Petron Brown

Hattiesburg, Mississippi

Petron Brown (he/him) is a Bahamian-born theatre artist. He is the recipient of several national theatre awards including an honorable mention for the KCACTF Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award at the 2023 national festival, the ASPIRE John Cauble Award at the 2022 national festival, and a Special Achievement in Performance Award at the 2021 national festival. He is also a two-time KCACTF Irene Ryan Region IV Acting Finalist and a member of the 2023-24 Conch Shell Productions Artist Collective. He was recently recognized as the Live Arts: 2023 WATERWORKS x The Bridge Emerging Artist for his play, The Colour Woman, as well as one of the 2024 Artists in Residence at Nancy Manocherian’s the cell theatre in NYC. He will be receiving his MFA in Theatre Performance from the University of Southern Mississippi this year, where he will be inducted into the 2024 Graduate Student Hall of Fame. Petron also holds a dual bachelor degree in Environmental Studies and Theatre. He has partnered with the Arkansas Coalition Against Sexual Assault both as a performer and playwright on multiple occasions, most recently at their 2023 state conference. He recently co-wrote a children’s play as a part of a grant commission from the Hattiesburg Arts Council. His work as a theatre artist explores international conversations on humanity. At present, his ever-evolving identity as an artist lies in a melting pot of Caribbean/West Indian culture both clashing and combining with American culture.

Orlando Morales

Seattle, Washington

Orlando G. Morales (he/him) is a musician, educator, and theatermaker from Seattle, Washington. He is currently Assistant Artistic Director for the Tacoma Refugee Choir and holds a B.A. in American Ethnic Studies and a Masters in Teaching from the University of Washington. He is also on the faculty of the Washington State Teaching Artist Training Lab and has over eighteen years of experience teaching music and theater, as well as over thirteen years of professional experience as an arts administrator (Seattle Children’s Theatre; The 5th Avenue Theatre). He is a Johnny Mercer Foundation Songwriters Project alum and a Jonathan Larson Grant finalist (2019, 2020, 2022).

Favorite music directing credits include: the annual “Rally for Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” (2017-2023) for the Kent School District; How to Break (2018, 2016), Great Wall (2012), and Cloaked (2011, 2010) for Village Theatre; The Hunger Lounge (2012) for Book-It Repertory Theatre; and The Tempest (associate music director, 2023) for Seattle Rep’s Public Works. Current musical theater writing projects include Psalm (Village Theatre, 2016 workshop) and The Promised Land (O’Neill Center National Music Theater Conference Semifinalist, 2021; The 5th Avenue Theatre, 2018 workshop). Orlando is a co-founder of Rondalya sa Seattle, a Filipino American folkloric music ensemble and is a member of the Shades of Praise Gospel Choir at St. Therese Parish in Seattle. He is an avid aquascaper, proud chinchilla parent, and he grows vegetables.

Nicolette Blount

Amherst, Massachusetts

Nicolette Blount (she/her) is a songwriter, writer, producer, singer, actress, and tribal member of the Chickasaw Nation. Nicolette is the creator, cowriter, composer and lyricist for a new musical, Savage – The Unconquerable Wanda Savage. Savage received Honorable Mention for the American Playwright Foundation’s Relentless Award 2022 and has 43K streams of it’s music streaming that she self produced. Nicolette’s music has been featured at 54 Below at Women of The Wings Vol. 4, at Joe’s Pub for the Ring of Keys Gala, and at the 2019 New York Musical Festival.

As a producer, she enjoys highlighting new talent and unheard stories through her LLC Take My Shot Productions. Recently, she started nativetheatreartists.com to help create more visibility for Native artists on and off Broadway.

Nicolette has performed at Broadway Sessions and is featured on Savage’s EP. Some of Nicolette’s performance highlights have been singing at Carnegie Hall and Performing in two operas Tosca and Turandot with the Palm Springs and Riverside Civic Operas. While living in Hawaii, Nicolette wrote and recorded her first album, Conversations and toured with the Kanikapila Singers. She continues to perform in local theater with her recent role being Miss Hannigan in Annie. Nicolette is a member of the Dramatist Guild, ASCAP, Beyond Music, PAAL, Songwriters Guild of America, TRU, and Maestra. She continues to work on the development of Savage and a few new endeavors including Red, the story of the Queen of Hearts and Riot Grrrl.

Nabra Nelson

Los Angeles, California

Nabra Nelson (she/her) is a playwright from Egypt, Nubia, and California. She is a founding company member of the Seattle based MENA theater company, Dunya Productions, a founding company member of the Milwaukee-based womxn-of-color performance troupe Heard Space Arts Collective, leads the Nubian Foundation for Preserving a Cultural Heritage, and is the co-host of the Kunafa & Shay Theater Podcast (produced by HowlRound Theatre Commons). Currently, she lives in Los Angeles where she is a teaching artist with The Unusual Suspects Theatre Company, a DEI Consultant with Avent Diversity Consulting, and Grant Writer for Dunya Productions. She was previously the Director of Arts Engagement at Seattle Rep, and the Community Engagement Associate at Milwaukee Rep. She is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Playwriting credits include: Nubian Stories (Dunya Productions, The Scratch’s In Pencil: Staged Readings, and Renaissance Theaterworks’ Br!NK New Play Festival), What to Expect When You’re Simulating (Macha Theaterworks’ Distillery, Golden Thread Productions’ New Threads Reading Series), A Muslim Christmas Carol (Dunya Productions, reading); Confessions (or the Secret Play for Secretly Liberal Muslims) (New Arab American Theatre Works Playwrights Showcase, University of Washington, readings), Paint Me (Strawberry Theatre Workshop), Induced Labor (Golden Thread Productions’ ReOrient 2019 honorable mention), In the Village Across the Nile (UCF Pegasus PlayLab Finalist), Creation Gossip and Lillith (Heard Space Arts Collective), Nebula & An Endless Staircase (Mini-Plays Magazine June 2023 Issue), and Minute to Minute and Le Serious Shit (MultiCultural Drama Company).

Lachrisa Grandberry

Chicago, Illinois

Lachrisa Grandberry (she/her), Milwaukee-born native, is an actor, singer, and writer who has made Chicago her home. As a performer she has done regional theater throughout Wisconsin and Chicago, as well as television, film, and commercial work. Her voice as a writer has been heard as a classroom teacher, poet, key-note speaker, and most recently a playwright, lyricist, and composer. Her writing credits include two musicals for Northern Sky Theater in Door County, WI. She is the lyricist and co-author of Girls On Sand, premiering summer of 2024, as well as lyricist, co-author, and co-composer of Sunflowered, produced at Northern Sky Theater in 2022. Lachrisa’s generational drama, Eeny Meeny Miny NO!, had a staged reading in the inaugural Milwaukee Black Theater Festival, and she’s written and performed her solo piece, The Healing Session, a show of all original poetry. Her performance credits include Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, The Second City, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Skylight Music Theatre, Theatre LILA, Forward Theatre, First Stage, and seven seasons at Northern Sky Theater where she also serves as the Program Director of NOVA (Nurturing Original Voices & Artists) and leads multiple Writing Circles each year for writers of all levels. Lachrisa was named one of Wisconsin’s 52 Most Influential Black Leaders in 2022. Lachrisa is an alumna of Wisconsin Lutheran College, and is represented by Paonessa Talent Agency. She aims to continue inspiring and transforming the human mind through the power of story-telling. Her first musical, Sunflowered, is available now on Apple Music and other streaming platforms.

Katie Winkler

Fletcher, North Carolina

In the thirty-plus years Katie Winkler (she/her) has lived in the mountains of western North Carolina, she has been active in the theater community as a writer, actor, director, publicist, reporter, and reviewer, working with various theater organizations, including Blue Ridge Community College’s theater department, Hendersonville Theatre, and Flat Rock Playhouse, the State Theater of North Carolina. Four of her plays have been produced, including the musical A Carolina Story with music by Curtis McCarley, which was produced a second time to benefit the Student Emergency Grant and Loan Fund at Blue Ridge Community College. In addition, she has participated in workshops and readings at the Burning Coal Theater in Raleigh, NC, the Southeastern Theater Conference, and Hendersonville Theatre. For a decade she wrote regular theater reviews and feature articles about the arts for the Hendersonville Times-News. Winkler often draws inspiration from some of history’s greatest works such as The Book of Job, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Elizabeth Browning’s Sonnets of the Portuguese, and Robert Browning’s masterpiece, The Ring and the Book. Recurring themes in her work include family bonds, the strength and courage of women, the process of grief, and the healing power of friendship and love. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America and the North Carolina Writers’ Network.

Joe Barsanti

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Joe Barsanti (he/him) identifies as a queer and autistic Composer, Lyricist, and theatre artist currently living in Philadelphia. He studied composition in Chicago after graduating high school and later received a B.A. in Vocal Performance and Theatre. Joe studied composition with Dr. Eliza Brown, Dr. Ilya Levinson, and Dr. Drew Baker, orchestration with Dr. Ken Kumpf, musical theatre writing with Phil Kern, and lyric writing with Adam Gwon and Marcy Heisler. His first musical, Oak Island, was produced by American Lives Theatre and had a staged workshop performance in 2022. While musical theatre writing is his passion, he also explores other ways we use music to supplement or enhance a story. Joe has written original music for plays, as well as theme songs for several podcasts, and has had his music license for independent films. He is the resident composer for the Roll Gay Role Play Network and works as a freelance vocal arranger, educator, orchestrator, and music engraver. For more information visit www.joebarsanti.com.

Hope Villanueva

Rockville, Maryland

Hope Villanueva (she/her) is an AEA stage manager by profession, but constantly writes. Her interest is in exploring the humanity of characters in their most challenging moments. She believes that the point of art is to examine ourselves and make ourselves better as a result of that reflection.

Her work has been presented by Honolulu Theatre for Youth, Next Act! New Play Summit at Capitol Repertory Theatre, Baltimore Playwrights’ Festival, The Black and Latino Playwrights’ Conference, The Kennedy Center Page to Stage Festival, The Discovery New Play Festival, The Kitchen Dog New Play Festival. The Women’s Voices Festival, INKubator On Air and WTF Occupy the Space Festival, Rapid Lemon, NextStop Theatre Company, and The Wayward Artist. Her plays have been selected as O’Neill Conference Semi-Finalist (2022) and Finalist (2020).

More recently, Vanishing Girl: A New Musical (with William Yanesh, book and lyrics), was hosted for multiple readings at NYC’s Latiné Musical Theatre Lab and a developmental workshop at Flying V in Washington, DC in 2023. Her newest play, BUZZ, was presented at the 2023 Valdez Theatre Conference and has been selected for the 2023 AGE Legacy Playwright Grant.

Ms. Villanueva is the current literary manager at Bay Street Theatre, holds a BA from the UCSB in Playwriting, and is pursuing a Master’s Degree in Writing for Stage and Screen at Lesley University. She is represented by IPEX Artists’ Agency.

Germaine Shames

Tucson, Arizona

Germaine Shames (she/her), a Kilroys List playwright and recipient of her state’s Literary Fellowship in Fiction, is author of the award-winning novels, Between Two Deserts and You, Fascinating You. Writing under the pen name Casper Silk (Hotel Noir, Echo Year), she has been compared to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Graham Greene, and P.D. James “on steroids”. After covering world conflicts as a correspondent and witnessing firsthand the gamut of senseless tragedies behind the headlines, she realized that hard news could never convey an iota of the deeper story she was gleaning. She turned to fiction writing, learning that she can find light in the most horrific situations and leave readers (and now an audience) with hope. As a playwright, Shames has celebrated premieres across the U.S. as well as abroad and been recognized in a number of festivals, including Fulton Theatre’s Stories of Diversity 2023, Pegasus Theatre’s Fresh Reads 2023 (First Place), ThinkTank TYA’s inaugural Playwrights Festival, Cimientos 2019, and Festival of New American Theatre 2018. As a librettist-lyricist, Shames collaborates with world-class composers in musical theatre, opera, choral and popular music. Her eco-opera The Bird Lady (with composer Timothy Miller) previewed in 2021 at the National Opera Center. Her immigration musical, Capri (w’ Paul Scherer), won Skyline Theatre’s new musical search and was their singular offering at the 2022 NJ Theatre Alliance Stages Festival. In 2019 and 2020 respectively, Theatre Elision produced her musicals If the Spirit Moves (w’ Erin Murray Quinlan) and The Manifesto (w’ Nadav Amir-Himmel). Shames holds a Master’s degree in Intercultural Studies. Her writing reflects the breadth of her worldview and fascination with the interplay of cultures, often drawing on events and settings from her sojourns abroad. She writes from a global perspective with the conscious aim of fostering interethnic, intergenerational and cross-gender understanding. It’s all about love.

Beth Kander

Skokie, Illinois

Beth Kander (she/her) is a Chicago-based writer, with tangled roots in the Midwest and Deep South. The granddaughter of immigrants, she loves exploring how worlds old and new can intertwine—or collide. Beth earned a Master of Social Work degree from the University of Michigan; an MFA in Creative Writing from Mississippi University for Women, where she currently serves as adjunct faculty; and a Bachelor of Arts from Brandeis University. Playwriting honors include: T. Jefferson Carey Memorial Playwriting Award (2022); Henry Award for Best New Play or Musical (2020); Headwaters Festival Award (2018); Equity Library Theatre-Chicago (2017); Ashland New Plays Festival (2015, 2016); New Stage Eudora Welty Awards (2008, 2010, 2012); and the Charles M. Getchell New Play Award (2012). She is a founding member of Fondren Theatre Workshop in Mississippi and served for seven seasons as Ashland New Play Festival’s resident playwright. Beth’s debut novel for adults, I MADE IT OUT OF CLAY (Mira/HarperCollins), hits shelves in fall 2024. She is the author of multiple children’s books, including DO NOT EAT THIS BOOK! (Sleeping Bear Press) and GLUBBERY GRAY, THE KNIGHT-EATING BEAST (Pelican Publishing). Her YA dystopian trilogy ORIGINAL SYN won a 2019 Foreword INDIE Award. A proud parent-artist, her favorite characters are her two brave, hilarious kids (for real—they’ve got jokes), and she cheers for parent-artists everywhere. Beth is represented by Allison Hellegers at Stimola Literary Studio. For more: www.bethkander.com