Under Construction 5
Introducing our Under Construction 5 Playwrights
These 21 playwrights have been selected for our UC program and will be developing their work over the course of a year!
In-Person Playwrights
Robert Axelrod
Robert Axelrod is a gay Jewish writer whose work focuses on exploring the intersectionality of identity and culture. Robert is a past recipient of the Humanitas New Voices fellowship, CineStory TV fellowship, and was part of the inaugural class of the Jewish Writer Initiative’s Digital Storyteller Lab. In 2020, he was one of the winners of the A-List, an annual competition honoring the best work written by assistants in the entertainment industry. Robert was named one of the winners of the Echo Theater Company’s inaugural playwriting competition, and previously won the ScreenCraft Stage Play Competition, which led to his award-winning play opening the 2021 IAMA Theatre Company’s New Works Festival. Robert is a Summa Cum Laude graduate of Syracuse University where he holds a BFA in Drama.
Rachel Borders
Rachel Borders is a writer, director, and podcaster based in Los Angeles. As a dyslexic writer, Rachel’s always loved oxymorons and unconventional pairings. Rachel is currently in the IAMA’s Emerging Playwrights Lab. In television, she’s written for FOX’s Proven Innocent and DirecTV Audience Network’s Rogue. Rachel has written and produced podcasts for Wondery, Realm, and Headspace. She served as a Writers’ Assistant on Netflix’s Virgin River, CW’s Life Sentence, and NBC’s Chicago Justice. Rachel is an alumna of Playground-LA’s Playwrights’ Circle and was recognized as Best of Playground in 2020. Additionally, she works as a Creative Executive for showrunners Erin Cardillo and Richard Keith under their In Good Company banner. Her first short film This Remains, starring Sosie Bacon, was selected as one of six films in the Soho House Short Film Series. Rachel’s second short “Those We Carry” starring Nancy Travis is currently streaming on Omeleto. Originally from Chicago, Rachel attended Brown University where she received a dual degree in Literary Arts & Psychology. The only thing Rachel loves more than hot dogs and math is ruining karaoke bars by singing showtunes.
Fiona Gorry-Hines
Fiona Gorry-Hines (they/she) is a playwright and screenwriter. Her produced work for the stage includes It Will Rise Soon Enough (Columbia University) You Can’t Touch My Sister I Ate In the Womb! (Columbia University), Of the Sea (Access Theater, Dixon Place), Our House (Gallatin Theatre Troupe), and Helena’s Bird (Emerging Artists Theatre, Acorn Theatre). They are also the author of several screenplays for film and television including “At Your Service,” which was selected for the Columbia Blue List in 2023. MFA Columbia University.
Malique Guinn
Malique Guinn is a playwright, poet, and screenwriter who hails from Lancaster, CA. With a childlike imagination, he crafts stories that bridge the gap between STEM, faith, and Hip-Hop to examine the human condition.
His work has been developed at New Harmony Project and has received recognition from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, HUMANITAS, the Kennedy Center, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and the FMM Works in Heightened Language. His ten minute play “Imposter’s Eve” was published by Concord Theatricals/Samuel French (2023). His MFA thesis play “Vice Wheels” received the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for Comic Writing and Distinguished Achievement for the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award (2023). He is an alumnus of the MFA Dramatic Writing Program at Carnegie Mellon University. Learn more about him at https://www.goodforyoulique.com/.
Steve Harper
STEVE HARPER writes about the “invisible things” (like race, sexuality, politics and religion) that people don’t usually talk about. His full-length plays include Black Lives / Blue Lives [co-written with Bill Mesce, Jr.] (The Theater Project, NJ), Urban Rabbit Chronicles (Georgia Southern University), The Escape Artist’s Children (Workshop at Celebration Theater), short plays include: For the Dark-Skinned Movie Going People of the World (The Fire This Time Festival, NY), and Things Are (mostly) Crazy (Vivid Stage, NJ). Readings and workshops: Classical Theatre of Harlem, Lower Depth Theater Ensemble, Malibu Playhouse, Roundhouse Theater, Northwestern University, Loyola Marymount University, New York Stage & Film and New York Theatre Workshop. TV writing credits include Co-Executive Producer duties on Tracker and DC’s Stargirl as well as writing episodes of God Friended Me, Tell Me Your Secrets, American Crime, and Covert Affairs. His web series SEND ME, about time traveling black people, garnered a 2016 Emmy Nomination for Tracie Thoms (Now on YouTube). As an actor he’s appeared at The Guthrie, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, The American Repertory Theater and The Kennedy Center. Awards: semi-finalist for the O’Neill Theater Center, the Artistic Achievement Award from the Afro-American Cultural Center at Yale, the Millennium Telly Award, a Weissberger Award nomination, two grants from Lincoln Center’s Lecomte Du Nuoy Foundation, a MacDowell NEA Fellowship and two Yaddo fellowships. His collection, A Few Short Plays to Save the World was published by Laughing Panda Press and won the 2023 Independent Press Award. Steve is a graduate of Yale, the A.R.T. Institute at Harvard and the Juilliard playwriting program. He also coaches professional and aspiring writers through his company Your Creative Life. www.harpercreates.com
John Anthony Loffredo
John Anthony Loffredo (he/they) is a playwright and graphic novelist currently creating in Los Angeles, CA. All their work as an artist explores the intersection of queerness and survival and aims to bring romance to queer stories. John Anthony’s work as a playwright has been produced at The Tank, Alchemical Studios, The Access Theater, and featured in Dixon Place’s HOT! Festival. They have previously developed work as a member of Boston Court Pasadena’s Playwrights Group and Clusterf**k, The Coop’s New Work Initiative. Their play Frou-Frou was recently named a Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference Semi-Finalist. John Anthony is a former Lambda Literary fellow and recipient of the Nancy Garden Scholarship. They are also a two-time AIDS/LifeCycle rider, cycling from San Francisco to Los Angeles with thousands of others to raise awareness and millions of dollars to support community members living with HIV/AIDS. Education: BFA in Drama, NYU Tisch.
Simon J.O. Martin
Simon J.O. Martin (they/he/she) is a queer creative living in Los Angeles, CA. Their dark comedies are electrified with a wicked magic that makes audiences cackle and their skin crawl. They hold a B.A. in Theatre with an emphasis in Playwriting and Directing from UC San Diego. They were a selected cohort member as a director in the 24 Hour Plays: Nationals (’23) and as a playwright in the Horizon Theatre New South Young Playwrights Festival (’19) for their one-act play Fruit Fly, or (Adam, Eve, & Steve). Playwriting Credits: Weirdo, or (make nice) [Larking House, 2023]; LORD (Quarantine BakeOff, 2020). Directing: Weirdo, or (make nice) [Larking House, 2023], Should I Swallow? (Larking House, 2022), & How I Learned to Drive (Company 157, 2020).
Michael Mejia
Michael J. Mejia is an award nominated playwright from Delano, California, and currently lives in LA working as the Development Manager for the Emmy Award winning World of Wonder Productions. He holds an MFA from Tisch School of the Arts. His play, The Book of Andy, received a staged reading through The Great Gay Play contest through Pride Films and Plays in Chicago before receiving a grant from the city of Tacoma for a digital production through the University of Washington, Tacoma, and Dukes Bay Theatre. Feliz: An American Play was a finalist for LTC’s Carnaval of New Latinx Work before receiving a digital production through a grant from the city of Santa Ana in partnership with The Wayward Artist.
Megan Tabaque
Megan Tabaque is a writer, director, and actor of mixed Filipina-Canadian descent who grew up in the dirtbag stripmalls of Florida’s Gulf Coast. She’s written for theater, fiction, and the immersive, weirdo-giants at Meow Wolf.
Megan writes to create new mythologies, using pop cultural tropes as accessible entry points for absurd, hot button issues. A decorated playwright, Megan’s play Britney Approximately (an adaptation of Medea remixed with the Britney Spears conservatorship) played to sold-out audiences in Atlanta as part of Theater Emory’s 2023 season. Only Reason (co-written with Kimberly Belflower) was named Best New Play by Austin’s Critic Circle and follows six obsessed teen girl fans when their favorite boy band crashes their tour bus.
Among her other plays are Cycle Play (a two woman thriller that takes place in a Soul Cycle), Marry Me, Bruno Mars (a socio-comic caper about a QAnon believer on a rescue mission) and Batman Returns Returns (an indie-holiday-musical adaptation of Tim Burton’s 90s classic) which she created with installation artist Terror Pigeon at Austin’s Museum of Human Achievement (MOHA).
Recent projects include a commission from Inner City Arts youth program in Los Angeles for a musical adaptation of Antigone, the world premiere of her play Decapitations with Salvage Vanguard Theater in Austin, and writing and directing MOHA’s 2023 Christmas Spectacular Edward Normalhands in Austin, Texas.
Megan has an MFA in Playwriting and Fiction from the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, TX. She currently resides in Los Angeles where she assists award winning screenwriter, Sheila Callaghan and is the Visiting Assistant Professor of Playwriting at University of California at Riverside.
Kim Yaged
Kim Yaged is an award-winning writer known for her comedic, politically engaged work. She received the Kennedy Center’s Meritorious Achievement Award for her play, America. America also won the Audience Award at the Downtown Urban Theater Festival in New York and was part of House Special at ODC Theater in San Francisco. Kim wrote the libretto for Kevin March’s opera, www.love, which was showcased by the New York City Opera and won four Ann Arbor News “Best of” Awards, including Best Musical and Best Original Production. Kim’s hilarious one-woman tour de force, Hypocrites & Strippers, was nominated for a Best Actress Artsie and is included in The Best Women’s Monologues for The 21st Century. The animated shorts inspired by Hypocrites & Strippers have been seen at film festivals around the world. Her work has been published by Disney Press, Random House, Applause, and Ballantine Books, among others. Most recently, she’s written for Clio Award winner Tumbleweeds with Killer Mike and the Streamy Award-winning Podcast of the Year Dark History with Bailey Sarian. She also produces a podcast called Kim’s Spot that features her writing.
Virtual Playwrights
JT Baldassarre
JT Baldassarre (she/her) is a Brooklyn-based playwright, fiction writer, and stop motion animation teacher. Her work explores twenty-six year old morticians, cockroach farms, spreading ashes in Long Island, the back alley of the wellness world, and more. In January 2024, JT was awarded the Joshua Tree Highland Arts Residency to complete a murder mystery novel. In August, 2023, JT was awarded a Guest Residency at Woodward, a studio in Ridgewood Queens, to complete a comedy novella. In June of 2022, JT won CRAFT magazine’s Creative Nonfiction Award for a personal essay. In 2020, JT won the James E. Michael Prize in Playwriting.
Paige Esterly
Paige Esterly (she/her) is an NYC based playwright, producer, and director. Her full-length plays include The Torso (Theater for the New City, 2018; ScreenCraft Stage Play Competition Quarterfinalist), Whittier, Alaska (commission & reading, American Lore Theater, 2019) Val & Archie Seize the Day! (Secret Loft, 2019), The Great Lesbian Love of Eve Adams (Irondale Ensemble Theater’s OnWomen Festival 2022; The Tank 2023), and C. Lingus, Independent Journalist (The Fled Collective). Directing credits include Missionary Woman (Meg Rosensweet, SERIALS @ The Fled Collective, 2022; developmental reading, 2023), demolition extreme (Jenny Jarnagin, developmental reading with The Fled Collective, 2022), and The Sporting Life (Marjorie Muller, developmental reading with Under Construction Playwriting Group, 2023). She is the creator, producer, and host of Fucked-Up Play Fest!, a recurring festival of 6 original 10-minute plays by NYC playwrights, all performed as a drinking game for the audience (2020-present). BFA: NYU Tisch Goldberg Dept. of Dramatic Writing, Playwriting Concentration (2017).
Kaylin Jones
Kaylin Jones is a Texas raised award-winning playwright and dramaturg whose interest lies in otherness within Blackness depicted through nonlinear storytelling. Her selected works include A Beautiful Death on 34th and Fifth (Distinguished Achievement, Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Lorraine Hansberry Award 2019; Production, The Ensemble Theatre New Voices Festival 2022), The Gender Reveal (Winner, Kerr Award for Playwriting 2019; Finalist, John Cauble Short Play Award 2019), and My Emotional Support White Men: OR The Trials and Tribulations of Self-Preservation (Reading, Mizzou New Play Series 2023). She holds a BA in English with a minor in Theatre from the University of Missouri (2019). Check out kaylinjones.com and @kaylinjonze on Instagram for more!
Dom Martello
Dom Martello is a playwright based in NYC. Their work has been developed by Syracuse University, We Who Wander, The Elif Collective’s FireWorks Lab, The Strides Collective’s Emerging Playwright Program, The Workshop Theater, and are currently participating in Theater Write Now’s inaugural cohort. They’ve recently become a semi-finalist in consideration for the NPC at the O’Neill. Their dramaturgy has been seen off-broadway and in developmental work. The intersections of levity, interrogation, and exorcism are the central tenets of their practice. Their work centers on trans and queer experiences, exploring the complexity of inter-community dynamics.
Sam Mueller
Sam Mueller [they|she] is a Chicago-born, Florida-raised, New York-based playwright. Their work primarily explores bodies, public spaces, and the search for safety and security to live as one’s authentic self. Their plays include PIN. (2023 O’Neill Finalist, 2023 EST/Sloan First Light), Laced (2022 Princess Grace Semifinalist, 2020 Kilroys List, 2019 O’Neill Finalist), and 70.3 (2020 Hearth Theater Commission). They are a member of EST’s Youngblood and an alum of the Ucross Foundation. They feel most at home in the pit of a punk show. The plays (and Sam) are all very queer. BS: Northwestern University
Louisa Nickel
Louisa Nickel (she/they) is a playwright, director, and administrator from rural Kansas. They strive for theatre that pushes the boundaries of spoken word and offers audiences more than spectatorship. Since moving to NYC in 2022, Louisa directed a series of theatre workshops at Fort Dix Refugee Center, costumed at Epic Players, produced their play, “A Collection of Small Things” at The New York Theatre Festival, and another original work, “The Anabaptist Play” at Frigid NYC. Currently, Louisa is the Wardrobe Supervisor at the off-broadway production of “The Office Parody Musical” and a member of the Theatre Write Now’s Playwright Cohort workshopping a new play called, “Falling Out”.
Peter Pasco
Peter Pasco is a fan of free food, Jordans, and Juan Soto being a Yankee! Let’s go Yankees!
He is not a fan of people who have speaker phone conversations in public, standing ovations for
every show(earn it), and people who don’t use their signal to change lanes. It’s not that fucking
hard yo. He’s an actor from the Bronx who graduated from NYU. Peter moved to Cali and has
worked on tv, film, commercials, theater, and himself. During the lockdown of 2020 he started
playwriting cause he wanted to find another way to be rejected His first play was a semifinalist
for the O’Neill and the Blue Ink Award. Recently, he was selected as part of IAMA’s emerging
playwrights group where he pitched and wrote a semi-autobiographical play called “el
exorcismo de Georgie Garcia.” Peter was also part of EST/LA’s Ignite Cohort in 2023. His
works have been selected several times to the writing intensives for Workshop Theater, and
more importantly his family thinks he is very handsome.
Mantra Radhakrishnan
Mantra (she/any) is a Chicago-based playwright, director, performer, from Bangalore, India. A soon-to-be graduate from Northwestern University’s Economics and Theatre/Playwriting program, her writing work was most recently seen Off-Broadway as a part of 24HourPlays in the short musical, The Bro’s Visit. Her play, The Thing About The Dream, has been produced by Vertigo Productions, and her adaptation Vikram & Betal was produced by Lovers & Madmen productions. She has also written a short adaptation of Jungle Book for ImagineU:Storytime (Virginia Wadsworth Wirtz Center), which she directed virtually during the pandemic using shadow puppets. Currently, as a recipient of the Agnes Nixon Playwriting Award, she is working on her play Love In The Time Of Blank. As a director, she loves physical theatre, puppetry, rhyming words, and the development process of a new play.
Emma Schillage
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. You can find them @emma_schillage on social media or at emmaschillage.com.
Grey Smith
I (Grey) am a Chicago-based experimental theatre artist with a particular narrative interest in awkwardness, uncertainty, and embarrassment. My plays 36 Monologues about Urban Planning and The Consumption of Mercy Brown were recently produced by Municipal Hole Company, which I help run. I aspire to write plays that are not only directable but delectable. In addition to writing, I also frequently direct and collaborate in various capacities in devised theatre.
Camille Simone Thomas
Camille Simone Thomas (she/her) is a Detroit-born Jamaican-American. She was a 2023 Broadway Advocacy Coalition Artivism fellow where her play “What We Deserve” premiered as a staged reading at MCC theatre. Her plays have been workshopped at New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, Sanguine Theatre Company, featured with The Obie Award-winning Harlem9 and Detroit Public Theatre Company, Dixon Place, The National Women’s Theatre Festival, Lime Arts Theatre Company, American Slavery Project, and Blackboard playwriting series. She was a 2023 New Harmony Project finalist, 2023 Catskills Creative Residency finalist, a 2023 Van Lier New Voices Fellowship Semi-finalist and a 2022 Art House Inkubator Finalist. She’s an associate artist with the Sanguine Theatre company. She’s had fellowships with The Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute’s DEAR fellowship and The Theatre Producers of Color program. Follow her upcoming project @2Plays2Days on IG!
FACILITATORS
Mackenna Goodrich (she/her) lives for the creation of new work. This is Mackenna’s third year of facilitating Under Construction. As a writer, she has written for The 24 Hour Plays: Viral Monologues, the Stagefemmes One-Act Festival, and the Bad Play Festival. Selected directing and choreography credits: The Laundry Play (The Chain Theatre; by UC4’s Sarah Groustra), An Axe-mas Story (The Players Theatre; by UC3’s Charlie O’Leary), Kids Club/Club Kids (The Fled Collective; by UC2’s Jasmine Sharma), The Pine Barrens (Lime Arts), Dance Nation (Kenyon College), Cabaret (Kenyon College Players), The Moors (Stagefemmes). BA: Kenyon College. Member of The Fled Collective. For more, check out mackennagoodrich.com and @mack3nna on Instagram.
Adam Hunter Howard [he/him], a Los Angeles native, is a playwright, educator, and actor. A proud member of the Road Theatre Company’s Under Construction 3 cohort, he developed his Jazz Age-centered play, Feast, and he is thrilled to now serve as a facilitator for future cohorts. Adam’s play, Headwind, a harsh look into the privilege of selective college admissions at independent private schools, was selected for the IAMA Theatre Company’s New Works Festival in 2019, and his play, Aine, an adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone, reset amidst “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland, premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He has also adapted Lewis Carroll’s classics into Curiouser, a piece designed for school-age actors or older. As an actor, Adam was most recently featured in the role of Leon Czolgosz in Assassins at the Pico Playhouse. He has also performed at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, with the Antaeus Theatre Company, and at various venues in Los Angeles, Austin, and Edinburgh. Adam has been an educator for over twenty years, working as a Drama teacher, English teacher, and college counselor. His most valued accomplishments, however, are his two young sons – Andrew and Max. MFA: The University of Texas at Austin, BA: Kenyon College.
UNDER CONSTRUCTION HISTORY
PRODUCTION TEAM:
Dramaturge – Jessica Broutt
Producer – Carlyle King
2019-2020 UNDER CONSTRUCTION PLAYWRIGHTS GROUP:
Steve Apostolina
Jami Brandli
Bernardo Cubría
Lisa Kenner Grissom
Cory Hinkle
Aja Houston
Velina Hasu Houston
Carlos Lacámara
Jennifer Maisel
Elizabeth Sampson
Jennie Webb
PRODUCTION TEAM:
Dramaturge – Jessica Broutt
Assistant Dramaturge – Mackenna Goodrich
Producer – Carlyle King
2020-2021 UNDER CONSTRUCTION PLAYWRIGHTS GROUP:
Cris Eli Blak
Sandra A. Daley
Ron Fromstein
India Kotis
Jennifer Lane
Kyle J. McCloskey
Matthew Paul Olmos
Joshua Rebell
Jasmine Sharma
PRODUCTION TEAM:
LA Workshop Facilitator – Jessica Broutt
Virtual Workshop Facilitator – Mackenna Goodrich
Producer – Carlyle King
2021-2022 UNDER CONSTRUCTION PLAYWRIGHTS GROUP:
Adam Hunter Howard
Alison Minami
Allison Merkel
Alyssa Haddad
Bonnie Antosh
Charlie O’Leary
Hannah Manikowski
Jason Gray Platt
Jessica Durdock Moreno
Kaela Mei-Shing Garvin
Kenjiro Lee
Laura Stribling
Lia Romeo
Mak Shealy
Marcus Scott
Marjorie Muller
Rafael Yglesias
Ryan Elliot Wilson
Shannon TL Kearns
Shayne Eastin
Tira Palmquist
PRODUCTION TEAM:
LA Workshop Facilitator – Jessica Broutt
Virtual Workshop Facilitator – Mackenna Goodrich
Producer – Carlyle King
2022-2023 UNDER CONSTRUCTION PLAYWRIGHTS GROUP:
Allyson Dwyer
Amanda L. Andrei
Anna Watts
Anya Pearson
Chelsea Sutton
Daniel Hirsch
David Meyers
Elise Wien
Jen Jarnagin
John Guerra
Jonathan Caren
Khari Wyatt
M.J. Kang
Madi Goff
Maxine Dillon
Mildred Inez
Lewis Nelson
Diaz-Marcano
Nilsa Reyna
SMJ
Sarah Groustra