Playwright Biographies

Connecticut's Bill Arnold was trained as an actor, but due to his habit of rewriting his lines, was told that he should write his own stuff. Primarily considered a composer, Bill dabbles in straight plays when the mood takes him. ABC: A Bureaucratic Comedy was his first play (published with JAC) and since then, he has written two full-length musicals: Lint! The Musical (with Scott Auden) and Night of the Musical Dead.  In his spare time, he edits Shakespeare's plays such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Richard III, due to his belief that "brevity is the soul of wit".  He is a founding member of the improv comedy troupe, Too Many Monkeys.  Arnold lives with his wife Barbara and their daughter, Frances.

Steven Bergman’s plays published through JAC include Cutting the Leash, The Guy Chair and Grieving Process.  Other published plays include History, At the Buzzer and Rosie, the Teddy Bear (Brooklyn Publishers), Marvin and Julius and Have a Seat, Please (Heuer Publishing). Also a composer, Steve’s works include Animal Farm (from Orwell), The Curse of the Bambino  ( www.bambinomusical.com ), Jack The Ripper: The Whitechapel Musical, Four Kisses, and scores for Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, and Wilson’s Book of Days.  For young audiences, Steve has adaptations of Tom and Huck (Lazy Bee Scripts), Tatterhood, (a Swedish folktale), King Midas and his Friends, (co-written with Peggy Traktman), The Pied Piper (co-written with Christopher DiGrazia & Earl Maulding), and Rumplestiltskin. As a Musical Director, Steve’s history includes Adding Machine (Speakeasy Stage), Disney's Beauty and the Beast (New Bedford Festival Theatre, Wheelock Family Theatre), Das Barbecü (New Repertory Theatre), …Forum (American Stage Festival), the New England premieres of The Gig and When Pigs Fly (Lyric Stage Company), Personals and Tomfoolery (Actors Playhouse), Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill, The Fantasticks, Pump Boys and Dinettes, Something's Afoot, Pirates of Penzance and Smoke On The Mountain (Worcester Foothills), plus readings of many new musicals. Bergman is a member of MENC, MTA, and Theatre Communications Group, and teaches Drama and Music in the Littleton (MA) Public Schools.  Visit him online at www.everydayaholiday.net.  

The works of playwright  Andrew Biss have been produced in New York, London, Los Angeles, and many other cities across North America and Europe. His plays have won awards on both coasts of the U.S. and critical acclaim in the U.K. and are an Off-Off-Broadway regular fixture.  Andrew is a graduate of the University of the Arts London, and a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, Inc.  Visit him online at www.andrewbiss.com.

Leslie Bramm’s plays have been produced, work-shopped and/or developed by Three Crows Theatre, The Present Company, The Penobscot Theatre, The Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, Emerging Artists Theatre, Nicu’s Spoon, The Edward Albee Last Frontier Conference, and Reverie Productions, to name a few. Bramm is the recipient of a Stanley Drama Award (Oswald’s Backyard) A Paul T. Nolan Award (Islands of Repair) A Tennessee Williams Literary Award (Big Ball). Marvelous Shrine was a semi-finalist in the 2008 O’Neill Festival. He is published by JAC Publishing, Smith and Krause, Brooklyn Publishers, One Act Play Depot and the New York Theatre Experience. Bramm and actor Kevin Corrigan co-founded indie rock band Diz Dam, where they sang and played guitar. He also co-wrote the screenplay This is Not Here with Corrigan, based on the memoir The Last Days of John Lennon. Bramm is also a published poet, and a member of the Pool, Emerging Artist Theatre, The League of Independent Theatres and the Dramatist Guild.

Tearrance A. Chisholm is a native of St. Louis (MO) and graduate from the University of Missouri Columbia with a degree in Fine Arts. A playwright and graphic artist he feels that the theatre is a synthesis of both his passions. His works have been featured in the Mizzou New Play Series and Endstations Theatre’s New Playwrights Initiative, and he’s worked closely with the Kennedy Center’s Playwriting Intensive.

Mona Deutsch Miller, a practicing attorney and graduate of Stanford Law School, has written stories, plays and poetry since childhood.  Her short comedy about peace in the Middle East, I’Rock Around the Campfire, was produced at the Secret Rose Theater in January 2010.  Strangers on a Train, a 10-minute black comedy, received a workshop production at the Actors Group Theater in 2008, and was published in the literary journal Sin Fronteras/Writers Without Borders in April 2009.  Her one-act plays The Beating and The Violent Seduction each won the All Original Playwrights Workshop Fellowship Award, and had staged readings in North Hollywood in 2008 and 2006.  Her full length play about the Jewish Saint, Edith Stein, was a quarter-finalist in the Chesterfield and Cyclone Entertainment competitions.  She is a member of Fierce Backbone Theater Company, the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights and the Dramatists Guild.  She has also written several screenplays.  Escape from Sumatra was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay and won for “Most Ambitious Script” at the 2008 Action on Film International Screenwriting Festival.  Her two romantic comedies, Close Your Eyes, You’ll See Better and Wishful Thinking, have been quarter finalists in competitions including The Nicholls Fellowship.   She has studied playwriting with Lisa Soland, Leon Martell, Jean Claude van Itallie and Susan Merson.  

Baltimore-based Rich Espey’s plays have been produced throughout the U.S., including an Equity Showcase production of Hope's Arbor in New York City by Gallery Players/Engine 37. Rich is a two time winner of the Carol Weinberg Award for best play at the Baltimore Playwrights Festival and was honored with an Individual Artist Award in Playwriting by the Maryland State Arts Council in 2007. He has studied extensively with playwright Jeffrey Sweet and is an alumnus of the Kennedy Center Summer Playwriting Intensive. Espey has served as a Playwright Mentor for Center Stage's Young Playwrights Festival. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, Playwrights Group of Baltimore, Lizard Claw Playwrights, and has served as Chair of the Baltimore Playwrights Festival. He currently serves as Board President for Single Carrot Theatre  and proudly teaches science at The Park School of Baltimore.  Visit him online at www.richespey.net.

Mike Folie was chosen one of “Fifty Playwrights To Watch” by Dramatist Guild Magazine.  His plays have been produced Off-Broadway, regionally around the U.S. and internationally, winning several awards.  Plays of his produced often include The Adjustment, Naked by the River, Panama and Lemonade.   Mike’s most recent plays are Alfred Kinsey: A Love Story (commissioned) and American Pastime.  Visit Mike online at www.mikefolie.com.

Award-winning playwright Chris Hare is the author of eight plays and four screenplays. In 2009, her full-length play suffer, lose, endure, stumble placed 18th in the top 100 best stage plays in the 77th Annual Writers Digest Competition. In 2005, she won first prize at the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights Monologue Slam. In 2003-2004, she wrote and directed two plays for the Moorpark College Original 1-Acts series. Also a published author, Chris penned humor columns for the Ventura County Star newspaper, served as an editor-at-large for Westlake Magazine, and is a featured columnist in the book, Hungry? Los Angeles Family: The Lowdown on Where the Real People Eat. Her memberships include the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights, Theatre Communications Group, and the Los Angeles Female Playwrights Institute. Chris resides in southern California with the three loves of her life: her husband Mike and sons Wesley and Mason.

Lynn-Steven Johanson holds an M.F.A. from the University of Nebraska/Lincoln and works at Western Illinois University in Macomb (IL). He has worked with Edward Albee at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and has directed more than 50 productions in theatres and universities throughout the Midwest. He is past president of the Mid-America Theatre Conference and the founder of its Playwriting Symposium, a network playwright with Chicago Dramatists and a member of the Dramatists Guild of America. Johanson´s one-act plays include Angel Cream, Buford and Leroy, Joanna on My Mind, Shooting Pool with a Rope, The Crucifixion of Moe and Ira, Autumn´s Twilight and Twisted. His full-length plays include new English language versions of Uncle Vanya and The Power of Darkness, and the original plays A Tale from the North Woods, Missing and Unaccounted For, Past Present Tense and Trailer Park Tango. He has also written two screenplays, Cassidy´s Way and Eye of the Hawk. Johanson is the past winner of the Nantucket Short Play Festival, the Snowdance 10-Minute Comedy Festival, and the East Valley Children´s Theatre Playwriting Contest, and his plays have been produced by numerous theatres throughout the country.

Arthur M. Jolly was born in the UK, and lived in England, Kenya, Madagascar and France until the age of eleven, when his family moved to New York City. In 2005, after various careers including stuntman and helicopter pilot, Jolly moved to Marina del Rey in Los Angeles to write full-time. Since then, he has been recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with a Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting (2006), and is the screenwriter of Under the Same Sky and Eight Ball (Top ten finalist - Pavaline Short Screenplay Competition). Jolly is also the playwright of the full-length plays Past Curfew (2008 AOPW fellowship winner, available from Next Stage Press), A Gulag Mouse (2009 Joining Sword with Pen winner, Off-Broadway Competition winner), and the radio play Thicker than Water (NPR). Other produced plays include: How Blue is my Crocodile, After It’s All Over, Tiger in a Cage, Better by Candlelight, The Bricklayer, Howie’s Last Words and The Christmas Princess. His collection of short plays Guilty Moments was published by Original Works Publishing.  Visit Arthur online at www.arthurjolly.com.

Thomas M. Kelly is the owner and Artistic director of the award-winning Thistle Dew Theatre, and founder of the Thistle Dew Playwright’s Workshop ( www.thistle-dew.net ).  Some of his JAC published plays are Zen and the Art of Making Par, Ba-Bang!, Extreme Unction, The Timekeeper, and ...smile, and smile and be a villian.   Recently written unpublished plays include Paddy's Devil, Mixville, Frankie and Johnny Were Schweethawts (a musical comedy) and Poor Men are But Pawns.  Mr. Kelly’s The Butterfly Within (also published with JAC) is included in the Eileen Heckart Senior Drama Archives in the Lawrence and Lee Theatre Research Institute at Ohio State University.

Janice Kennedy is an award-winning playwright whose work has been seen in London, New York, Chicago and Seattle, as well as other venues.  Among the recognition she has received is a nomination for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for women playwrights in the U.S. and Great Britain for her play about the Hatfield-McCoy Feud, The Last Hanging in Pike County. She also won a “Spirit of Moondance” award from the Moondance International Film Festival in their playwriting division for her one-woman drama about Mary Shelley, Shadows Round the Moon.  In 1997, Janice co-founded the Hedgebrook Women Playwrights Festival, which annually showcases the work of writers from across the country at the Seattle Repertory Theatre.  In 2004, she moved to L.A. to focus on film and television writing and was the first ever Writers Guild of America writer-trainee at CSI: Miami.  Among Janice’s screenwriting awards are “Best Screenplay” from the Dixie Film Festival for a comedy, Martial Artiste, co-written with Susan diRende, and “Best Screenplay” from the 15 Minutes of Fame Festival of Shorts for the film Man. Woman. Blackbird, which is based on her award-winning play, The Dark.  Janice is a member of the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights, the Dramatists Guild, and Women in Film.

Lauren Kettler has been involved in one form of writing or another, from prose to poetry to journalism, for more than thirty years. Playwriting commandeered her focus some ten years ago, and since then her plays have had readings and/or productions in New York City, Detroit, Sonora (CA), Orlando, Tampa, Boca Raton, Northport (AL), Nashville, and Iowa City. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, a regular participant of the Iowa Summer Writing Festival’s Playwriting Workshop and a founding member of the Kingston Springs Writers Group. Originally from New York, Lauren resides in the “other Hollywood” (FL), with her husband Michael, daughter Nastia, son Sasha, and a small bevy of cats and dogs.

Steven Korbar's full-length and one-act plays have been produced in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and throughout the U.S.. His drama Table for Four, opened at The Source Festival in Washington (DC) in June’09 and will be published in Smith and Kraus’ Best Short Plays of 2010; as will his comedy Mrs. Jansen Isn’t Here Now. Other productions include I Understand Your Frustration at the Turtleshell Theatre (New York, NY) , Let Go at Future Ten in Pittsburgh (PA), Blind Man's Bluff at Cleveland Public theatre and  Our Little Angel at the 78th Street Theatre in New York City, as well as in Los Angeles and San Diego.

Mark Lambeck is a resident playwright of both Manhattan-based Emerging Artists Theatre Company (EAT) and Stratford (CT)-based SquareWrights.  He has had staged readings and productions throughout Connecticut and New York including a staged reading of his Holocaust play Voices from the Ashes at The Lamb’s Theater in New York City.  Other NYC credits include productions at The Pulse Ensemble Theatre, Genesis Rep and Spotlight On Productions, among others.  His one act, Ben’s Story competed in the 2007 Samuel French one act festival, Tuna & Jack was a finalist in the 2001 American Globe Theatre’s 15-Minute Play competition, and Call Me Bernice won the 2002 Sage Theatre One Act Playwright's Award.  Lambeck’s play Lucky Day was published in a “Best of EAT” anthology by United Stages, Intervention and October People were published in a short play anthology by Smith & Kraus and his previous JAC plays are Countdown to 40 and Bus Stories.

Debbie Lamedman is a playwright, author and editor of eight acting books published by Smith & Kraus, Inc., including the best-selling The Ultimate Audition Book for Teens IV:  111 One Minute Monologues.  Her produced plays include phat girls, Triangle Logic, Mind Control, Eating in the Dark and Just Add Love.  phat girls has also been featured in the Smith & Kraus anthology New Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2003. Debbie’s newest work Ignorance is Bliss: A Global Warning will have its world premiere in April 2010. Debbie received her MFA from Brandeis University and is a proud member of The Dramatist Guild.

Born and raised in Downey (CA), Rhea MacCallum’s playwriting career began in high school with her award winning one-act, Hot Seat.  Recent writing credits include: Baby Secrets (Cheeky Monkey Theatre Company/Red Room Theatre), Selling Beaver (EBE Ensemble’s Elephants on Parade 2010 at Teatro lati), Getting Back to Me (Acme New Works Winter Festival 2010), Name Me (StimuLatte at Theatre Encino), Flushed Suicides (Stage Left Studios), Baby Blues (Project Playwright IV @ Access Theater, Short + Sweet Melbourne 2009 shortlist), A Little Experimenting (Native Aliens Theatre Collective, Strings Attached, Flint City Theatre, Southern Slam Fest, ACTober Fest at Secret Rose Theatre, NoHo & staged readings at RAW and Lavender Footlights), Mowing Down the Junipers (Scripteasers’ Script Tease of Short Plays & Lakeshore Players Ten-Minute Play semi-finalist), Resurrection for Dummies (Stormy Weather Players 2007 Pregnant Chad New Plays Festival winner), Nothing in Particular (First Stage LA, Playwrights Festival), The 7th Disorder (Westbeth Theatre & winner of TADA! Youth Theater’s 15th Annual One-Act Playwriting Contest), Penguins, Puppies and Porn (NY Fringe Festival), The Law of Life (HERE), Motherhood (Altered Stages), and Watching Tricia (Petoskey Theatre Festival).  She co-produced 8 Stories High, a festival of one-acts written, directed and performed by Well Played Productions.  Rhea is a member of the Dramatists Guild, International Center of Women Playwrights, Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights and a working finalist at the Actors Studio.  A graduate from USC and the Actors Studio Drama School, Rhea was honored to participate in the 2005 Lincoln Center Directors Lab.  Her full-length romantic comedy Room Service was a semi-finalist in the 2008 Trustus Playwrights’ Festival and the Actors Theatre of Louisville selected her ten-minute play, Yesterday Once More, as a finalist for the 2004 Heideman Award.

Josh McIlvain is a Philadelphia-based playwright, poet, musician and fiction writer.  He has had some ninety productions of more than fifty plays throughout the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.  Josh is an editor and co-founder of Don Ron Books, publisher of the critically acclaimed Philly Fiction ( www.phillyfiction.com ) book series. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Deborah and son, Jasper.

The author of over twenty plays, Rick Mitchell’s critically acclaimed work has been seen throughout the U.S. and Europe.  In 2009, Mitchell was awarded the Holland New Voices Award for Brecht in L.A., which also won the Southwest Theatre Association’s National New Play Contest.  Brecht in L.A. has been presented as part of an international writers’ series, Literaturforum im Brecht-Haus, in Berlin (Germany) in German translation, as well at the Orlando Shakespeare Festival’s PlayFest.  His play with music, The Composition of Herman Melville, was produced in 2009 in New York, as part of Metropolitan Playhouse’s theatre festival, “Melvillapalooza.”  Mitchell’s plays about Brecht and Melville are published in the U.K. by Intellect Books, which will also be publishing a forthcoming collection of his recent plays, including Anthropology; or How to Win Friends and Influence Afghans, a dark comedy set, primarily, in post 9/11 Afghanistan.  Another recent drama, Through the Roof, which examines the social history of “natural” disaster in New Orleans, was presented as a reading at Actors’ Theatre of Louisville as part of the Juneteenth Jamboree New Play Festival, and broadcast on Pacifica Radio’s KPFK-FM in Los Angeles.  His play Ventriloquist Sex, a “Pick of the Week” in the LA Weekly during its premiere in Hollywood, was also produced in Las Vegas as part of the Samuel Beckett Festival. A professional comedian/ventriloquist as well, Mitchell teaches playwriting at California State University/ Northridge, where he is Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing.  Graduate training includes playwriting at Brooklyn College; performance studies at Tisch School of the Arts; and a PhD in English/Creative Writing from the University of Louisiana/Lafayette.

As a director and dramaturg, Jeffrey Neuman has worked for the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, the University of Colorado/Boulder, and the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. He has presented professional papers for the Association for Theater in Higher Education, the American Alliance of Theatre Education, and the American Music Research Center. Recently, his original research was acknowledged in the book Kander and Ebb, a 2009 installment in the Yale University Press Broadway Masters series. As a playwright, Jeff’s work has been produced at theaters and festivals across the country. Zeus’s Women was presented at the Playwrights Showcase of the Western Region in 2007. It was also performed by Stage Left Theater Company (Salida, CO) as part of the group’s one act play festival and as their award-winning entry in the Colorado Community Theatre Coalition’s state festival.  Jeff is a member of the Dramatist’s Guild of America; information about his writing activities can be found at www.theaterbyjeff.com.

Dave Patterson's full length play To The Teeth opened in New York at the Creek Theatre in May, 2007. His absurdist play What’s The Magic Word? was part of the Iowa Play Festival in 2009,  8 Minute Madness Plays in New York City in 2006 and YouthFest 2009. Buried But Not Forgotten appeared at the Insomniac Theater in Hollywood in 2006. Cafe Wannabe was part of the Montana One Act Festival in 2006 . Dead Serious was performed at the Little Fish Theatre in California in 2005.  His play Idiots Out Wandering Around was second in the Kernoble Prize at the University of Arkansas. His play Slop Bucket appeared at the First Run Theatre in St. Louis  His play UNKEMPT  played at Chicago's N.U.F.A.N. Theatre and his monologue "Dead Already" was performed at the Universal Theatre in Provincetown (MA).  Patterson won the 2009 IMPA Award for Best Unproduced Screenplay in Des Moines for Prairie Dogs.  His short film MOONBITE is currently running the film festival circuit.

Boston’s Martha Patterson has more than 25 plays and monologues to her credit, three of her one-acts being produced Off-Off-Broadway.  She has been published in three anthologies of mother/daughter monologues by the International Centre for Women Playwrights, and has also had three monologues produced at the Seoul, Korea Players’ “Night of 1000 Plays”. Her comedy An Artful Marriage boasts production by Pink Banana Theatre at the Off Broadway Theatre in Milwaukee (WI), and her comedy Cookin’ with Gas was produced in the “We Mean to Be Green” One Act Showcase at Thespian Prods., Fort Myers (FL) (4/10).  Patterson’s work has had readings at the Boston Center for the Arts and SWAN Day/Boston (Support Women Artists Now), and she had a half-hour comedy/murder mystery produced (5/10) by Shoestring Radio Theatre in San Francisco.  She is a freelance online contributor to Life123…Answers at the Speed of Life.  Patterson earned her B.A. from Mount Holyoke College and an M.A. from Emerson College, both degrees in Theatre. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the International Centre for Women Playwrights, Screen Actors Guild, and Actors’ Equity Association.

Andy Pederson lives and writes in Chicago where he teaches English at Concordia University Chicago.  Andy received his MFA in playwritign from Goddard College in Vermont.  His plays have been produced in Chicago, Atlanta, and central Illinois. His play YELLOW LIGHT, opened this April at the Gorilla Tango Theatre in Chicago produced by The Just Passing By Theatre Company.  When not writing, Andy spends time with his wife and daughter and lives with the hope that one day the Cubs will win the world series. 

New York playwright Robin Rice Lichtig has authored over 40 plays, seen on stages from Alaska to Florida, Amsterdam to South Africa to Mongolia. Publishers include Dramatic, Bakers (French), Smith + Kraus, Brooklyn, ArtAge, and JAC. Residencies include Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum (CA), The Phoenix Theatre (AZ), Cleveland Public (OH), The Lark (NYC), and Sarah Lawrence College. Producers: Kennedy Center, Bailiwick Repertory, 3Graces, 3Fates, Bloomington Playwrights Project, Venus, Alleyway, NJ Rep, HERE, One Heart, Emerging Artists, New Georges, ManhattanTheatreSource, and Lincoln Center Directors Lab among others. She has been recognized by: Goshen Peace Play Prize, Jane Chambers, Moondance, Maxim Mazumdar, Perishable, Reva Shiner, TADA!, Samuel French and others. Full-length titles include: Lola and the Planet of Glorious Diversity, Frontier, Suki Livingston Opens Like a Parachute, Listen! The River, Searching for a New Sun, Play Nice!, Embracing the Undertoad, The Power of Birds, Music of the Spheres (Harmony), Humans Remain, Women w/o Walls and Necessary Geography. Membership: League of Professional Theatre Women, International Centre for Women Playwrights, Manhattan Oracles, the Dramatists Guild. For information on upcoming gigs, synopses and scripts: www.dramamama.net.  

In 2009, Laura Richardson's Come Back, Little Horny, premiered at The Lost Studios and received a WOW! in Stage Scene L.A. Her Do Do Love premiered at The Open Fist Theatre in 2007 and received a Los Angeles Times Critic’s Choice review. Her one woman show Sweety’s Big Experiment had its world premiere in Los Angeles at Actors Art Theatre where it garnered a “Critics Pick of the Week.” Most recently Richardson’s Chronic Pain ran at the award-winning Theatre East. Lady Liberty was chosen for a reading at The Abington Theatre in New York City, Life Eats Mikey and Kitty Cornered were both recognized by the Writer’s Digest and Writer’s Network play contests, and her screenplay of Do Do Love placed in the Scriptapalooza contest. Along with writing, Laura is also an actor in theatre and film. She is a graduate of Playhouse West, holds a BA in Theatre Arts, and is a company member at Open Fist Theatre, Actors Art Theatre, Playwrights 6, Second Story Theatre and The Dramatists Guild.

Dan Roth is a veteran actor/writer born in Flint (MI). He wrote the screenplay for the recently released Steve McQueen feature-documentary An American Rebel ( www.anamericanrebel.com ). Seven of his short plays (And...Action!, Big Wow, Exit Right, He Shoots...He Scores, Hitler Was a House Painter, Incredible Rump and The Scrapbook) are published by One Act Play Depot ( www.oneactplays.net ), and his Smilin’ Jack was a finalist in the 1995 Actor’s Theatre of Louisville Ten- Minute Play Contest. It was performed at the Secret Rose Theatre, North Hollywood and in 2003 produced as a short film by Silver Penny Productions. The film was an Official Selection of several film festivals the following year.. Hitler Was a House Painter was a winner of the 1996 Festival of One Act Plays at Playwrights Initiative Theatre, Kalamazoo (MI) and received a 2006 production by University College of Frazer Park, Chiliwack, British Columbia, Canada.  And...Action! was produced by The Eclectic Company Theatre, Valley Village (CA) in 2005 after being named a winner in their Hurricane Season Annual One Act Festival. Produced full-length plays that have been produced include The Pixley Caper (Theatre In the Gulch, Bisbee, AZ 1986; Reid Performance Center, Tucson, AZ 1987, and The Attic Theatre, Hollywood, CA 1990); Cab Rap (Carpet Company Stage, Los Angeles, CA 1991); Scotch Rocks (Company of CharActors Theatre, Sherman Oaks, CA 1997).  As an actor, Dan is best known for his three-year stint as Officer Daniels on NBC’s daytime-drama Santa Barbara, the voice of GRUNT on the syndicated G.I. Joe series, and his continuing appearances as Frank Bartles of Gallo Wines Bartles & Jaymes Premium Wine Coolers. He also facilitates the writers workshop at First Stage L.A.

Carol Anne Seflinger has an MA in Linguistics, and works currently in as a private educator in all things having to do with language.  She is also a free-lance editor and transcriber, and currently is editor of the WIT Spotlight (Women in Theatre e-newsletter).  A professional actor since childhood, Carol Anne started creating her own monologues out of a desire to use unique audition pieces as well as to workshop them in the various theatrical companies to which she belonged. It was at Theatre East in Studio City where she first performed an original monologue, Up Leapt Leopold, for a special benefit evening of solo performances appropriately enough titled SOLO. This evening also included a monologue by noted performer/writer Sandra Tsing Loh, who was in charge of selecting the pieces to be performed.  Some years later Carol Anne decided to expand her writing to include more than one character, to create dialogues, and eventually plays, including full-length plays which she has developed, workshopped and had produced in affiliation with the workshops, All Original Playwrights Workshop (AOPW), and Trey Nichol’s writing workshop, among others. She has showcased and/or staged readings of more than 10 different scenes and/or full 10-minute monologues in this fashion.  Some of her 10-minute one-acts that were either workshopped or showcased include Something for the Pain, Solving for X, The Session--which was selected to be a part of UC Irvine's World Premiere Weekend in 2009, My Life as a Meteor,  Graduation Day and The Deal,  along with scenes from her longer plays.  Carol Anne has one complete full-length play, First Day Cover, a romantic comedy, and two others which are on their way to completion: Imperfections, a comedy,  and Special Delivery, a mystery/drama. Carol Anne is proud and delighted to have My Life as a Meteor selected for this compilation.

John Small’s theatrical avocation began in the fourth grade when he appeared as Jack the Giant Killer in the school play. In the late 1970s, he worked as a professional actor in dinner theaters around the greater Boston area, and in 1980 he performed in the cast of Turtle Lane Playhouse's inaugural production of Godspell. After taking a short 23 year break from the theater, John returned to the stage in 2004 as Dr. Lyman Hall in Concord (MA) Players' production of 1776.  Since his return to the stage, he has performed in numerous community theater productions in Eastern Massachusetts, as well as making his network television debut as New York State Senator William Armstrong in the PBS documentary, Louis Brandeis: The People's Attorney.  In December of both 2008 and 2009, John played Ebenezer Scrooge in a radio adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol on WCAP 980 AM in Lowell (MA).  Though John is not a ‘playwright’ per se, he enjoys writing monologues tailored to a particular audition he is attending.  Thus far, this practice has served him well by getting him cast in all of the productions he has done this for.

Jennie Staniloff-Redling, 2007 winner of BMI’s Jerry Harrington Musical Theatre Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement as a librettist, is the national recipient of the Stanley Drama Award, and the Arlene R. and William P. Lewis Playwriting Award for Women.  Her screenplays include Zone One with HBO’s Big Love creator Mark V. Olsen, and the future release Six Candles (working title) for SevenOverSeven Entertainment.  Her musical The Harvest, first produced non-musicalized by The Mint Theatre in New York was presented at the Dramatists Guild of America’s Friday Night Footlights Series (4/09).  Her  plays have been read or produced in NYC and nationally at Soho Rep, Ensemble Studio Theatre, the Mint Theater, Mefisto Theatre Company for the New York Fringe Festival, Abingdon Theatre Company, Urban Stages, The Barrow Group, the Globe Theatre, Buffalo’s Alleyway Theatre, Louisville’s Juneteenth Legacy Theatre, and others.  Jennie is the recipient of two New York State Foundation for the Arts grants and has been nominated by Ensemble Studio Theatre for the Arnold L. Weissberger Award, was a finalist in Firehouse Theatre’s 2009 Festival of New American Plays, the Arts & Letters Prize for Drama, the Actors Theatre of Louisville Ten-Minute Play Competition and The Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center’s Summer Conference twice. Her monologues and scenes are published in Smith & Krause’s Audition Arsenal for Women in Their 20s: 101 Monologues by Type, and Smith & Kraus’s Winner’s Scenes for Kids and Teens.  Staniloff-Redling is an audition and a certified rape crisis counselor with Rockland Family Shelter Sexual Trauma Services. She is a member of BMI-Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Librettist Workshop, the Dramatists Guild of America, Inc., Actors Equity Association, Hudson Valley Professional Playwrights Lab, and International Centre for Women Playwrights.  Visit her online at http://jennieredling.com.

Kim Stinson holds a BFA in Stage Management from North Carolina School of the Arts, an MA in Theatre with a concentration in directing from Miami University in Ohio, and an MFA in playwriting from Spalding University. Her play Courageous Paths, about women who have attended the New Opportunity School for Women in Berea, Kentucky, and adapted from the book Courageous Paths: Stories of Nine Appalachian Women by Jane Baucom Stephenson, has been performed in Berea (KY), and Banner Elk (NC). She was chosen as one of six playwrights to participate in the New Mummer Group’s, New York/Kentucky Writer’s Exchange for which there was a workshop in Kentucky (7/07), followed by a public reading of the works in New York (9/07). Post Partum Blue, a one-act play, was published in The Louisville Review in their spring 2008 issue. Kim is also contributor to the book 365 Low or No Cost Teambuilding Activities by John Peragine.  Kim won second place and third place in the 2008 Appalachian Writers Association Josefina Niggli Award for Playwriting for her short plays OxyNanny and Soapbox, respectively. In Spring, 2009, Stinson was awarded a grant from the United Arts Council of Catawba County in Hickory (NC) to conduct research for and write a play about Catawba County women. Kim is a member of The Dramatists Guild of America, Inc. 

Marti M. Stocker is an aspiring writer, bravely venturing into a new career as a playwright.  The transition from telling to writing stories for the stage seemed to be natural for an educational reading specialist with many years devoted to encouraging middle-school reading.  When presented with the challenge of supporting and encouraging creative, burgeoning female writers, Stocker decided to become one of the founding members of Denver Center Theater Company’s Women’s Voices Fund.  Stocker is currently working on a one-act play about sexual exploitation and family secrets revealed to a teacher by a trusting student, and a full-length historical piece about two families living during the rise of “big” steel and the labor movement in the late 1800s.

Lucy Wang is an award-winning, published and produced writer who began her illustrious career as a bond trader on Wall Street because her parents often screamed, "If we knew you were going to be a starving artist, we could have left you in China!" When Wang (nicknamed the "Hemingway of Memos") lost her job because the Mayor of New York lost his, Wang decided it was finally time to pursue her deepest passion. Everyone thought she was crazy to "waste" her University of Chicago MBA. Luckily, her biting first play Junk Bonds won an award from the Kennedy Center, Best New Play from the Katherine and Lee Chilcote Foundation, and a new nickname, "the female David Mamet." She has been writing steadily ever since, surprising audiences with her diverse array of voices and life experiences and collecting as many awards, accolades and new nicknames along the way. Wang's other awards include a grant from the Berrilla Kerr Foundation, James Thurber Fellowship, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Honorary Fellow, James Irvine Honorary Fellow, artistic residencies at MacDowell, Hedgebrook, Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Tin Shop and Djerassi.  Wang's plays have been produced all over.  In addition to plays, Wang has written screenplays, teleplays, short stories, news articles, essays, and fiction.

Michael Weems is a Connecticut-born, Vermont-educated, all around Yankee, who now calls Texas home.  Recent playwriting credits include Bludgeon the Lime and Necessary Adjustments (Phare Play Productions), Wincing at the Light and Quiet Bed (Love Creek Productions); Fragments (Little Hibiscus Productions & Festival 56, Chicago, IL); Onward, Forward and Waiting Life (Little Hibiscus Productions), Subtlety (Algonquin Theatre); Burden Me (Strawberry Riant Festival & Awakening Drama); Laugh Riot (The Seven Collective); and Waiting Life, Ready to Shine and Subtlety (Brief Acts). Recent fiction/poetry credits: Love Me, As Well (Record Magazine - Winter 08-09); When We Reached the Forest (Indite Circle Literary) and being named the poet of the month for 'O Sweet Flowery Roses Literary Journal (October 2008), as well as recent works being published by 63 Channels Literary, Jump In Magazine and Oregon Literary Review, amongst others. 

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