The Writers - 2012

GARY DUGGAN (Playwright, Run/Don't Run)

Gary Duggan is an Irish playwright and screenwriter. He won the Stewart Parker Trust Award for his first play Monged. Other plays include Dedalus Lounge and Trans-Euro Express, which have toured throughout Ireland and performed internationally. Gary's most recent play Shibari is an Abbey Theatre Commission for the 2012 Dublin Theatre Festival. Gary has also co-written Amber, a major four-part TV drama for RTE (Ireland's national network).

ALEXANDRA GERSTEN-VASSILAROS (Playwright, Big Sky)

Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros is the author of Mean Time (Julliard and Vineyard Theatre workshops, dir. Daniel Aukin), Omnium Gatherum, (Humana Festival, Off-Broadway, BEST PLAYS of 2004, Pulitzer Prize for Drama Finalist 2004), The Argument (w/ Melissa Leo, Vineyard Theatre), Mother of Invention (Williamstown Theatre Festival, dir. Nicholas Martin and Steppenwolf Theatre Co. dir. Anna Shapiro), My Thing of Love (BROADWAY w/ Laurie Metcalf, Steppenwolf Theatre Co., Jefferson Award, dir. Terry Kinney), Supple in Combat (w/ JohnMahoney, Steppenwolf Theatre Co.). Her one-acts include: I Never told Anyone (McCarter Theatre commission, dir. BD Wong), The Airport Play (EST Marathon ‘05), and Two Jews in their Seventies and Open Arms, both to be featured on Playing for Air on NPR. She also developed a half hour comedy for HBO with co-writer Carl Capotorto and Executive Producers Will Scheffer and Mark Olsen. She is a graduate of NYU Tisch and member of PEN and Actors Studio. Her work is published by Samuel French and Smith and Kraus.

SHERI GRAUBERT (Playwright, Prozac & Other Miracles)

Sheri Graubert’s plays include: Military 4Play (Hangar Theatre); Johnny’s Girl (Festival of New Plays, Prop Thtr, Chicago); The Adelaide Chronicles (semi-finalist Mill Mountain Theatre); G.R.A.P.E.H.E.A.D.S (Last Frontier Theatre Conference, WBAI Radio; TDC); Love Dust (BCT, Australia; Sun Dog Theatre – also, in nest-of season); The Vestibule (Neighborhood Playhouse); St Croix (Clubbed Thumb); King of the World, (Alcoholic Fringe, Alaska); A Few Good Eggs (Words of Choice) Penny Black (Invited to Great Plains; finalist, Women at Plays(4); semi-finalist, Heartland Theatre); Parental Consent (Wild Card, Short + Sweet, Sydney; Semi-finalist, Short+Sweet, Singapore; Winner; Theatre Oxford; Winner, Northern Writes, Penobscott Theatre; Brief Acts Festival, NY; Winner, 6-Women Playwriting Festival, April 2010; Published: Smith & Kraus, Best American Ten-Minute plays, 2010); The Summer Display (Off Cut Festival, London; Joint Jury Winner, Short + Sweet, Sydney); The Hundred Years’ War (TDC); Gerry (TDC) Ms Santos’ Dream after Reading Medea (TDC); staged reading of Last Word (TDC); Carlotta, workshop (The Well-TDC) Penelope (Asphalt Jungle Shorts; Winner, Astor St Opry; Winner JAC Publishing Competition; Winner, Vagabond) Magnolia Day (Source Festival, DC; Spring Writes; Mind-the-Gap Productions; BCT 4ShortPlaysPlus; NYFA; published Best American Short Plays, 2011); A Few Good Eggs (Words of Choice) Ginto & May (Semi-finalist, Shorter & Sweeter Festival) The Millhouse Contract (semi-finalist, Lakeshore 5th Annual 10 Minute Play Contest) Dick Spacey and the Space Detectives (OMB Commission); The Troglodytes (Reverie Productions’ WetInk Festival; Finalist, Lark Playwrights’ Week) Sheri is also an actress. www.sherigraubert.com.

GARRET JON GROENVELD (Playwright, The Hummingbirds)

Garret Jon Groenveld is a poet and playwright living in San Francisco, CA with an MA in Poetry and an MFA in Playwrighting from San Francisco State University. He's a founding writer of PlayGround and an inaugural member of the Writers in Residence program at the Playwrights Foundation. His plays have appeared in San Francisco, Amsterdam and New York. He teaches playwrighting at the New Conservatory Theatre Center.

SUET LEE (Playwright, A Second Life)

Suet Lee, a chartered accountant, began writing plays after a playwriting workshop in 2001. Since then she has written eight plays. Her most recent play Sperm was performed by Magdalena (Singapore) at the OCBC Singapore Theatre Festival in 2008. Another of her plays, Shopping with Ang, was performed by Yellow Earth Theatre as part of their Typhoon Festival, London, in 2004. She is a member of Singapore Repertory Theatre's Writers Week.

QUI NGUYEN (Playwright/Screenwriter, She Kills Monsters)

Qui Nguyen is a playwright, screenwriter, and Co-Artistic Director of the OBIE Award winning Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company of NYC. Recent scripts include the hip-hop musical KRUNK FU BATTLE BATTLE, children's play ALIENS VERSUS CHEERLEADERS, and the Off-Broadway productions of SOUL SAMURAI, THE INEXPLICABLE REDEMPTION OF AGENT G, TRIAL BY WATER, and the stage version of SHE KILLS MONSTERS. He's published by Samuel French, Broadway Play Publishing, and Playscipts Incorporated. He is a resident artist of New Dramatists, a core member of The Playwrights Center, an alumnus of Youngblood, and a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre and The Ma-Yi Writers Lab.

ROMY NORDLINGER (Playwright, The Feeling Part)

Romy Nordlinger has enjoyed an over 20 year career as an actor and playwright in NYC and regionally. Playwriting credits include “Lipshtick” (Fringe NYC 2012), “Sex & Sealing Wax” performed as part of the Estrogenious Festival as well as The Midtown International Theatre Festival, “The Feeling Part” (accepted into the 2010 Dream Up Festival at Theatre for the New City and Fringe NYC 2012), “Broadville” performed at the Source theatre as part of their Playground Development Series as well as numerous short plays. Some favorite acting credits include “Rose” in Resonance Ensemble’s “Shakespeare’s Slave” at The Clurman (Theatre Row), “Broadville” written by Romy and performed at Manhattan Theatre Source, and her original solo show “Sex & Sealing Wax”. Regional and New York theatre includes leading and supporting roles in such theatres as: Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, Kirk Theatre, Primary Stages, NY Fringe Festival, Circle Repertory, Fleetwood Stage, The Wilma Theatre, The Hudson Guild Theatre, and the Shubert Theatre among others. Film and TV: “Law & Order: C.I.” (Officer Talbor), “Real Life”, “All My Children”, “One Life to Live”, plus numerous indies, industrials and voice-overs. She is also a very busy Audiobook narrator with audible.com. As a theatre and literary teaching artist she has had a 15 year career and has taught underserved populations in schools, libraries and homeless shelters in every borough of NYC. Romy is a graduate of the University of Arts, B.F.A with honors. Member of LoNyLa, Resonance Theatre Ensemble, The Workshop Theatre Co. and the League of Professional Theatre Women.

DEREK OLSON (Screenwriter, Posse)

Derek Olson was born in San Mateo, CA. After graduating from Yale he moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in film and television. His TV writing credits include ABC’S THE UNUSUALS and NBC/DIRECTV’S FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS. He loves American history and racing triathlons.

JEAN TAY (Playwright, Between Us - The Untold Stories Behind the Sisters Islands)

Jean Tay graduated in 1997 with a double-degree in creative writing and economics from Brown University, USA. For her fiction, she was awarded the Weston Prize for Fiction from Brown, as well as the 1st and 3rd prizes for NAC's Golden Point Short Story competition in 1995 and 2001 respectively. Her plays have been performed in Singapore, the US, the UK, and Italy. These include Water from the Well (1998), The Knot (1999), Plunge (2000), Everything but the Brain (2005, 2007) and Boom (2008). Jean has also written the books for the musicals “The Admiral’s Odyssey” (2005) and Man of Letters (2006), as well as the children's musical Pinocchio (2010). In 2000, The Knot was awarded 1st prize for Action Theatre's 10-minute Play Competition and selected as a finalist for the Actors Theatre of Louisville's 10-minute Play Contest. She has been nominated three times for Best Original Script for the Straits Times' Life! Theatre Awards, and won for the play Everything But the Brain in 2006. From 2006-2009, Jean was attached to the Singapore Repertory Theatre (SRT) as resident playwright. She participated in the month-long International Playwriting Residency organised by the Royal Court Theatre in London in 2007 and the LaMama International Playwriting Retreat in Umbria, Italy in 2010. Her play Boom is currently being used as an 'O' and 'N' Level literature text for high school students in Singapore.

KEN URBAN (Playwright, Sense of an Ending)

Ken Urban's plays have been produced and developed at Summer Play Festival @ The Public, Donmar Warehouse (London), The Flea, The Chocolate Factory (NYC), Williamstown Theatre Festival, Playwrights Horizons, Irish Rep, Primary Stages, Epic Theatre Ensemble, The Huntington, Moving Arts, Theatre of NOTE, and Soho Rep. His play The Correspondent opens Off-Broadway at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre in March 2013. His other plays include I (HEART) KANT, Nibbler, The Happy Sad, The Awake and The Private Lives of Eskimos. Awards include the Weissberger Playwriting Award, Huntington Playwriting Fellowship, Epic Theatre Ensemble Spotlight: Human Rights Commission, Djerassi Artist Residency, Dramatist Guild Fellowship, Writers’ Room of Boston Emerging Writers Fellowship, MacDowell Colony Fellowships, SPF/Donmar Warehouse Residency and Lark Romania Exchange. His plays are featured at Indie Theatre Now, in the anthologies Plays and Playwrights 2002 and New York Theatre Review as well as numerous monologue collections. His feature film adaptation of The Happy Sad is in post-production, directed by Rodney Evans (Brother to Brother).