. Her adaptation of Native Son (Sam French)has enjoyed productions across the country, most notably, at Yale Repertory Theatre, and will premiere in NYC in 2019. www.nambikelley.com.

Benjamin Velez

Benjamin Velez is a composer/lyricist and Columbia graduate where he wrote the 114th Annual Varsity Show. A member of the BMI workshop since 2010, he won the Harrington Award in 2012. His work has been at the Yale Institute for Music Theater, Ars Nova, NAMT, NYMF, NEO, the Civilians, 4@15, Joe’s Pub, and the York Theater where his musical “Afterland” had a reading directed by Mark Brokaw. He was a 2017 Sundance Artist at the UCROSS Foundation, and a spring 2018 artist in residence. His original musical “Starblasters” had its first reading at Dixon Place this past March, directed by Daniel Goldstein. His musical “Borderline” was the 2018 winner of the Weston Playhouse New Musical Award. His musical “Kiss My Aztec”, written with John Leguizamo, had a reading this year at the Public Theater and will be having its world premiere at Berkeley Rep in 2019.

Rae Binstock

Rae Binstock grew up in Cambridge MA and attended undergrad at Columbia University. Her plays include land of no mercy (David Ross Fetzer Foundation Theatre Grant, 2017 winner), POSE (O’Neill Conference semifinalist), and We Are The Light of the World (Red Theater’s National Playwriting Competition, 2016 winner). Her plays have been produced and developed with companies such as The Lark Development Center, the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival, Salt Lake Acting Company, The Hearth Theater, and The Fresh Fruit Festival.

Rae is a 2018-2019 Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellow, a 2017-18 Rita Goldberg Playwrights Workshop Fellow at the Lark, and the 2018 Emerging Artist Fellow in Dramatic Writing at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop. She has been awarded residencies by the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, PLAYA Summer Lake, and the Writers’ Colony; she is also an O’Neill Conference, SPACE at Ryder Farm, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and ATHE Judith Royer Award semifinalist. Rae is currently a Writers’ Assistant on FX Networks’ upcoming miniseries about choreographer Bob Fosse. She lives in Brooklyn, NY, with her cat, Black Cat. (www.raebinstock.com)

Zack Zadek

Zack Zadek is a composer/lyricist, playwright, and songwriter with Warner/Chappell. He won the 2017 Weston New Musical Award for his book, music, and lyrics to DEATHLESS (dir. Tina Landau) which received its world premiere at Goodspeed Musicals last spring after being developed at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley. Zack was a 2017 MacDowell and VCCA Fellow, and was recognized as a 2018 Kleban Prize Finalist, 2017 Jonathan Larson Grant Finalist, SigWorks Finalist and Kevin Spacey Artist’s of Choice Finalist. He is developing STORE BRAND (dir. Jaki Bradley) with The Civilians and currently holds commissions from Mike Bosner Productions, Ars Nova/Jill Furman Productions, and Arena Stage, and is a writer-in-residence with The Orchard Project Greenhouse and Ars Nova.