workshop intensive Fall 2025
Sixteen talented playwrights are selected to participate in The Workshop Intensives, which are collaborative dramaturgical sessions uniquely designed to support each writer wherever they are in the development of their script.
Erika Phoebus
(she/her) is an NYC-based playwright who writes shapeshifting plays about pleasure, autonomy, and all things magical, strange, and a little horrific. Select plays include witch play (Great Plains Theatre Conference 2023; Seven Devils finalist; Soho Rep Writer Director Lab finalist), LET’S PRETEND (O’Neill National Playwrights Conference semi-finalist), RUSALKA (Awarded Outstanding Script & Outstanding Production, Planet Connections Theatre Festival), KISS IT, MAKE IT BETTER (New Ohio). Her short play SHARK WEEK won the Samuel French Off-Off-Broadway Short Play Festival and is now published by Concord Theatricals, and has been produced by the Atlantic Theatre Acting School. Erika has received residencies through Fresh Ground Pepper’s BRB retreat, Theatre 4the People @theBarn, and was a finalist for Fresh Ground Pepper’s PlayGround PlayGroup. She’s thrill to develop her play hercules actually f*cking sucks in the Fall Writers’ Intensive with The Workshop Theater! As an educator, Erika has taught playwriting at Bowie High School (Austin, TX), Westerly High School (Westerly, RI), and Arizona Actors Academy (Phoenix, AZ), and has received her Mental Health First Aid Certification from the National Council of Mental Wellbeing. B.F.A. Creative Writing from Brooklyn College. www.erikaphoebus.com; IG: ephoebs
Jane M. Lee
is a New York City-based playwright whose work has been performed across the United States as well as in Canada, Hong Kong, and London. Her short play Trite and True was produced Off-Broadway in the Downtown Urban Arts Festival at Theatre Row. Her short play Family Emergency was praised for “fus[ing] the hostility of a Jerry Springer program with the warmth and irony of an O. Henry story.” She was a semifinalist for Chisa Hutchinson’s Signpost Fellowship for writers of color. Her play Closet Space won the College of Charleston’s Todd McNerney National Playwriting Award.
Ash
(they/she) is an active composer, choral arranger, playwright, songwriter, sound designer, and music director for choir and theatre. As a writer, they are currently developing Fairy Tales Fairy Told (short play anthology; writers’ intensive), Crumbs (musical; multiple readings), This Side of the Door (song cycle; table read and festival inclusion), MOVE - BEND - FALL (short play trilogy; residency and readings), Magnetic Electric and The Dark Stuff (two plays by Mikki Gillette with music by Ash; upcoming premiere productions in 2025 and 2026), and other projects. She participated in the National Queer Theater 2025 Criminal Queerness Studio and the Fresh Binder Spring 2025 Writer’s Cohort, and various 10-minute plays of hers (Fairy Got Mother, My Very First, and The Wound) were performed in spring/summer 2025 in NYC. Her song “I’ve Heard the Stories” from her musical Crumbs was a finalist in the 2025 Write Out Loud Contest. As a queer, non-binary, Persian, and hard-of-hearing artist, she values storytelling as a means of connection, revelation, and celebration. Ash is the former artistic director of Transpose PDX, and her choral works and arrangements have been performed globally by various choirs. She grew up in Portland, OR and currently resides in NYC. musicbyash.com
D-Davis
lives in NYC. Her most recent productions are Broken Thread (Femme Collective and Columbia University), Complicity (New Ohio), and her one-act plays Erasing Time, short-listed SPF-16, and Night Becomes Morning (Chain Theatre), Memorial Tree, (Columbia University, pub. Pitkin Review), and What’s What (Polaris Theater). She was a finalist for Cry Havoc, and her play Broken Thread was a semifinalist for Premiere Stages, Road Theatre, Bronx Creative Vision Award and a Honor Roll Residency. She received an DQT American Woman Fellowship (Grrls Play Bass) and HB Studio Residency Fellowship (Complicity). Her work has been developed at The New Ohio, Primary Stages, New York Theater Workshop, Eden Theater Company, Theatre East, Workshop Theatre, Actors Studio (NYC), Howl Playwrights, AMIOS, Dramatist Guild, Goddard College, and Columbia University. She earned a BA in Theater at Bennington College, an MA in History at CUNY and granted two NEH research fellowships (Feminism and Philosophy) and earned an MFA in playwriting at Columbia University. She currently works as the Literary Associate for The Tent Theater Company. www.d-davis.com
Sean Dunnington
is a New York-based playwright from Hawai‘i Island. His plays include Inversion, Failed Artist, Jew Bash, The Children's Farm, Zap, Flat Fish, and Hawaiian Shake. His work has been produced nationally and internationally, with premieres in Hawai’i, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, London, and Singapore, as well as in libraries, state museums, old basements, public radio stations, indie film festivals, and LGBTQ+ centers. Sean has been in residence with Centre 42, The Workshop Theater, Orchard Project (Audio Lab), East-West Center, Ka Waiwai Collective, and the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa’s Native Hawaiian Place of Learning Advancement Office. He has received fellowships from the MacDowell, Dramatists Guild Foundation, Magic Theatre, Creative Labs Hawai‘i, Culture of Health Leadership Institute for Racial Healing, California Arts Council, and Henry Luce Foundation. He is the founding director of Tree Moss (est. 2021), a collective of emerging and established Hawaiʻi playwrights who center new play development, advocacy, and strengthening the theatrical landscape of Hawaiʻi. Sean holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU Tisch School of the Arts (2024), a BA in Applied Playwriting from the Johnston Center for Integrative Studies at the University of Redlands (2019), and a Diploma in Classical Acting from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts (2017).
Cerulean Chen Long
(she/they) is a theater writer, director, and producer who aims to challenge, transform, and heal. She is the co-founder and co-artistic director of in-version ensemble (@in_version_ensemble), a theater collective led by an international team of women and non-binary artists. As a queer artist from China, they seek universal truths and bonds from their otherness. A graduate of UCLA Theater with an emphasis in Playwriting and Directing, their work has been presented at various festivals and venues including Edinburgh Fringe, Hollywood Fringe, The T ank NYC, and Nimoy Theater. You can view more of her work at ceruleanchenlong.com
ADRIENNE LAVALLEY
(she/her) is a writer, director and voice actor with a healthy obsession for nature and adventure. She attributes that to being born and raised in New York’s Finger Lakes region between the corn fields and vineyards. She’s a proud member of the Actor’s Studio Playwright/Directors Unit where her play In Here was first read under the moderation of John Patrick Shanley. Her work often explores the quiet, complicated corners of human connection. The Good Father, which examines three generations of bipolar disorder within one family and the devastation it leaves in its wake was developed and first read at The Dramatist Guild’s Footlights Reading Series followed by The Actors Studio. Midge, which she also directed in Theatre Revolution’s: Glass Ceiling Breakers Festival, tells the story of two unlikely characters who share the same goal but are unwilling to admit it. Midge was selected to be performed with Enter Stage Left’s PPP Festival and the Geneva Theatre Guild. Honey was chosen for the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Company’s 2024 Bake-Off competition and asks what unfolds when a teenage boy stumbles upon an old man at his darkest moment. Beyond the stage, Adrienne created the podcast The Old Man and The Me, the backyard nature video series Nugget O’ Knowledge, and authored the children’s book The Bravest Kind, which explores the inner thoughts of a young boy being raised by a bipolar parent.
Brazil Remani
(she/her) is a proud Southern playwright, dramaturg, and financial professional whose work centers the richness, resilience, and complexity of modern life in the Deep South. Their plays explore the intersection of individuals, families, and larger systems—whether community, government, or workplace—often set in the post-Obama era to examine promises of inclusivity against enduring inequities. Brazil’s play The Cost of Justice was selected for the SheATL Summer Festival, and they are the 2025 Barbara Molette Scholar with Working Title Playwrights, where they are further honing their craft through the New Play Dramaturgy Intensive. Dramaturgical credits include Unfinished Women at Vanderbilt University, where they provided critical analysis, socio- political context, and biographical research. The Welfare Queen examines how two women, divided by age but united by circumstance, struggle to reclaim autonomy within the Department of Family and Children Services and bridge their intergenerational gap. Her play, Fuck Donald Trump, draws on their lived experience as a federal employee, chronicling a group of workers navigating moral awakening post-Trump’s 2025 inauguration. Her ten-minute play, Eddie’s Special, will be showcased at the 2025 Essential Theatre Festival in August. Beyond theatre, they serve as a Financial Institution Specialist with the FDIC, where their skills in leadership, analysis, and regulatory compliance enrich their contributions to the arts. Above all, Brazil writes with the heart and hospitality of a proud Southern Negro, committed to sharing powerful, untold stories with authenticity and grace.
Kaila Tacazon
is a Brooklyn-based writer, director, producer, and performer. His work uses dramatic verse to tell mystical stories about queer and trans experiences. Kaila is the General Manager of Theatre of the Bacchant (IG: @theatrebacchant), a collective dedicated to promoting queer and BIPOC voices in classical theatre. Writing includes: The Ghost of Leslie-Fucking-Feinberg, comissioned by Dyke Theatre Company and produced for the T4T theatre festival; Native Healing, commissioned and produced by Celebration Theatre in Tales of the Transcestors: The Divine; and Fractured Mirror, produced for the Winter 2025 Chain Theatre One-Act Play Festival. They graduated from the University of Southern California with a BA in Theatre and a minor titled Justice, Voice, and Advocacy.
C.S. Hanson
is a playwright with off Broadway and regional credits. Her plays have been produced off Broadway and regionally, including in NYC (Cherry Lane, Theater for the New City, Theater Row, NY Int’l. Fringe Fest., The Brick, Metropolitan Playhouse, Estrogenius); Miami (City Theatre); Washington, D.C. (The Source); Pittsburgh (New Works Fest.); Denver (Three Leaches); and Montreal (Gleams Theatre, Montreal Fringe Fest.). Her short play STALK ME, BABY has been produced in high schools and college campuses worldwide. Hanson’s plays have been developed thanks to The Lark, The Bechdel Group, Lake George Theater Lab, EST, LaMaMa, Abingdon, Naked Angels, The Actors Studio, and NJ Rep. Hanson is also an alumna of American Lyric Theater’s Composer/Librettist Development Program, for which wrote the libretto “Giovanni/a” (composer: Del’Shawn Taylor), presented at Symphony Space in June 2025. Hanson has received commissions from the Experimentals at LaMaMa, Working Theater, Nomad Theatrical, America-in-Play, and Gleams Theatre. Proud member of the Dramatists Guild of America and Honor Roll. More at www.cshanson.com