Resident Playwrights are proven dramatists, who have dedicated their careers to writing for the stage and screen, standing as one of the fundamental pillars of our organization. These writers have gone on to be produced on Broadway, as well as nationally and internationally, and have written to great acclaim for television and film.
Todd Bauer
Todd Bauer is a visually impaired playwright, whose work has been performed in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and at the Kennedy Center. Recent productions include: Downsizing Camus at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), New York, and The Bird Feeder Doesn’t Know, Raven Theatre, Chicago. He was a finalist for the 2017/18 Goodman Theatre Playwrights Unit, was awarded an NEA Grant, received a fellowship from the Ragdale foundation, and was nominated twice for a 3Arts Artist Award. Todd has taught British and American drama at the Newberry Library in Chicago for over ten years, and is an ensemble member of Apothetae Company in New York. He has twice lived with indigenous tribes, once in the Amazon and once in Indonesia, and he has witnessed both a tornado and a volcano.
Kristiana Rae Colón
Kristiana Rae Colón is a poet, playwright, actor, educator, Cave Canem Fellow, and Executive Director of the #LetUsBreathe Collective. She recently debuted her first hip-hop one-act Lack on Lack in Victory Gardens Theater’s 2014 Ignition Festival of New Works. Her play Octagon is the winner of Arizona Theater Company’s 2014 National Latino Playwriting Award and Polarity Ensemble Theater’s Dionysos Festival of New Work. In February and March 2013, she toured the UK with her collection of poems promised instruments published by Northwestern University Press. In autumn 2012, she opened her one-woman show Cry Wolf in Chicago while her play but i cd only whisper had its world premiere in London at the Arcola Theater. Her play Tilikum received the 2019 Jeff Award for Best New Play. She also appeared on Season 5 of HBO’s Def Poetry Jam. Kristiana has taught English, Humanities, and Creative Writing at North Park University, Chicago State University, Tribeca Flashpoint Academy, and Malcolm X College, as well as served as a teaching artist for a number of nonprofit arts organizations including Young Chicago Authors, Gallery 37, and the Poetry Center. She believes in the power of art as a catalyst for social progress.
Selected Plays:
BUT I CD ONLY WHISPER
THE DARKEST PIT
ONE WEEK IN SPRING
CRY WOLF
OCTAGON
LACK ON LACK
GOOD FRIDAY
FLORISSANT & CANFIELD
TILIKUM
SUSPENSION
MT Cozzola
MT Cozzola has adapted stories by Wilkie Collins, ETA Hoffman, and Oscar Wilde. MT’s work has been produced and/or developed at Piven Theatre; Chicago Dramatists; The Side Project; The Fine Print Theatre; Victory Gardens; Donny’s Skybox; La MaMa ETC; The Ruckus; The Last Frontier Theatre Conference; Small Fish Radio Theatre; 20% Theatre Company; and other theatres. Commissions: Working Women’s History Project; Shapeshifters Theatre; Step Up Productions; The Side Project; and Something Marvelous: A Festival of Magical Realism. Honors: Winner, Heartland Theatre’s 2015 New Plays from the Heartland; 2015 Equity Library Showcase Finalist; 2014 Illinois Arts Council Award; Finalist, 2014 Citizen’s Play Festival; Residencies at Hawthornden Castle; La MaMa Umbria International Playwrights Retreat, Ragdale, and Playa. MFA: Northwestern University. Teaching: Carthage College; Chicago Dramatists; and private studio. MT is also a director and solo performer. She has directed solo plays by Rebecca Joy Fletcher, Natasha Tsoutsouris, and Beth Urech, among others, and has told stories at Louder Than a Mom, Story Sessions, That’s All She Wrote, National Association for Mental Health, Essay Fiesta, and This Much Is True. Her Pushcart-nominated story “Toothbrush” will appear in a forthcoming anthology from Hippocampus Magazine; other publications include After Hours, Crawdad Literary Review, 3Elements Review. Her play BOY SMALL is available from Original Works Publishing, and her feature Eye of the Sandman (Split Pillow Films) is available on Amazon. MT is a Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists and a member of the Dramatists Guild. She is represented by The Robert A. Freedman Dramatic Agency. More at www.mtcozzola.com.
Selected Plays:
HOW TO RAISE A POPUP KID
WHEN THEY CAME
LOVELAND
EARTH TO MARGARET
BOY SMALL
TWIN SET
NAMELESS AND SHAMELESS
ST GEORGE ON THE BUS
DANCE FOR BEGINNERS
BONY FISH
OSCAR WILDE’S PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY (radio)
TWO MIDDLE-AGED WOMEN GETTING LEGALLY HIGH (short)
RUNAWAY HOLIDAY TRAIN (short)
CHRISTMAS EVE EVE (short)
SAD MOM BAR (short)
HUNGRY WOMEN (short)
Sandra Delgado
Sandra Delgado is a Colombian-American writer and actor best known for her play La Havana Madrid, which enjoyed sold-out runs at Steppenwolf and Goodman Theatre, and most recently in a co-production with Teatro Vista and Collaboraction. La Havana Madrid received recognition as one of the best plays of 2017 by New City Chicago and Time Out Chicago, and the Time-Out Audience Award for Best New Work. It was an Alliance of Latinx Theatre Artists (ALTA) nominee for the Maria Irene Fornes New Play Award and ALTA Award winner for Best Production and was featured in the New York Times and CNN. Her new play, Felons and Familias, was part of Theatre on the Lake’s 2018 season and The Goodman Theatre’s New Stages Festival under the new title, Hundreds and Hundreds of Stars. Ms. Delgado is also a respected veteran of the stage, with a career spanning two decades. Acting highlights include La Ruta, Motherf**ker with the Hat (Steppenwolf Theatre), Oedipus El Rey (The Public Theater), the epic five-hour 2666 (Goodman Theatre) and Mojada (Victory Gardens Theater), where her portrayal of Medea earned distinction as one of the Top Ten performances of the year by the Chicago Tribune.
Sandra is a newly appointed member of the City of Chicago’s Cultural Advisory Council. an Illinios Arts Council Fellow in Literature, a 3Arts Awardee, Joyce Awardee, TCG Resident Actor Fellow, the recipient of two DCASE and 3Arts 3AP Project grants, a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists and a member of ALTA’s Semillero Playwright’s Circle. She is a founding ensemble member of Collaboraction and Teatro Vista, and is currently the artist-in-residence at Loyola University Chicago, where she is developing her new musical, The Boys and the Nuns. Sandra is one of the 20 women of Chicago arts and culture honored in Kerry James Marshall’s mural Rushmore on the facade of the Chicago Cultural Center. sandradelgado.net
Selected Plays:
LA HAVANA MADRID
FELONS AND FAMILIAS
Dolores Díaz
Dolores Díaz is a Chicago-based Chicana playwright originally from the border city of Laredo, Texas. Her plays investigate the gray areas that defy definition, the contradictions within the individual and group, and the hybrid places where the notion of “natural” is investigated, challenged, and revealed. She uses boundaries as a vantage point to observe different points of view and as a means to interrogate current affairs.
Díaz is currently in residence with TimeLine Theatre and teaching playwriting at Columbia College. In the spring, she will begin an artistic residency with Northeastern University and teach graduate students at Texas Tech.
Most recently, Goodman Theatre – in partnership with Chicago Park District, the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, Chicago Latino Theater Alliance, and the National Museum of Mexican Art – produced her play, Zulema, which toured the Chicago Parks District with a finale in Millennium Park.
Prior to this, Dolores developed work with Broken Nose Theatre, taught students via the National High School Institute at Northwestern University, and served as a guest artist with Mosaic Theater in Washington, DC. Her play, MetaMorphic, commissioned by Shattered Globe Theatre and workshopped with WildWind Lab at Texas Tech, was a semi-finalist for the 2021 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference and the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. The Curse of Giles Corey was a finalist for Seven Devils Playwrights Conference and a semi-finalist for the 2020 Bay Area Playwrights Festival and Blue Ink Playwriting Award. Los Tequileros received a reading from 16th Street Theater in October 2019.
Kimberly Dixon-Mays
Kimberly Dixon-Mays is a poet, playwright and performer. As a playwright, Kimberly has received readings and staged productions at Crossroads Theatre Company, Plowshares Theatre Company, Emotive Fruition, Windy City Playhouse, Rivendell Theatre and Mad Cow Theatre. In addition, from 2005-2013 she was a recurring member of the Guild Literary Complex’s devised theater project the Poetry Performance Incubator (Artistic Director Coya Paz).
Among other theater honors, Kimberly’s play The Gizzard of Brownsville was a 2002 finalist for the Theodore Ward Prize for African-American Playwrights; (Nine) was a featured reading for Congo Square Theatre Company’s 2019 August Wilson New Play Initiative, and a semi-finalist for the 2019 Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. She was also a semi-finalist for the 2020 National Black Theatre I Am Soul Playwright Residency and received a Soul Series Lab Playwriting Micro-Development Session with NBT for her play When Given a Choice, Bleed. In Fall 2020 she was an Artist in Residence with Chicago State University, and was nominated for a 2021 3Arts Award.
Kimberly was a 2018-20 Russ Tutterow Fellow with Chicago Dramatists. She holds a B.A. in Psychology/Theater Studies from Yale, an M.A. in Afro-American Studies (playwriting concentration) from UCLA, and a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Theatre/Drama from Northwestern.
Will Dunne
A Resident Playwright and faculty member, Will Dunne is an author, playwright, and teacher. Published by the University of Chicago Press, his bestseller THE DRAMATIC WRITER’S COMPANION has been released in a Second Edition (2017) and translated into Polish by PWN in Warsaw (2014). Other books from the Press include CHARACTER, SCENE, AND STORY (2017) and THE ARCHITECTURE OF STORY (2016).
Mr. Dunne’s plays have been presented in three languages worldwide. Locally, THE ROPER was produced at The Den Theatre (2014) and received a Joseph Jefferson nomination for Best New Work. Other Chicago area productions include: DEEP GARDENS at Second City (2005), THE ASCENSION OF CARLOTTA (2008) and LOVE AND DROWNING (2012) at 16th Street Theatre, HOW I BECAME AN INTERESTING PERSON at Chicago Dramatists (2009), TWO MEN ON A TRAIN PLATFORM JUST BEFORE THE APOCALYPSE (2012) and TEA TIME (2017) at The Artistic Home, IN THE DARK at Intuit (2012), CAPE COD MORNING at Arts on Elston (2014,) THE DEATH AND LIFE OF JOHN SMITH at Madison Street Theatre (2016).
HOW I BECAME AN INTERESTING PERSON, LOVE AND DROWNING, and HOTEL DESPERADO were each selected for development at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center. Through the O’Neill, INTERESTING PERSON received a Charles MacArthur Fellowship for comedy and was presented at the Australian and Croatian National Playwrights Conferences. HOTEL DESPERADO was presented at the Moscow Theatre Union’s annual festival of new plays.
MOONRISE (2000) and GOOD MORNING, ROMEO (2007) were finalists for the Heideman Award at Actors Theatre of Louisville. The latter was published by Pearson in IMAGINATIVE WRITING: THE ELEMENTS OF CRAFT (2014). West Coast productions of Mr. Dunne’s work — ELEVENTH HOUR, I MARRIED A WEREWOLF, BETWEEN QUAKES, and THE BRIDGE — received four Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Awards, two DramaLogue Playwriting Awards, and a Best-of-Year mention from the San Francisco Examiner.
As a teacher, Mr. Dunne has conducted more than two thousand dramatic writing workshops in Chicago, San Francisco, and Oregon. He has been a dramaturg at the National Playwrights Conference at the O’Neill under the Artistic Direction of Lloyd Richards and twice been a guest playwriting instructor at the Australian National Playwrights Conference.
Selected Plays:
Full-length plays include:
THE ROPER
RAG DOLL IN A MAD DOG’S MOUTH
THE DEATH AND LIFE OF JOHN SMITH
HOTEL DESPERADO
HOW I BECAME AN INTERESTING PERSON
LOVE AND DROWNING
I MARRIED A WEREWOLF
THE ASCENSION OF CARLOTTA
ELEVENTH HOUR
Short plays include:
THE BRIDGE
TEA TIME
CAPE COD MORNING
THE EFFECTS OF GRAVITY ON A WOMAN LEAPING
IN THE DARK
BETWEEN QUAKES
DEEP GARDENS
THE INTERPRETER
MOONRISE/SUNRISE
KRAPP’S LATEST, BUT NOT LAST, TAPE
THE RED DOOR AJAR
TWO MEN ON A TRAIN PLATFORM JUST BEFORE THE APOCALYPSE
Hannah Ii-Epstein
Hannah Ii-Epstein (she/her/hers), was born and raised on the North Shore of Oahu, and received her MFA in Writing for the Screen + Stage at Northwestern University in 2018. She is a creative writer, dramatist, and Co-Artistic Director of Nothing Without a Company (NWaC). Since 2007, over twenty of her plays and musicals have been produced in Hawai’i by Kumu Kahua Theatre and in Chicago by NWaC, About Face Theatre’s Babes on Stage, Random Acts’ Scary Stories, and more. In 2016 Hannah and her play, Not One Batu, was honored with six awards by Hawai’i State Theatre Council Po’okela Awards, and in 2018 Not One Batu was Reader and Jeff Recommended in Chicago. In 2019 her short film, Redesign Your Life, won 5 awards, including Best Film Runner Up at 48HFP Chicago. Hannah is a founding member of BearCat Productions, a board member of Aloha Center Chicago, and member of the Ke Ali`i Victoria Ka`iulani Hawaiian Civic Club and the Ke Kula Kupaa O Ka Pakipika Hālau.
Kristin Idaszak
Kristin Idaszak (she/they) is a Chicago-based playwright, dramaturg, deviser, producer, and educator. She has received two Playwrights’ Center Jerome Fellowships. She was the Shank Playwright in Residence at the Goodman Theatre and was a member of the 2017-2018 Goodman Playwrights Unit. She has received commissions from EST/the Sloan Foundation, Cleveland Play House, Shakespeare Festival St. Louis, and New Light Theatre Project. Her play SECOND SKIN received the Kennedy Center’s Paula Vogel Playwriting Award and the Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award. Her play ANOTHER JUNGLE was a Relentless Award Honorable Mention, and THE SUREST POISON was a Princess Grace finalist. Kristin was the Kennedy Center Fellow at the Sundance Theatre Lab. Her work has been seen at or developed through the Goodman Theatre, The Playwrights’ Center, La Jolla Playhouse’s WoW Festival, SPACE at Ryder Farm, Williamstown Theatre Festival’s Directing Studio, The Drama League, Pasadena Playhouse, Circle X, Renaissance Theaterworks, and Perishable Theatre. She has also received support from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. Kristin is a Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists and adjunct faculty at The Theatre School at DePaul University and Northwestern University. Previously, Kristin served as Associate Artistic Director/Literary Manager of Caffeine Theatre and Associate Artistic Director of Collaboraction. She is the Artistic Director of Cloudgate Theatre. MFA: University of California, San Diego.
Selected Plays:
SECOND SKIN
THE SUREST POISON
THREE ANTARCTICAS
TAR AND FEATHER
STRANGE HEART BEATING
Georgette Kelly
Georgette Kelly is a playwright with one foot in Chicago and the other in New York. Her work has been produced across the country, and she has participated in numerous artistic residencies, including the 2018-2019 Goodman Playwrights Unit. Her play I CARRY YOUR HEART received the inaugural Hope on Stage Playwriting Award, accompanied by a rolling world premiere, and BALLAST was featured on The Kilroys List and received the Craig Noel Award for Outstanding New Play. Other plays include: NORTH STAR, FAITH IN A FALLEN WORLD, IN THE BELLY OF THE WHALE, F*CK LA VIE D’ARTISTE, HOW TO HERO, and an adaptation of Jeanette Winterson’s LIGHTHOUSEKEEPING. Georgette’s work has been developed with The Kennedy Center, The National New Play Network, The DC Source Festival, The Alliance Theatre, Diversionary Theatre, and Chicago’s DCASE. She is a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists, a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, and she has participated in residencies at the Tofte Lake Center, the National Winter Playwrights Retreat, and terraNOVA Groundbreakers Playwrights Group. She has been chosen as a finalist for the O’Neill Playwrights Conference, the Lark Playwrights Week, the Playwrights’ Center CORE Writer Program, the BPP Woodward/Newman Drama Award, the Stage Left Playwright Residency, and the Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition. Georgette holds a B.A. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and an M.F.A. in Playwriting from Hunter College, where she studied with Tina Howe, Arthur Kopit, and Mark Bly.
Selected Plays:
BALLAST
I CARRY YOUR HEART
NORTH STAR
FAITH IN A FALLEN WORLD
HOW TO HERO, OR THE SUBWAY PLAY
IN THE BELLY OF THE WHALE
F*CK LA VIE D’ARTISTE
LIGHTHOUSEKEEPING (adaptation)
Arlene Malinowki
As actor and playwright Arlene views her solo work as an artistic extension of the social justice work she has been committed to for the last twenty-five years. plays include: A LITTLE BIT NOT NORMAL; FULL DISCLOSURE, AIMING FOR SAINTHOOD; KICKING THE HABIT; JFK AND ME; WHAT DOES THE SUN SOUND LIKE. Short Plays Include: DEAF SANTA, OR FOREVER HOLD YOUR PEACE, INTERROBANG; SILENCED, IN A DIFFERENT VOICE.
As a solo artist her plays have been produced; In Chicago; Victory Gardens, Pritizker Pavillion, Millennium Park, Live Bait, 16th Street Theater. In LA; HBO Workspace, West Coast Ensemble, Blue Sphere Alliance, Ojai Theater 150 as well as Nationally including; St Louis Center of Contemporary Art, National Center On Deafness, Minneapolis Arts Center, Palmdale Cultural Arts Center, Chicago Street Theater, Riverside Performing Arts Center, UCLA, National OrganizationTheater Educators, National Alliance on Mental Illness, Las Vegas Performing Arts Center, and colleges nationwide. These works are an exploration of disability in our culture through the lens of her family’s and her own disability. Her short plays have produced at Chicago One Minute Play Festival, United Kingdom’s UK-60 Festival and NY Playsmiths Theater Company.
Arlene is recipient 3Arts/UIC Department of Disability and the Arts Fellowship 2015-2016. Her solo work has been honored with an LA Theater Ovations Award, LA Garland Award and LA Weekly Award. Her work has been chosen for as a finalist Chicago’s Fine Print Theater Festival, finalist in the New Plays From the Heartland and a semi-finalist Blue Ink Award from American Blues Theater. She has been nominated for a 3 Arts award in 2009 and 2014. Two of her solo works have been commissioned by 16th Street Theater, Berwyn Il.
As an actor Arlene has appeared in the word premiere of “The Music of the Spheres” at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago premiere of Love Person at the Victory Gardens and Pancake Breakfast with the New Colony. Favorite roles in LA include “Lovers and Other Strangers”, “Chapter Two”, “The Crucible”, “Marty,“One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest”, and the critically acclaimed “In A Different Voice”Television credits include: CSI, ER, The Division , The Practice, X Files, Any Day Now,, and the CBS movie, Sweet Nothing in My Ear. As a spoken word artist she has performed In Chicago: Victory Gardens, Story Sessions, This Much Is True, 2nd Story, Here Chicago, Thats All She Wrote, Tuesday Funk, Story Club, In LA: at Tasty Words and Word Nerd. Her work appears in Paramanu Pentaquark, and En Posse Review and “Women Of Letters Anthology” by Penguin Press.
As a Teaching Artist Arlene has taught at Victory Gardens, AEA Workshops, SF Comedy College, Rosewood Arts Center LA and College of the Canyons CA, and Master Classes at conferences, story festivals and colleges nationally. Arlene has developed the “Solo Show and Storytelling” curriculum for Chicago Dramatists Theater where she teaches regularly.
Selected Plays:
WHERE ALL OF IT IS TRUE AND NONE OF IT IS REAL
LITTLE BIT NOT NORMAL
WHAT DOES THE SUN SOUND LIKE
FULL DISCLOSURE
AIMING FOR SAINTHOOD
KICKING THE HABIT
JFK AND ME
INTERROBANG
OR FOREVER HOLD YOUR PEACE
SILENCED
IN A DIFFERENT VOICE
Derek McPhatter
Before joining the resident playwright roster at Chicago Dramatists, Derek McPhatter was an inaugural member of the Tutterow Fellowship program, developing Real Talk with Auntie B, a satire on American ambition in the age of social media. His recent residency at The National Black Theatre (NYC) incubated Serious Adverse Effects, his futuristic play on technologies of healing. Derek has written five musicals for The Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Lyric Unlimited division. Bring the Beat Back is his queer, black, sci-fi, music-theatre passion project, recently a featured presentation in the Polyphone Music Festival (Philadelphia), followed by a concert production run with Otherworld Theatre Company. Organizations that have presented his work include The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Prop Thtr, Hi-ARTS, JACK, the Djerassi Artists Residency, and The Drama League. Derek is a founding playwright with The Fire This Time Festival and an inaugural playwright in the 48 Hours in Harlem Festival, two Obie-winning programs in NYC. Beyond theater, Derek has co-created digital programming for numerous platforms, such as HIVE, a sci-fi anthology series in development with OTV | Open Television. He’s originally from Pickerington Ohio and is happy to call Chicago home.
Selected Plays:
A ONCE AND FUTURE DOPENESS
BRING THE BEAT BACK
REAL TALK WITH AUNTIE B
SERIOUS ADVERSE EFFECTS
THE LATTICE CRASHES
THIS APP IS NOT THE BUSINESS
Kestutis Nakas
Kestutis Nakas is a writer, performer, director, and teacher whose work has been presented at the New York Shakespeare Festival, Yale Rep, La Mama, Dixon Place, P.S. 122, St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery, 8BC, The Kitchen, Highways, Prop Theatre and numerous other national and regional venues. Most recently he presented his new ventriloquist show, “Velvet’s Republic” at Pangea Cabaret in New York. Other performance works and plays include, “Remembrance of Things Pontiac”, “My Heart, My President”, “Hunger and Lightning”, and “The Andrew Carnegie Story”. In the 1980’s, he was active in New York’s East Village performance scene. His Gates of Dawn performance space showcased legendary New York performance artists. He has taught at NYU’s Experimental Theatre Wing, CCNY, UCLA, and the University of New Mexico. He is Professor Emeritus of Theatre at The Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University in Chicago. His performance text about urban beekeeping, “No Bees for Bridgeport” was published in “Animal Acts” an anthology of new performance edited by Una Chaudhuri and Holly Hughes, University of Michigan Press. A bilingual edition (English/Lithuanian) of his critically acclaimed play cycle: “When Lithuania Ruled The World” was published by Aukso Zuvys publishers, Vilnius , in 2017. Also that year, “Channel D”, a new solo performance debuted at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Kestutis Nakas lives in Chicago with his wife and son.
Steve Peterson
Recent productions of Steven Peterson’s full-length plays include PARIS TIME in 2018 at Capital Repertory Theatre (Albany, NY), THE ACTUARY in 2017 at Peninsula Players (Fish Creek, Wisconsin), AFFLUENCE at Theatre 40 (Los Angeles), and THE INVASION OF SKOKIE at Chicago Dramatists. His one-act plays have been produced by The Pittsburgh New Works Festival, The Artistic Home, Step Up Productions, and other theaters. His plays in development have been presented at the new play fests of Cleveland Play House, Utah Shakespeare Festival, Centre Stage (Greenville, SC), Theatre Ariel (Philadelphia), and others. Steve is a two-time winner of the Julie Harris Playwright Award, a Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists, and is represented by the Robert A. Freedman Dramatic Agency of NYC.
Selected Plays:
THE ACTUARY
AFFLUENCE
THE INVASION OF SKOKIE
LYDIA LINDSTROM
PARIS TIME
PRODIGAL BROTHERS
THE SHABBOS GOY
THE WIDOWS’ LEAGUE
Alvaro Saar Rios
Alvaro Saar Rios’ plays have been performed in New York City, Hawaii, St. Louis, Milwaukee and all over Texas. Rios has received commissions from various organizations, including The Alley Theatre(TX), Houston Grand Opera, Honolulu Theatre for Youth, and Milwaukee’s First Stage. His award-winning play Luchadora! is published by Dramatic Publishing Inc. He is a veteran of the US Army and the co-founder of The Royal Mexican Players, a national touring performance troupe. Mr. Rios holds an MFA in Writing for the Stage and Screen from Northwestern University. Originally from Texas, Alvaro lives in Chicago and is a Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists.
Selected Plays:
BLUE BULLETS
LUCHADORA!
PIGGSVILLE
THE HISTORY OF MEXICANS IN 10 MINUTES
ON THE WINGS OF A MARIPOSA
Robert Tenges
Robert Tenges is a playwright and musician. His play STRANGERS KNOCKING was produced by the side project in May/June 2005, and subsequently presented Off-Broadway by The New Group in May/June 2007. In 2010, the side project produced his play PEOPLE WE KNOW, which went on to receive a Joseph Jefferson Award nomination for Best New Work. His play FOUND was awarded the 2004 Illinois Arts Council Playwriting Fellowship and was workshopped and read at Victory Gardens Theater, and subsequently presented at Ensemble Studio Theatre and the Abingdon Theater, both in New York. His play THREE HYMNS OF APATHY was produced by the side project in 2008 (dir. Brandon Ray), and he has also written English-language adaptations of Chekhov’s UNCLE VANYA and THE THREE SISTERS, both of which were produced by Chicago’s LiveWire Theatre in 2004 and 2005, respectively.
His play ELSEWHERE was developed and workshopped Off-Broadway at The New Group in April 2012, under Ian Morgan’s direction, and was given a full production in April 2013 by the side project, under Adam Webster’s direction. His play KANSAS, was workshopped by The New Group in June/July 2014, and given a public reading by Chicago Dramatists in March 2015; and his latest play, WHATEVER, was produced by the side project in July-August 2015, directed by Adam Webster, and was named to the Chicago Tribune’s list of Best Plays of 2015.
From 1999 until 2012, Robert Tenges was an administrator and faculty member at The Old Town School of Folk Music, where he served as Director of Education & Programs beginning in 2007. In 2013, he joined Columbia College Chicago, and now serves as the college’s Assistant Provost for Continuing & Community Education. He is a member of New River Dramatists, an artist with The New Group, and became Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists in 2014.
Selected Plays:
Chekhov’s UNCLE VANYA (English Adaptation)
Chekhov’s THE THREE SISTERS (English Adaptation)
STRANGERS KNOCKING
PEOPLE WE KNOW
THREE HYMNS OF APATHY
ELSEWHERE
WHATEVER
DEAD CHILDREN
Fouad Teymour
Fouad Teymour is a Chicago-based Egyptian American playwright. He is an associate artist of Silk Road Rising, and a board member for International Voices Project (IVP). The Jeff-recommended world premiere of his play Twice, Thrice, Frice…, directed by Patrizia Acerra, was co-produced by Silk Road Rising and IVP. It was listed among Chicago Best Plays 2019 by Picture this Post. His play Blue Fish in A Tall Clear Vase, directed by Jason Smith, was produced at Three Cat Productions (2017) where he had previously collaborated on The Other Side of Christmas (2016), and Holiday Stories (2015), and where his play An Afternoon With My Mother (2015) was featured in the Chicago New Work Festival. Twice, Thrice, Frice… was part of the Crescent and Star Staged Reading Series at Silk Road Rising (August 2017), the New American Voices Series at Queens Theater, NY (October 2018), and a semi-finalist for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival BAPF 2018. He translated Ahmed Serag’s The Castle and The Sparrow from Arabic (Performed in IVP 2014. Published in 2015 by Dar Ibda’a in Egypt). Fouad is a former Network Member with Chicago Dramatists.
Emilio Williams
Emilio Williams is a bilingual (Spanish/English) award-winning writer and educator. His critically-acclaimed plays have been produced in Argentina, Estonia, France, Mexico, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington DC.
His nonfiction work has been published in Hinterland Magazine and Imagine Theatres, among other publications. Emilio has lectured around the world, and taught in several U.S. universities, including DePaul University, Columbia College Chicago, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Georgia State University. He has been a guest artist at the University of Portland, Mary Washington University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
He holds a BA in Film and Video and MFA in Writing. He is a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists where he is also a faculty member. He divides his time between Chicago and Paris.
Catherine Yu
Catherine Yu is a writer of plays and librettos. Her plays include Le Jeté (2019 BAPF Semifinalist); The Day is Long to End (2018 University of Florida production); The Things You Tell Yourself and The Sun Experiment (FringeNYC Excellence in Playwriting; Time Out NY’s Top Ten Nightlife and Music Events of the Week in August 2014). She has been a 2016 NYSCA/NYFA fellow, a MacDowell fellow, a Soho Rep W/D Lab writer and a New York Theatre Workshop Emerging Artist of Color. Her short plays have been commissioned by 52nd Street Project, Two Headed Rep and Planned Parenthood among others. Her one-act “A Sand Romance” was a 2016 Heidman Award finalist. Her arts writing has been published by Hyperallergic and her poetry in a Dutch Kills Press 2020 pandemic anthology. She has served as a grants panelist for the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and Brooklyn Arts Council. A New Yorker based in Chicago. BA: Stanford University. MFA: New York University.