ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHTS

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Luke Brett is a Cleveland based playwright and actor with a talent for pop-up performances that create wonder from the ground up. He has performed his own work in unconventional spaces across Cleveland, whether that meant reciting original fabulist pulp stories at a bookstore or doing a handcuffed waltz on top of a hill in Public Square for the BorderLight Fringe Festival. He’s also acted on the mainstages of Great Lakes Theater, Dobama Theatre, The Cleveland Shakespeare Festival, The Ohio Shakespeare Festival, and Cleveland Public Theatre. His plays have been produced at Playwrights Local, Hunger Theatre, Radio on the Lake Theatre, the Ohio Shakespeare Festival and the BorderLight Festival. In 2019, his first full length play Unletter'd, Rude and Shallow was a finalist in the Shakespeare's New Contemporaries project at the American Shakespeare Center. He adores Cleveland and life.

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Madeleine George's plays include The Sore Loser, Hurricane Diane (Obie Award), The (Curious Case of the) Watson Intelligence (Pulitzer Prize finalist), Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England, Precious Little, and The Zero Hour. Honors include a Lilly Award, the Hermitage Major Theater Award, the Princess Grace Award, and a Whiting Award.  Madeleine’s translation of Chekhov’s Three Sisters premiered at Two River Theater in 2022, and her audio adaptation of Alison Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For was released by Audible Originals in 2023.  Madeleine has written on shows for FX and HBO, and she’s been a writer/producer on all four seasons of the Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated mystery-comedy "Only Murders in the Building."  Since 2006, she has worked with the Bard Prison Initiative at Bard College, where she currently serves as Director of Admissions.

Amy Jo Jackson (they/she) is a performer, playwright, composer/lyricist and glitter alien based in New York City. They are the recipient of a 2023 EST/Sloan Commission for Grace/Bliss, and were a 2022 finalist for the Jonathan Larson Grant. AJJ’s original musical Hatchetation was one of two musicals selected for the National Music Theater Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in 2021, and has also been developed through She-Collective, Untitled Musical Project, and Fresh Ground Pepper’s PAL program. Her acclaimed solo cabaret The Brass Menagerie was commissioned in 2019 by the Denovan Fellowship in Cabaret and was the recipient of a 2022 Bistro Award. As an actor, Amy Jo has performed with Company XIV, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Exit Pursued by a Bear, Prospect, Syracuse Stage, Arkansas Rep, Theatre Works Hartford, and many more. Their work as a kabarettist and nightlife artist has found them on just about every cabaret and comedy stage in NYC: Company XIV, 54 Below, Joe’s Pub, Green Room 42, (le) Poisson Rouge, Little Island, the Cutting Room, the Slipper Room, the Bell House, Club Cumming, Caveat, and others. As a dialect coach, they’ve worked extensively in NYC and regionally, most notably on Broadway’s Kinky Boots. BFA Boston Conservatory.

Fleurette Modica is an NYC-based playwright, composer, and Shakespeare nerd. Her work offers comedic perspectives on the world and often focuses on the female coming-of-age experience. Most recently, her short play Full Moon was performed at the International Human Rights Art Festival. She is a two-time semifinalist in the Comedy/Novelty category of the International Songwriting Competition.

Paloma Nozicka is a Mexican-American playwright, actor and filmmaker. She is currently a writer with the 2023/24 Geffen Writer's Room. Playwriting credits include Enough to Let the Light In (2022 World Premiere, Teatro Vista) and Both (currently in development with Geffen Playhouse). Directing credits include Each Lovely Thing (currently showing in festivals). Screenwriting credits include Enough to Let the Light In, Horns, Each Lovely Thing, HUGE, and Sam Kelly. She is committed to telling femme-forward stories and promoting the equality of historically marginalized groups, specifically Latinas.

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Robert O'Hara  is the Tony-Nominated Director of Slave Play and is currently working on several Film, Television, and Broadway projects. He’s a two time Obie Award Winner and two time NAACP Award Winner whose work has been seen around the country.

Emma Schillage (they/them) is a Southern Gothic playwright based in New Orleans and New York. They write about resilience, girlhood, and the horror / wonder of growing up in the Deep South. Schillage earned their BA in Theatre Arts from Loyola University New Orleans ('19) and MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University ('23). Their work has been produced by The 24-Hour Plays: Nationals, Breaking and Entering Theatre Co., and Southern Rep Theatre. Their play, Cockroaches, is also a semi-finalist in the Austin Film Festival Playwriting Competition and the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference.

Madison Stranahan is an actor and a writer from Bozeman, Montana, currently based in New York. After studying History and Theatre Studies at Guilford College, she graduated from the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in 2022. Her hobbies include watching old movies, reading about jazz singers, and walks in the park.

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ABOUT THE DIRECTORS

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Irvin Mason Jr., is a director, actor, poet, and teaching artist born and raised in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. His work intersects expressive movement, live music, emerging technology, and Afro-Caribbean traditions to breathe new life to physical storytelling. Irvin seeks to direct work that leaves a residue — unapologetic work that dismantles the traditional foundations of theater, and creates space for new voices to tell their own stories. Irvin is the proud, current recipient of the 2024-2026 Drama League Stage Directing Fellowship. His recent directing credits include: Ain't Misbehavin (Gallery-Players), Stuck (Chain Theatre), and Pipeline (Gallery-Players). Assistant Directing: Gospel According to Heather (AMAS, dir. Rachel Klein). In 2023, Irvin served as a directing observer to Schele Williams on the Broadway revival of The Wiz. He was the SDCF directing shadow on Little Shop of Horrors (dir. Maggie Burrows) and Rent (dir. Lili-Anne Brown) at the MUNY. He was also the directing observer on Pup! A Chew Story (NAMT). @iirvinmason

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Evan Yionoulis, an Obie award-winning director and nationally recognized teacher of acting, is Juilliard’s Richard Rodgers dean and director of the Drama Division. She came to Juilliard after 20 years on the faculty of Yale School of Drama, where she was a professor in the practice of acting and directing and Lloyd Richards chair of the department of acting from 1998 to 2003. She has directed new plays and classics in New York, across the country, and internationally, including Adrienne Kennedy’s He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box (world premiere) and Ohio State Murders (Lortel Award, best revival) for Theatre for a New Audience, Richard Greenberg’s The Violet Hour (Broadway), Three Days of Rain (Obie for direction, Manhattan Theatre Club), and Everett Beekin (Lincoln Center Theater), and, during her 20 years as a resident director at Yale Repertory Theatre, productions including Shakespeare’s Richard II and Cymbeline, Brecht’s Galileo, Ibsen’s The Master Builder, and Guillermo Calderón’s Kiss. With composer/lyricist Mike Yionoulis, she is developing the multiplatform project Redhand Guitar, about five generations of musicians across an American century, and The Dread Pirate Project, about identity and anonymity across the digital and natural worlds. She is a Princess Grace Award recipient and serves as president of the executive board of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.

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