PLAYWRIGHTS
Fernanda Coppel
(She/Her)
Mashuq Mushtaq Deen
(He/They)
Ty Defoe
(He/Him/They/Them/We/Us)
Marquis D. Gibson
(He/Him)
Nina Ki
(Xe/She/They)
Derick Edgren Otero
(They/He)
Harrison David Rivers
(He/Him)
J. Harvey Stone
(He/Him)
Lucy Thurber
(She/Her)
Doug Wright
(He/Him)
Fernanda Coppel
(she/her)
Fernanda Coppel is a Mexican/American playwright and screenwriter. Her play King Liz received its world premiere at Second Stage Theater in 2015. Her professional New York debut, Chimichangas and Zoloft premiered at the Atlantic Theater Company in 2012 and is published by Samuel French. Fernanda received the New Play Commission from Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2015 where she wrote her latest play: AYA or Dear Lover.
She’s currently working on a commission for La Jolla Playhouse. Fernanda’s work has won the 2012 HOLA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Playwriting and the 2012 Helen Merrill Award. She’s an alum of: The Juilliard School, NYU (M.F.A.), and UC Santa Cruz (B.A.). Fernanda’s also written for TV shows such as: Shonda Rhimes-produced How to Get Away with Murder, Jason Katims’s Rise, USA Network’s adaptation of Queen of the South, among others. In feature film, Fernanda co-wrote No One Gets Out Alive which was produced by Netflix and Andy Serkis’ UK-based Imaginarium Productions and premiered on Netflix in fall 2021.
Mashuq Mushtaq Deen
(he/they)
Mashuq Mushtaq Deen is an award winning Brooklyn based playwright. A CORE writer at the Playwrights Center, and winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Draw the Circle, Deen has had his plays produced by PlayMakers Rep, Mosaic Theatre, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, Kansas City Rep, Keen Company, as well as others.
Deen’s work has been supported by a number of institutions, some include: the Siena Art Institute, Sundance Theatre Institute & the Ucross Fundation, Blue Mountain Center, The Public Theater, NYTW, New York Foundation for the Arts, InterAct Theatre, Page73, Ma-Yi, as well as numerous others. They have also been supported by a number of festivals and universities and have received grants from places like the New York Foundation for the Arts,the Bronx Cultural Council, and TCG. He is a member of the NYTW Usual Suspects and the Dramatists Guild.
He is an alum of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab, the Public Theater Writers Group, and New Dramatists. He earned his MFA from the Actors Studio Drama School/New School for Drama.
Ty Defoe
(he/him/they/them/we/us)
Indigiqueer/2S+ citizen of the Oneida/Ojibwe Nations. A director, writer, interdisciplinary artist, and Grammy Award winner. Ty aspires to an interweaving and glitterizing approach to artistic projects with social justice, indiqueering, and environmental-ism.
Ty’s global cultural arts highlights: the Millennium celebration in Cairo, Egypt; International Music Festival, Ankara, Turkey; and Festival of World Cultures in Dubai.
Awards: Global Indigenous Heritage Festival Award, Jonathan Larson Award, First Peoples Cultural Capital Fellow, Helen Merrill Playwriting Award 2021, and finalist at the Cordillera International Film Festival for We Will Always Be Here.
Works created and authored: Trail and Tears (w/ Dawn Avery), River of Stone, Red Pine, The Way They Lived, Ajijaak on Turtle Island, Hear Me Say My Name, The Lesson (w/ Avi Amon and Nolan Doran), and Firebird Tattoo, among others. Current release of VR and digital media projects ANAKWAD (w/ Dov Heichemer and _alpha), CIRCLE, and Strong Like Flower (w/ Katherine Freer). An artEquity facilitator, co-founder of Indigenous Direction (w/ Larissa FastHorse). Member of All My Relations Collective, whose GIZHIBAA GIIZHIG | Revolving Sky was presented at The Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival.
Publications: Casting a Movement, Pitkin Review, Thorny Locust Magazine, HowlRound, and Routledge Press, The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays for the Stage. Degrees from CalArts, Goddard College, and NYU Tisch.
Director: The Winer Bear (Perseverance Theater), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Arizona Shakespeare Company).
Movement Direction: Mother Road, directed by Bill Rauch (Oregon Shakespeare Festival), Manahatta, directed by Laurie Woolery (OSF and Yale Rep); and choreographer for Tracy Letts’s The Minutes (Broadway). Ty appeared on the Netflix show Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and in Young Jean Lee’s Straight White Men, directed by Anna Shapiro (Broadway debut). Lives in NYC + loves the color clear.
Marquis D. Gibson
(he/him)
Marquis D. Gibson is an actor/writer from Durham, NC. He trained at Howard University where he graduated magna cum laude as well as with SpringboardNYC and AADA-Los Angeles. Marquis is a veteran of the American conservatory Theater, Marin Shakespeare, Cincinnati Playhouse, Baltimore Center Stage, Signature Theater and many more.
Marquis was a cast member in the Pulitzer-prize-winning play FAT HAM by James Ijames which played at the American Airlines Theatre on Broadway, following sold-out runs at the Public Theatre in New York. He went on to perform the starring role of Juicy in the show's transfer to D.C. He was also a member of the fall 2021 cohort of the Baldwin House Urban Writing Residency.
Nina Ki
(xe/she/they)
Nina Ki is a Queerean (Queer + Korean) American playwright who lives in Brooklyn. Xe holds a BFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and xer plays have been read, recorded, and presented nationwide, including with MCC Theater, Queens Theatre, Yale Summer Cabaret, and The Parsnip Ship. Xer play “Moon Bear '' was given special consideration for the Relentless Award, and xer play “Taemong (Birth Dream)” was a finalist for the Van Lier Fellowship. Xe was also an inaugural member of The Parsnip Ship’s Radio Roots Writer’s Group, and is currently a part of Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writer’s Group.
Derick Edgren Otero
(they/he)
Derick is a former Lambda Literary Fellow and recent participant in the Fresh Ground Pepper NYC BRB Retreat. Development includes Lambda Literary LGBTQ+ Emerging Writers Retreat with faculty Victor I. Cazares, La MaMa Umbria with guest artist Todd London, November Theatre, Art Garage, Cherry Lane Theatre, Capital Repertory Theatre, and Rockford New Play Festival, curated by Nathan Alan Davis. Awards in KCACTF Region V: 2024 John Cauble One-Act Festival, 2024 Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, and 2024 and 2023 Latinx Playwriting Award. University Awards: 2018 Lipkin Prize in Humanities, 2017 David Lindsay-Abaire Prize in Playwriting. Finalist: 2023 Catskills Creative Residency, 2020 Campfire Theatre Festival, 2016 and 2015 Capital Repertory NEXT ACT New Play Summit, 2015 and 2014 Rockford New Play Festival; semi-finalist: 2021 Playwrights Realm's Scratchpad Series, 2017 O'Neill National Playwriting Conference; long list: 2019 Independent International Award for Improper Dramaturgy. BA, Sarah Lawrence. MFA, Iowa Playwrights Workshop.
Harrison David Rivers
(he/him)
Harrison David Rivers is an award-winning playwright, librettist and television writer based in St. Paul, Minnesota. His works include The Salvagers (Yale Rep), we are continuous (Uptown Players, New Conservatory Theatre Center, Geva Theatre Center, Williamstown Theatre Festival), the bandaged place (Roundabout, NYSF), This Bitter Earth (Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre, White Bear Theatre, Seattle Public, TheatreWorks Hartford, InterAct, The Road, Richmond Triangle Players, Theater Alliance, About Face, Penumbra, NCTC), among others, and the musicals We Shall Someday with Ted Shen and I Put a Spell on You with Nubya Garcia.
His television credits include One of Us Is Lying (Peacock), The Nevers (HBO) and Wytches (Amazon). Harrison is a recipient of McKnight, Jerome and Van Lier Fellowships, residencies with the Siena Art Institute, NYTW, Williamstown, Geva and Duke University, and commissions from Roundabout, Transport Group, Penumbra, Geva, La Jolla Playhouse and Minnesota Opera. He sits on the Board of Directors of The Movement Theatre Company and the Playwrights’ Center. MFA: Columbia University.
J. Harvey Stone
(he/him)
J. Harvey Stone is a public-school theatre teacher, director, and writer living in Williamsburg, Virginia. Harvey has taught learners from ages 2 through 72 in everything from Shakespeare to swimming, and from Plutarch to pedagogy. Harvey is in his 24th year of teaching and currently teaches and directs the theatre program at Jamestown High School. Harvey and his Jamestown students are four-time winners of the “Best Original Play” award from the Virginia Theatre Association. Harvey is pursuing an MFA in Playwriting at The Playwright’s Lab at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. A simple foodie, Harvey is always looking for the world’s best pimento cheese.
Lucy Thurber
(she/her)
Lucy Thurber is a TV/Film Writer and OBIE Award-winning Playwright. She has written films and/or tv episodes for networks and streaming services including HBO, Amazon, AMC, Hulu, and Starz, among others. Lucy is the author of numerous plays including Where We’re Born, Ashville, Scarcity, Killers and Other Family, Transfers, and many others. Her work has been produced by places like MCC, Williamstown, Labyrinth Theater Company, Contemporary American Theater Festival, Rattlestick Playwright’s Theater, The Axis Theater, and The New Ohio Theatre, The Atlantic Theater and numerous others.
Lucy is published by Dramatists Play Service. She is an alumni of New Dramatists, a member of 13P, Labyrinth Theater Company, Rising Phoenix Rep, and New Neighborhood. Lucy has been commissioned by Steppenwolf Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, The Contemporary American Theatre Festival, Houses on The Moon, Yale Rep, Williamstown Theatre Festival, and A.C.T. She is the recipient of Manhattan Theatre Club’s Playwriting Fellowship, the first Gary Bonasorte Memorial Prize for Playwriting, the Helen Merrill Award, a LILLY Award and an OBIE Award for The Hill Town Plays. Lucy was formerly the head of Graduate Playwriting at The New School. She has taught writing classes for NYU/Tisch, Columbia, Sarah Lawrence College, Primary Stages, and MCC Theatre.
Doug Wright
(he/him)
Doug Wright is a celebrated playwright, screenwriter, and librettist. He attended Yale University and New York University. Wright has written three musicals (including Grey Gardens, produced 2006–07), eight plays, and one feature film. His best known play is I Am My Own Wife (produced in 2003–04), which won many honors, including a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony Award for Best Play, and Lucille Lortel Award for Best Play (all in 2004). He also wrote both the Obie Award-winning play Quills (1995) and the original screenplay for the 1999 film of the same name, which was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay, among other honors.
His Broadway credits include War Paint, Hands on a Hardbody (Drama Desk Nomination), The Little Mermaid, Grey Gardens (Tony Award nomination), I Am My Own Wife (Tony Award, Pulitzer Prize). Off-Broadway credits include Posterity (Atlantic Theater Company); Unwrap Your Candy (Vineyard Theater); Quills (New York Theatre Workshop); Standing on Ceremony (Minetta Lane Theater); Buzzsaw Berkeley (WPA Theater). Films include Quills (Paul Selvin Award, WGA) and The Burial (starring Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones). He is the former president of the Dramatists Guild of America and a member of SAG-Aftra, SDC and the WGA.
RESOURCES
→ Anti-Trans bills have doubled since 2022
→ Fact Sheet: Anti-LGBT+ Mobilization in the United States
→ Florida teachers navigate their first year under the "Don't Say Gay" law
→ G.O.P. State Lawmakers Push a Growing Wave of Anti-Transgender Bills
→ When Students Change Gender Identity, and Parents Don’t Know
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