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York Walker

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Covenant (PlayPenn, 2020)

 

York Walker is a writer based in Harlem, New York. He is currently a member of Lena Waithe’s Hillman Grad Mentorship Program. His work includes The Séance (Winner of the John Singleton Short Film Competition, 48 Hours… in Harlem), Covenant (Fire This Time Festival, Access Theatre’s 4 Flights Up Festival), White Shoes (Fire This Time Festival), Summer Of ’63 (The Actors Company Theatre’s New TACTics Festival, Actor’s Theatre of Louisville’s Apprentice Reading Series) and Of Dreams To Come (American Conservatory Theatre’s New Work Series). York received his MFA in Acting from the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco.

Amy E. Witting

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Archipelago (PlayPenn, 2019)

 

AMY E. WITTING resides in Queens where she received a QAF New Work Grant for her documentary play, Sunnyside Impressions. Other work includes Anne Page Hates Fun (American Shakespeare Center World Premiere), The House on the Hill (CATF World Premiere, Atlantic Theater Commission, NNPN Showcase, The Kennedy Center ACTF/NNPN MFA Alumni Playwright Workshop), and A Bad Night (NY Rep Workshop, MTC Creative Space). Her plays have been developed at Atlantic Theater, The Lark Play Development Center, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Tofte Lake Center, Roundabout Theatre, National New Play Network, Abingdon Theatre, and The Kennedy Center. She received her MFA in playwriting from Hunter College.

Nicholas Wardigo

Nicholas Wardigo

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Hum (PlayPenn, 2010)

Nicholas Wardigo is a Philadelphia-based playwright and novelist who has been confounding audiences and readers since his first production in 2004. He has received grants from the Pew Fellowships in the Arts and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and his plays have been produced by such forward-thinking theaters as the MacKnight Foundation (Philadelphia), Plays & Players Theatre, Straw Flower Productions, Philadelphia Theatre Workshop, the Brick Playhouse, the Theater Alliance (Washington, DC), and The Phoenix Theatre (Indianapolis). Nicholas has received staged readings in lots of other places, including PlayPenn, InterAct Theatre Company, Theatre Exile, Society Hill Playhouse, and Flashpoint Theatre Company. He is also the proud creator, host, editor, and chef on a web series called Martinis with Nick.

 

 

Joe Waechter

Joe Waechter

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Profiles (PlayPenn, 2013)

Joe Waechter is a playwright and screenwriter living in Los Angeles. His plays include: The Hidden People, PROFILES, Lake Untersee, Good Ol Boys, and The Strangler. His work has been developed with or produced by Playwrights Horizons, Guthrie Theatre, Ars Nova, American Repertory Theatre, McCarter Theatre, Trinity Repertory Theatre, The Kennedy Center, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, PlayPenn, Red Eye Theatre, Workhaus Collective, and the Inkwell, among others. Awards include the AracaWorks Graduate Playwriting Prize, Lucille Lortel Playwriting Fellowship, and a McKnight Advancement Grant and two Jerome Fellowships at the Playwrights’ Center, where he is currently a Core Writer and serves on the Board of Directors. He has been a resident artist at Hangar Theatre, Tofte Lake Center, SPACE on Ryder Farm (member of Working Farm writers group), and on board an ice-class sailboat the Antigua for The Arctic Circle residency in summer 2014. M.F.A. Brown University.

Davey Strattan White

Davey Strattan White

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Cattle Barn, Hoochie Coo (PlayPenn, 2014)

Dave Strattan White is a Philadelphia playwright, originally from the farmlands of Indiana, who hopes that his plays live in the more personal shadow of larger social problems. Past productions and workshops include: Cattle Barn Hoochie Coo (PlayPenn); The Foundling Wheel (Philly Fringe Festival); Liverpudlian Sleeve (Temple University Thesis); The Amazing Irene Craigmile, and Cliff-Diving (Philadelphia Theatre Co PTC@Play); Still Life of a Moving Picture (workshop, New Leaf Theatre, Chicago); Nativity: A Christmas Play about Islamaphobia (Maples Rep, Macon, MO); Simulations (Plays and Players Theatre); Reindeer, Magnetosphere (Philadelphia Theatre Workshop); An Imperfect Sonnet (Cardboard Box Collaborative). He has earned MFA’s in Acting and Playwriting from Temple University, where he also teaches.

Bess Wohl

Bess Wohl

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Barcelona (PlayPenn, 2012)

Bess Wohl’s plays include Small Mouth Sounds, American Hero, Barcelona, and Touched.  They have been produced or developed at theaters in New York and around the country, including Second Stage, Ars Nova, The Williamstown Theatre Festival, People’s Light and Theatre Company, Center Theatre Group, The Contemporary American Theater Festival, Vineyard Arts Project, The Pioneer Theatre, The Pittsburgh Public Theater, The Northlight Theater, TheaterWorks New Works Fesitval, The Geffen Playhouse, The Vineyard Arts Project, Ojai Playwright’s Conference, the Cape Cod Theatre Project and the New York International Fringe Festival (award for Best Overall Production). The world premiere of her play, Small Mouth Sounds, enjoyed a sold-out run at Ars Nova, directed by Obie-award winner Rachel Chavkin. Her original musical about the adult entertainment industry, Pretty Filthy, in collaboration with the composer/lyricist Michael Friedman and The Civilians, also premiered this season off-Broadway, and was recently nominated for the Lucille Lortel award for Outstanding Musical. Her play, Barcelona, had its west coast premiere at LA’s Geffen Playhouse in early 2016. She also writes for film and television. She is currently in post-production on Broad Squad, an original pilot for ABC. She is also at work on a new feature for Disney, and has written two features for Paramount Pictures: The Luxe (based on the book) and Virginia (the true story of mob queen Virginia Hill). Her screenplay adaptation of her play, In, was included on Hollywood’s Black List of best scripts. She has also developed original television pilots for HBO, USA, FOX and the CW. Her work has been supported by a MacDowell Fellowship, PlayPenn, the Sewanee Writer’s Conference and Ars Nova. She has been the recipient of new play commissions from Manhattan Theatre Club, Hartford Stage and Center Theatre Group. In her previous life as an actress, Bess appeared onstage in New York and regionally, and in numerous films and TV shows where she has given birth, solved crimes, committed crimes, been wrongly accused, and come back from the dead. She is a graduate of Harvard, Magna Cum Laude, where she studied with Seamus Heaney and Jamaica Kincaid and was awarded the Rona Jaffe Writing Prize and the Tennessee Williams Scholarship. She earned her MFA from the Yale School of Drama, where she was a recipient of the Rebecca West Scholarship. She is originally from Brooklyn, New York, and divides her time between New York and Los Angeles.

Stephanie Kyung Sun Walters

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PlayPenn 2022, Foundry Alumni

Stephanie Kyung Sun Walters (she/her) is the Philadelphia Theatre Company Terrence McNally Award Recipient for her play, Acetone Wishes and Plexiglass Dreams. She’s a recent alum of InterAct Theatre Core Playwright, a current American Theatre Group PlayLab artist, and serves as the Lead Artist on the Philly Asian Performing Artists’ Playwrights Project. Her play, Esther Choi and the Fish that Drowned will have a world premiere production with Simpatico Theatre Company (postponed due to COVID-19) and has earned her a spot on the 2020 Kilroys List and Table Work Press Recommended list. Her play Acetone Wishes and Plexiglass Dreams was recently workshopped at the UC Santa Barbara Launch Pad BIPOC Reading Series and will be featured at the Great Plains Theatre Conference in June 2022. Her play Half of Chopsticks was a finalist for both the 2021 Bay Area Playwrights Festival and Seven Devils New Plays Conference, and received a stage reading at the inaugural Boise Contemporary Theatre BIPOC Playwrights Festival. Stephanie’s K-pop romcom, Be Like the Flower, was a finalist for the Austin Film Festival’s Table Read My Screenplay. She is a two-time finalist for Unicorn Theatre’s In-Progress New Play Reading Series as well as a finalist for the Playwrights Center Many Voices Fellow. She was a semi-finalist for Nashville Repertory Theater’s Ingram New Works and received a nomination for the NNPN Smith Prize for Political Theatre. Due to COVID-19, Stephanie received a 3Views Theatre The Bret Adams and Paul Reisch Foundation Grant Recipient. Additional plays have been developed with Asian Arts Initiative, Philly Asian American Film Festival, Dragon’s Eye Theatre, Revolution Shakespeare, PlayPenn, Revamp Collective, and Philadelphia Women’s Theatre Festival. Stephanie is a proud graduate of Bucknell University and received her MFA in Playwriting from Point Park University.