SPECIAL EVENT
SHORT NEW PLAY FESTIVAL 2022: ALCHEMY

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHTS

​

Montana Cypress (And There Shall Be No More Tears) is a playwright, filmmaker and actor. Originally from the Miccosukee Tribe located in South Florida, he now resides in Los Angeles where he is a member of the Native Voices Theatre Ensemble. He is a winner of the Von Marie Atchley Excellence in Playwriting Award, winner of Best Native American Short Film at the 2022 Phoenix Film Festival for his film “Two Brothers”,  Semi-Finalist for the Eugene O’ Neill Playwriting Conference and Runner-up at the National AT&T Create-a-thon contest partnered with Warner Brothers for his short film “Thunderdance” which he wrote, co-produced and acted in. He is featured in Noggin Knows (Nickelodeon) Season 2 and is working on a short documentary about alligator wrestling for PBS North which will premiere in 2023 as part of Native Report programming. His most recent film “The Red Orchid” can be seen on the Bawaadan Collective Youtube Channel.

​

Larissa FastHorse (With Visible Breath) grew up in South Dakota, where she began her career as a ballet dancer and choreographer. Returning to an early interest in writing, she became involved in Native American drama, first in the Native film community, but she found her artistic home as a playwright. Her satirical comedy The Thanksgiving Play was one of the top ten most produced plays in America. She is the first Native American playwright in the history of American theater on that list. FastHorse also co-founded Indigenous Direction, a consulting firm that helps organizations and individuals who want to create accurate work by, for, and with Indigenous peoples. Personally, FastHorse challenges every theatre she works with to be sure that her work isn’t the only Indigenous art in the building and that she isn’t the only Indigenous person being paid in that season. A 2020 MacArthur Fellow, some of FastHorse’s produced plays include What Would Crazy Horse Do? (KCRep), Landless and Cow Pie Bingo (AlterTheater), Average Family (Children’s Theater Company of Minneapolis), Teaching Disco Squaredancing to Our Elders: A Class Presentation (Native Voices at the Autry), Vanishing Point (Eagle Project), and Cherokee Family Reunion (Mountainside Theater). Additional theaters that have commissioned or developed plays with her include The Public, Yale Repertory Theater, Guthrie, Geffen Playhouse, History Theater, Kennedy Center Theater for Young Audiences, Baltimore’s Center Stage, Arizona Theater Company, Mixed Blood, Perseverance Theater Company, The Lark Playwrights’ Week, the Center Theatre Group Writer’s Workshop, and The Berkeley Repertory Theater’s Ground Floor. She has recently returned to film and TV with projects at NBC, Disney Channel, Dreamworks, Apple, and Freeform.

Debra Fried (Another Part of the Green Room) taught English and American poetry and literature at Cornell for thirty-five years and lives in Ithaca, New York; studied English and classics at Bryn Mawr (A.B. '76), Yale PhD in English '83; other interests include classic film comedies of the 1930s.

Stephen Adly Guirgis (Title to be announced) is a member of LAByrinth Theater Company. His award-winning plays include: Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven, the Pulitzer Prize Winning, Between Riverside & Crazy, The Motherf**ker With The Hat, The Little Flower of East Orange, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Our Lady of 121st Street, Jesus Hopped The A Train, In Arabia We'd All Be Kings, Den Of Thieves, and Dominica The Fat Ugly Ho. He also wrote, produced, and co-created the Netflix series The Get Down. As an actor he can currently be seen in Edward Norton's Motherless Brooklyn, Jason Chaet's Seneca, Russian Doll on Netflix, and Adam McKay's upcoming Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty on HBO.

Kevin P. Joyce (Vulgar Gold) is a New York based director and playwright. Originally from Boston, Mass, he received his degree in Theatre Arts from Pace University and ever since has been creating theatre in festivals, basements, and barrooms all over New York City and beyond. His published works include The Braggart of Bourbon St., Jackie and Johnny and the Whoracle Named Daphne, When the Cat’s Away, Wilde Tales (Three Fairy Tales by Oscar Wilde), and a translation of Pierre Corneille’s L’illusion Comique. www.kevinpjoyce.net.

Nick Martorelli (Make Gold of That) is a writer and producer based in Queens. His writing includes multiple episodes for a fiction podcast, several short films, and a series of live radio plays that have been performed in Philadelphia. Nick is a former professional actor, and currently works in book publishing. He can be found on Twitter (@NickMartorelli), where he is always willing to talk at length about Star Trek, Superman, and Sherlock Holmes. 

Justin Muschong (Make Gold of That) is a writer and editor based in Queens. His articles, short stories, and essays have been published in Resource Magazine, Newtown Literary, Atticus Review, Maudlin House, and Alternating Current’s The Coil, among others. He has also contributed to the stories and screenplays of short and feature films that have appeared at numerous festivals. In 2018, his script for Deadbolt won Best Short Screenplay at the Eclipse Awards in Michigan. He has received further recognition from Project Twenty1 in Philadelphia, Gotham Screen in New York City, and the Snowtown Film Festival in Watertown, New York. He spends too much time on Twitter (@JustinMuschong) and posts too many pictures of his wretched cat on Instagram (@justin_muschong).

Zoë Rhulen (Medusa Prays) is a Colorado-grown, New York-based playwright. She writes to reconnect audiences with the Earth and their own wildness. Her plays include Dirty Pretty, H & P, Mommy and The Pirate, Rooted or homeplay, Slippery (Slingshot Theater Company, upcoming), and Star Country. Her work has been supported by Arts on Site, Curious Theatre Company, The Lark, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Slingshot Theater Company, and Theater Accident. She holds a BFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.

​

Elaine Romero (Prosperita) An award-winning U.S. playwright, Elaine Romero’s plays have been presented across the U.S. and abroad; she is also widely published and anthologized in over 50 publications. Her play, Secret Things, received a critically-acclaimed production in November/December 2021 at 1st Stage where the play was named by DC Metro Theater Arts as one of the best Outstanding Professional Theatre Productions of 2021. Her commissioned play, The Grotowski Method, premiered last year, sparking conversations about race in a rural Midwestern town. The month-long, RomeroFest, featured her work at theatres nationally and internationally in March 2021 with over seventeen separate projects. Initiated by the Arizona Theatre Company, some of the collaborating companies included Artists Repertory Theatre, Scoundrel & Scamp Theatre, InterAct Theatre Company, Seven Devils New Play Foundry, Winding Road Theatre Ensemble, Teatro Travieso/Troublemaker Theater, Justice Theatre Project, and Foro Shakespeare in Mexico City.

​

ABOUT THE DIRECTORS

​

Timothy Douglas’s credits include Frankenstein for Classic Stage Company, 24 Hour Plays/Broadway, world premiere of Rajiv Joseph’s The Lake Effect for Silk Road Rising (Jeff Award: Best New Work), Disgraced for Arena Stage and The Great Theatre of China, and the world premiere of August Wilson’s Radio Golf for Yale Rep. Also Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park Associate Artist (The Trip To Bountiful, Clybourne Park, The North Pool); Actors Theatre of Louisville Associate Artistic Director (10 productions including 3 Humana Festival premieres), American Conservatory Theater, Center Theatre Group Director in Residence, Guthrie, Berkeley Rep, South Coast Rep, Steppenwolf, Playmakers Rep, Woolly Mammoth, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Downstage (NZ), National Theatre of Norway, Milwaukee Rep Artistic Associate, and many others. Timothy is also an actor and designated Linklater voice instructor and currently serves as Distinguished Artist in Residence at Emerson College.  

​

Nathan Winkelstein has been with Red Bull Theater for five years. He is the Producing Director of The Revelation Reading Series as well as the host of Remarkabull Podversations. He also serves as the casting associate for Red Bull. Nathan has acted or directed for numerous companies around the country, including The Alley, NYU Grad, Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, Shakespeare Theater Company, LCT, The Folger, American Shakespeare Center and others. Dubbed 'The Pied Piper of Shakespeare' Nathan provides private acting coaching to select clients and has taught for Red Bull, STC, LCT, TGS and Maggie Flanagan Studio. Nathan received his BA in Theater from the University at Buffalo and his MFA in Classical Acting from the prestigious Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in the UK. Nathan is a proud member of both Actors Equity and SDC.