Thursday, May 16, 3pm

Disrupted

by Melisa Tien

In the male-dominated tech arena, two women join forces to create a brand-new app—one that tracks the menstrual cycle—and form a partnership that is tested to its limits.

Melisa Tien is a playwright and librettist invested in making formally unconventional, socially relevant, and emotionally evocative work. A resident of New Dramatists, she is the author of the plays Best Life (JACK, 2021), Yellow Card, Red Card (Ice Factory, 2017), Refrain (Wild Project, 2011), The Boyd Show, and Familium Vulgare; librettist of the operas Forever (Washington National Opera, 2024), The Big Swim (Houston Grand Opera/Asia Society Texas Center, 2024), Family Heirloom (Experiments in Opera, 2024), Song of the Nightingale (On Site Opera/Arts Brookfield, 2023), and The Beehive (University of Northern Iowa, 2023), lyricist for the song cycles Swell (HERE, 2021) and Daylight Saving, co-creator of the podcast/auditory experience Active Listening, and creator of the theatrical experiences Untitled Landscape and Community Forest. She has been published in the anthologies Theater Artists Making Theatre With No Theater (Tripwire Harlot Press, 2020) and Modern Music for New Singers: 21st Century American Art Songs (North Star Music, 2021), and has authored essays for New Music USA and Innovations in Socially Distant Performance. She is currently a librettist for the American Opera Project’s Composers & the Voice program, and a recent member of Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative, Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Ground Floor Residency Lab, Experiments in Opera’s Writers’ Room, and The Assembly Theater Project’s Deceleration Lab. She earned a BA in English from UCLA, and an MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University. More at www.melisatien.com.

Monday, June 17, 3pm

BIGFOOT

by Megan Endres Brown

A darkly funny high-stakes suspense play about sibling rivalry, quantum physics, and the terrifying power of a good story.

Meghan Endres Brown writes plays and screenplays about dangerous women.  She does not believe in Bigfoot.  Or does she?  Check out www.MeghanBrown.net to find out.

Thursday, June 6, 3pm

Amma's Wit

by Sandra A. Daley-Sharif

A homage to the "Granny" midwives.

Sandra Daley-Sharif is an Afro-Caribbean writer for Theater and TV living in Savannah, GA. She is a Professor of Dramatic Writing at SCAD University. Sandra is also a highly sought after dramaturg and collaborative deviser of new works. She is an OBIE Award winner and a recipient of the Josephine Abady Award, commending her for her contribution, as a producer, of Diversity to the American theater landscape. Two of her plays made it to the Kilroys List.

https://www.americantheatre.org/2023/12/06/a-harlem-renaissance/

Thursday, June 13, 3pm

Apple Bottom

by Karina Billini

When a humble neighbor, Andrea, and a high-strung influencer, Belinda, arrive as patients for their post-BBL recovery, Apple Bottom Spa struggles to keep both women afloat.

Karina Billini is a Dominican-American playwright, poet, and educator from Brooklyn. She is a first-year playwright in the Juilliard School's Lila Acheson Wallace American playwriting program. She is a current member of the Public Theater's 2023-2025 Emerging Writers Group. She is a proud alum of the New Harmony Project Conference, Ensemble Studio Theatre's Youngblood, Pipeline PlayLab, Gingold Theatrical Group's Speaker's Corner, among others. Her plays have been workshopped and/or produced at La Jolla Playhouse, Alliance Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, New Harmony Project, Fault Line Theatre, Teatro Vivo, among others. Her play, Apple Bottom, is a recipient of the Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation commission. MFA: The New School for Drama, BA: Marymount Manhattan College.