Under Construction 7

After reading and evaluating 250 wonderful submissions by playwrights from all over the country, we are proud to announce the Playwrights of UC7.
We are excited to be a part of creating more new plays to be released into the theatrical world.

ABOUT UNDER CONSTRUCTION
In 2019 Carlyle King and Jessica Broutt brought together a group of eleven playwrights, both emerging and established writers, to meet with the sole purpose of creating new work. Each playwright entered the group with the beginnings of a new play. The work would be developed collaboratively. First in the room with the playwrights and then bringing in actors, then a director as we build towards our final staged readings. This program is modeled for playwrights who would benefit from a structured space to receive feedback from peers, all in the supportive environment of The Road. This group furthers The Road’s mission to develop socially and politically relevant voices and thoughts to the American stage, as well as continues to establish The Road as a leader and champion of new work in Los Angeles.

We are lucky to have the talents of Mackenna Goodrich who facilitates our virtual group and William Francis Hoffman facilitates our live group. Carlyle King heads the program. We look forward to reading your plays and beginning the next journey of UNDER CONSTRUCTION!

FACILITATORS

Mackenna Goodrich (she/they) loves Big Girl Explosion Fests and plays of and about the body. She’s been running the virtual Under Construction group since 2021. Selected directing credits: Gross! by Emma Schillage (Ten Toes), The Station by Maggie Cregan (SheNYC), biome by Dom Martello (Theatre Write Now), Straight Icons by SMJ and Anne-Marie Pietersma (Ars Nova/Second City NYC), American Girl Doll Horror Play by Jasmine Sharma (The Brick), An Axemas Story (The Players Theatre/54 Below), WO[MAN] by Alyssa Haddad-Chin (The Brick), Radio Man by Sarah Groustra (SheNYC), Bogeyman by Allison Merkel (The Road), ars moriendi by Jessica Durdock Moreno (The Road), Jin and Julie and the Jersey Devil by Kenjiro Lee (Paper Kraine). Mackenna is also an associate producer for SciShow. BA: Kenyon College // mackennagoodrich.com 

William Francis Hoffman was born and raised in Oakville, Missouri. He was a one time member of the Rivendell Theatre Ensemble in Chicago Illinois and is a current member of the Actor’s Gym in Los Angeles, California. His play ‘Cal in Camo’ received its world premiere Off Broadway at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in May of 2016, as a co-production between Colt Coeur and Rattlestick. It was Directed by Adrienne Campbell-Holt and featured David Harbour, Paul Wesley, and Katya Campbell. ‘Cal in Camo’ received its Midwest premiere in 2018 at the Rivendell Theatre Ensemble in Chicago IL. The production was a Critic’s Pick in Time Out NY and garnered a Joseph Jefferson Award win in the supporting role category for actor Keith Kupferer. ‘Cal in Camo’ received subsequent productions and readings in Los Angeles, New Paltz, New York and Brisbane, Australia. His play ‘Drift’ was developed at the Actor’s Gym in Los Angeles. It was subsequently workshopped as part of the New Plays/New Year Festival at Palm Beach Dramaworks in Palm Beach, Florida in 2019. ‘Drift’ was set to receive its world premiere Off-Broadway at The New World Stages, but was closed three nights before its opening due to the Covid – 19 Pandemic. William co-moderates the Playwright’s Development Unit at the Actor’s Studio Los Angeles, and works frequently as a dramaturg.

Playwrights of Under Construction 7

IN-PERSON

Amy Dellagiarino is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter whose work has been produced across the country. Her play “From the Perspective of a Canoe” won the Playwriting Script Competition at the Austin Film Festival and her play “The Value of Moscow” was nominated for a Stage Raw Award for Best Playwriting and is published through Stage Rights. Most recently, her play “Hello, My Name Is…” enjoyed a run at Moving Arts Theatre, where it was developed as part of their MADLab New Play Development program and was named the Top 20 of 2025 by Don Shirley’s Angeles Stage. Her short play “The Most Precious Thing” is a part of “The Best 10-Minute Plays of 2023” anthology published by Smith & Kraus. Her short film “Shift Change” gathered the Best Short award among film festivals, and her feature “Freelancers Anonymous” won the 2018 NCGLFF Audience Award for Best Women’s Feature, was a recipient of the Frameline Completion Fund Award, and earned the Reframe Stamp for gender balanced media. She was participant of the Kennedy Center Playwrights Intensive and has participated in numerous new play development programs throughout Los Angeles. She earned her BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and is represented by Ipex Artists Agency. www.amydell.com

Shira Gorelick is an LA–based playwright whose work explores relationships between women and intergenerational narratives. Her short play Anna-Versary won the Audience Award for Best Play at Short Play Fest NYC 2025, and her one-act Yom Kippur Abortion played at Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival in NYC and the ShPIeL Performing Identity showcase in Kentucky. She has completed literary fellowships with The Braid, JewFace, and the QueerKeit Incubator, and has worked in writers’ rooms for HBO, Max, and Amazon Studios. She has also worked as a creative producer and development coordinator at Blue Monday Productions, as an associate producer on the documentary A Feminist Lens: The Art and Activism of Joan Roth, and as an assistant on the show SMILF and the documentary White With Fear. She is a member of the Dramatists Guil

Demetra Kareman is a born and bred New Yorker, a Catholic girls school survivor and a dyslexic writer whose plays have been produced and developed across the country and Canada. Most recently her plays have been produced and developed by Manhattan Rep., The Abingdon Theatre Co., The School House Theater, Mile Square Theatre, The Echo Theatre Company, Theatre of Note, The EstroGenius Theatre Festival, SHE Broadway Festival, and The Future Is Female Festival.

Her play Lessons & Carols was the winner of the Denise Ragan Wiesenmeyer Award, The Award in Drama from Arts & Letters Journal of Contemporary Culture, and the James W. Rogers Award. My work, Bitch Brow was recently awarded “Best of The Fringe” at The Hollywood Fringe Festival and will also receive productions at The William Inge Theatre Festival, The Women’s Work Broadway Festival, and The East End Fringe Festival. It was recently adapted into a short film which is currently streaming on HBO MAX.

Her feature script SAINT IN THE CITY has won awards at The Metropolitan Film Festival, The Los Angeles REEL Film Festival, Women in Cinema Festival, The Westfield Screenwriting Award, The Beverly Hills Film Festival, and is currently in development at Roadside Attractions.

Her television and film work includes scripts for Warner Brothers, The Electric Company, The Sesame Street Workshop, Kraftbox Entertainment, R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour, The HUB Network, BOSA Visual, Lookout Entertainment, Vox Media and HBO MAX.

She is a graduate of Kenyon College and holds an MFA in Playwriting from The Mason Gross School of The Arts at Rutgers University. She is a faculty member at Los Angeles City College where she runs the playwriting department

Originally from the searing hot suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona, Bebe Katsenes is an LA-based writer, performer, and comedian. She graduated from the University of Southern California where she studied acting and screenwriting. Bebe’s play Liver and Onions was part of The Road Theater’s 2025 Summer Playwrights Festival and her half hour-comedy pilot was selected for Group Lab Fest’s Pilotpalooza. She performs standup & improv around LA and hosts a monthly standup show called LINDA: A Comedy Show. Bebe’s experience as a multi-hyphenate and bend towards humor makes her interested in telling darkly comedic female stories that dare to be unflattering and often incorporate fantastical elements to illuminate deeper truths about the human experience.

Kerry Knuppe is an enrolled Oglala Lakota Sioux tribal member from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

She has been currently named a semi-finalist for both the 2026 National Playwrights Conference and the 2025–2026 Geffen Playhouse Writers’ Room, as well as the 2025 Road Theatre Summer Playwright Festival. Her play MORNING VIEW DRIVE was selected for the 2025 Kemble Playwriting Series, presented by Greenway Theatre in Hollywood. Several of her plays have been selected for development through the Playwrights Lab at Actors Studio West (2023–2026).

Kerry also writes for the screen and was recently a finalist for the 17th Annual Lady Filmmakers Festival for Best Screenplay and the Los Angeles International Screenplay Award. She wrote, performed, and produced the comedy web series FREEVILLE and THE POLLY SHOW and continues to create comedy / dark comedy for TV and film.

She is a member of the National New Play Network and contributor to the Ruskin Group Theatre’s monthly Café Plays and Rogue Machine Theatre’s Rant & Rave. As a published poet, she was featured at the 2021 Malibu Arts Summer Jubilations poetry event.

Drew Paryzer is a playwright and narrative designer. Theatrical work has been developed or presented at Playwrights’ Center, Kennedy Center, Roundabout Theater, Pivot Arts, and Fusebox Festival; immersive work through Meow Wolf, Moment Factory, and more. Drew is an Affiliated Artist at the Playwrights’ Center. BA: Sarah Lawrence College. MFA: UT Austin. www.drewparyzer.com

Matilda Corley Schulman is a Los Angeles-based writer and actor—and former NCAA Division I equestrian (yes, she’s a horse girl) — who loves telling stories that are a blend of rebellion, heartbreak, and just a touch of magic. As she puts it, she writes westerns (the one standing up to the many) in every font and hopes to amplify voices that have too often been told to quiet down—stories that help us all feel a little less alone. She holds a BA from UC Berkeley (after transferring from Oklahoma State) where she was mentored under Philip Kan Gotanda and holds an MFA from USC. Her plays, pilots, and features have been recognized by the O’Neill, Mazumdar, Stowe Story Labs, Cinestory, Austin Film Festival, Coverfly, Stage 32, ScreenCraft and more. She was also named to Coverfly x Tracking Board’s The Next List 2024

VIRTUAL:

Serena Berman is a writer, performer, and producer from LA, based in NYC. Her work has been developed and produced with Ars Nova, Westport Country Playhouse, Williamstown Theater Festival, Fuller Road Artist Residency, The Hearth, Elegy Theatre UK, Less Than Rent, The Corkscrew Festival, Refracted Theatre Company, Flying V, and more. Ars Nova Play Group alum, O’Neill Finalist, Princess Grace Award finalist, Relentless Award honorable mention, Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship semi-finalist, Samuel French OOB Festival two time finalist. She is repped by Writ Large Management as a screenwriter. Serena is a producer with The 24 Hour Plays and runs the Nationals program. She was Co-Director of Performance at LES gallery Chinatown Soup with Jake Beckhard from 2016-2020, where they produced theatre and organized artist-led political activism. As an actor, favorite credits include Set it Up (Netflix), Diaspora (NY Premiere), Murder at the Gates (Steven Sater), and Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tales (Voice of Lucy – ABC). BFA NYU Tisch. www.serenaberman.com

Alexandra Haddad (she/her) is an artist of new work and postcolonial interpretation of classics. Alex is especially drawn to funny and scary plays about women, queer people, and people of the Global Majority. She has written one play, HELEN IN HER HOMELAND, which premiered in 2025 produced by Frayed Knot Collective. She’s thrilled to be developing her second play with The Road’s 7th Under Construction cohort. Alex is primarily a director of new plays in collaboration with writers. Directing premieres: HONEYSUCKLE by Abigail Duclos (Bechdel Project), GRIEF PLAY by Abigail Duclos (Queens Short Play Festival), PEACH BOY by Kenjiro Lee (Pan Asian Repertory – Nu Works), POOLSIDES by jose sebastian alberdi (the pebble collective). Directing new work development: Vaibu Mohan (Live and In Color), Abigail Duclos (The Elif Collective), Kenjiro Lee (Leviathan Lab). Assistant director: Amanda Dehnert’s INTO THE WOODS (Oregon Shakespeare Festival) and LOVE’S LABOR’S LOST (Hudson Valley Shakespeare, SDCF Fellowship), Katie Willmorth’s RICHARD II (Smith Street Stage).

Advanced Plus Diploma & Associate Faculty with Theatrical Intimacy Education. Movement: Fight & Intimacy Director of SLAUGHTER CITY (Small Boat), Associate Fight & Intimacy Director of SUMO (The Public/Ma-Yi), Intimacy Choreographer of MEASURE FOR MEASURE (Shakespeare & Company) and RIDE THE CYCLONE (McCarter/Arena Stage).

Associate Member, SDC | alexandradarcyhaddad.com | @alexhad

BT Hayes is playwright, director, and actor from Pittsburgh, PA / Richmond, VA and based in NYC. They are a fierce advocate for new work and good parties. 24 Hour Plays: Nationals ‘24 Playwright. Moxie 2025 Incubator Playwright (500 Rats: A Love Story). Their adaptation and translation of Schiller’s mary stuart won Princeton University’s Robert & Lynn Fagles Translation Award in 2022. Her work has been produced at Edinburgh Fringe, Classic Stage Company, University of Chicago, Brick AUX, The Tank, Caveat, The Rat, HERE Arts, and more. Select plays include: The Dears, Masha Eats What She Does Not Understand, 500 Rats: A Love Story, and 13th Morning. BT is a proud member of the BMI Advanced Bookwriting Workshop and Hedgepig Ensemble’s Expand the Canon Reading Committee. Directing: Press Delete (S.B. XII), Masha…(The Tank), 13th Morning (Caveat, EdFringe), Ghost Quartet (PST), First Daughter Suite, mary stuart: a new translation (Princeton). Acting: Roommates (Netflix), Blackpilled (Lavender Town), Cat Kid Comic Club (TWUSA), From…the Wreck (Cape Rep), Buffalo Girls (UMiami). B.A. in Comparative Literature from Princeton University.

Nina Ki (xe/she/they) is a Queerean (Queer + Korean) American playwright living in Brooklyn. Xe graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2008 with a BFA in Dramatic Writing, and xer plays have been read, recorded, and presented nationwide, including with Clubbed Thumb, Ma-Yi Theater Company, MCC Theater, and the Public Theater. Xer play “Moon Bear” was given special consideration for the Relentless Award, and xer play “Ravage” was a finalist for the Playwrights Realm’s Fellowship. Xe was also an inaugural member of The Parsnip Ship’s Radio Roots Writer’s Group and a member of Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writer’s Group, The Public Theater’s Emerging Writers Group, The Orchard Project’s Greenhouse Lab, and Ma-Yi’s Writers Lab. To contact xer or learn more about xer work, please visit xer website at www.nina-ki.com.

D.A. Mindell is a playwright and educator who aims to contribute to a canon for transgender artists to explore the breadth and depth of opportunity that cis artists have been able to pursue for centuries. His play “On the Evolutionary Function of Shame” made its off-Broadway debut February 2025 with Second Stage, following its inclusion as a reading in their 2024 Next Stage Festival. Recent recognition includes participation in the 2024 //dare and 2025 Cloud Nine commissions for Breaking the Binary Theatre, First Kiss Theatre’s Summer 2024 Residency, and the 2023 Fair Play Initiative Commission through Florida Atlantic University. 

Rory O’Neill is a playwright originally from Los Angeles, currently based in Brooklyn. In her plays, Rory loves to explore the fine line between reality and a secret other place, especially through the lens of complicated and imperfect queer characters. Select credits: untitled hamlet play (LOVECHILD Theatre Co.), Meeting Notes (Fork & Shoe Theatre Co-op), dogboy supreme (QTC Boston Developmental Residency), 4 Genres in Search of a Plot (Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2025), Coolwater (Staged reading, Full Circle Players; Shortlist, Boston Court Pasadena), You Should Talk to Someone (Boston Theatre Marathon 2024), Art Imitates (Edmonds Driftwood Players).

Reynaldo Piniella is an actor, writer, director, and educator from East New York, Brooklyn. His work as a playwright includes No History (Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor), Black and Blue (Ars Nova’s ANT Fest), Black Doves (Thomas Barbour Award), Real Life RPG (commissioned by Baltimore Center Stage, produced by San Diego Rep), No Shade (produced by the Lee Strasberg Institute), I’m Old School (produced by Single Carrot Theater). His work has been developed at the Public Theater, Folger Theatre, National Black Theatre, Classical Theatre of Harlem, and the Acting Company. He is an alum of New Victory Theater’s LabWorks, All for One Theater’s Solo Collective, the Civilians’ R&D Group, and a former artist-in-residence at Hi-ARTS, the cell theatre, Abingdon Theatre Company, HB Studio and Culture Lab LIC. He has received fellowships from TCG, NALAC, Folger Shakespeare Library, Weeksville Heritage Center, FORGE NYC, and the All Stars Project. www.reynaldopiniella.com

Alec Silberblatt is a playwright and actor originally from Pittsburgh, PA. His play RYAN’S PUB, TRIVIA NIGHT received its world premiere at Third Avenue PlayWorks, was a semifinalist for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and was workshopped at the 2023 Seven Devils Playwrights Conference. A TELL-TALE HEART, commissioned by Pittsburgh Public Theater, premiered online during the pandemic lockdown, and in 2023 received a live, sold-out world premiere run at Pittsburgh Public Theater in which he starred. His play THE VAMPIRE was workshopped and performed as part of Theatre Aspen’s 2025 Solo Flights Festival, where it was awarded one of the Solo Flights Festival Grants. He acted in and co-directed a filmed version of his play THE MON VALLEY MEDIUM for The Studios of Key West which is still available to rent and stream online. He’s been a finalist for the Road Theatre Summer Playwrights Festival, a semifinalist for Jewish Plays Project, and his plays have been developed by Theatre Aspen, Third Avenue Playworks, Curious Theatre Company, Pittsburgh Public Theater, Carnegie Stage, Emerging Artists Theater, and the NYU Steinhardt School. He is an alum of Pittsburgh Public Theater’s Playwrights Collective. When not working on theater, he’s a senior interpretive guide at the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum. 

Charlie Tynan is a writer, comedian, and Maxxinista based in Brooklyn, New York. Charlie’s work has been developed with Theatre Write Now, The Cult Collective, SERIALS, and more. One day, Charlie will be president of AARP, if not the world.

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