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About the Playwrights

LAUREN DAVENPORT (she/her/hers) is a bisexual Philadelphia-based playwright and theatre artist with a first-degree black belt and a fascination for historical things. Her work has been produced and read inPhiladelphia, Chicago, San Diego CA, Chestertown MD, and West Chester PA. Herplays include Sandcastles (2021 Semi-Finalist Bay Area Playwrights Festival), Morning Stars (2018 Semi-Finalist PlayPenn New Play Conference), Fishers Of Men (2014 Finalist Sue Winge Playwriting Award),her Mary Shelley solo show Waking Dreams (2016 co-production with Beacon Theatre Productions), and her ten-minute play A Weight Of Worlds (2019Project Transcend, 2020 Art Pride Diner Theatre Library Selection, and 2020 DGFootlights Ten-Minute Play Fest) among others. She received her MA in Theatre from Villanova University and her BA in English Literature, Theatre, and Creative Writing from Washington College.

DEVON HAYAKAWA (any pronouns used with respect) is a Chicago-based theatreartist with a passion for developing new works. Their plays have been seen atChicago Dramatists, Women's Theatre Festival - Occupy the Stage, Digital Dramatists,and Ball State University. Favorite new work credits include: 9066(playwright, Chicago Dramatists), Emily/Emily (playwright, WTF Occupythe Stage), The Bushwick Girls (director, Wayward Sisters TheatreEnsemble), Baked! The Musical (performer, Chicago Musical TheatreFestival), and Rosemary and Time (dramaturg, BSU). BSU Class of 2019, devonhayakawa.com.

ALEX LIN (she/her/hers) is a playwright, screenwriter, and journalist. Her plays have been workshopped and read with Women's Theatre Festival, The Rude Mechanicals, Pace University, Actors Theatre of Louisville (PTC), Little & Fierce Theatre Co., Spooky Action, The COOP, and Central Square Theater. As a journalist for Supercluster, the frontline space media agency founded by A24Films, she’s worked with NASA, SpaceX, Boeing, Netflix, and Apple TV+ to bridge the gap between scientific discovery and the popular culture it inspires. Her artistic work centers marginalized voices who manage to not only survive, but also thrive in systems that were never intended to accommodate or protect them. Honors: Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival, Semifinalist; Ashland NewPlays Festival, Pass the Pen Nominee. Writer’s groups: The COOP’s ClusterF**K,Page Break.

RACHEL LYNETT is a queer Afro-Latinx playwright who writes dark comedies about complex, complicated women of color. Her recent playwriting credits include commissions with Barrington Stage Theatre Company (Holy Ground), Florida Studio Theatre (CARRY ME and AS YOU ARE), and Theatre Lab (Last Night). Other credits include Last Night presented as a reading with Theatre Lab (2020); Here Be Dragons presented as a reading with Capital Rep (2019); You Were Mine presented as a reading at the Kennedy Center Page to Stage Festival presented by Theatre Prometheus (2019); He Did It presented as a reading with Equity Library Theatre, Chicago (2018) and presented as a workshop production with University of Central Florida's Pegasus PlayLab; Refuge as part of Z Space's Problematic Play Festival (2018); Good Bad People as part of Talk Back Theatre's Reading Series (2018), part of American Stage Theatre Company's 21st Century New Voices New Play Festival (2018), part of Jackalope Theatre's CIRCLEUP series (2017) and as a reading as part of Unicorn Theatre Plays In Progress(2018); Well-Intentioned White People as the Michigan premiere with Matrix Theatre (2018), the world premiere with Barrington Stage Theatre Company (2018), the Downstage Left Residency with StageLeft (2017), part of Orlando Shakespeare New Play Festival (2017), and receiving honorable mention for the 2017 Kilroys for her play (2017). Her play, Abortion Road Trip received a workshop production produced by Theatre Prometheus as part of Capital Fringewhere it won Best Comedy (2017) and then was later presented by Theatre Prometheus, as a part of the 2017 Kennedy Center Page to Stage Festival. Rachel Lynett is also the 2018 Recipient of the Arkansas Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship, one of the 2020 recipients for the Artist 360 grant, and the 2021 Yale Drama Series Prize.

SAM NORMAN is a prize-winning lyricist, librettist and poet originally from England. His three full-length musicals have been performed across the UK. His twenty-minute musical THE YELLOW WALLPAPER had a developmental reading with HARP Theatricals and will receive its stage debut at Alleyway Theatre; it is also a finalist in the Mazumdar Short Play Prize. Sam has been profiled in The Huffington Post and Tin Pan Alley 2; his work has been performed at Lincoln Center and off-Broadway at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, as well as reaching the finals of the Mercury Songwriting Contest (judged by producers of SIX). He has authored a book of comic poems, A Teen’s Guide to Modern Manners (Little,Brown), warmly reviewed by Buzzfeed, and has won The Stephen Spender Prize for Poetry in Translation. He graduated from Oxford University with a congratulatory first-class degree, and has recently completed an MFA in musicaltheatre writing at NYU Tisch. samuelnorman.com 

ELIZA RANDALL is a composer and pianist from Southern Nevada. She began composing music when she was six years old and has been hooked ever since! Her twenty-minute musical THE YELLOW WALLPAPER had a developmental reading with HARP Theatricals and is currently a finalist for the Mazumdar Short Play Prize. Her various other compositions have been performed by the Gallatin Theatre Troup and Tin Pan Alley 2, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre off-Broadway, and the Lincoln Center. Eliza studied classical piano under internationally renowned pianists Jeffrey Shumway and Stephen Beus at Brigham Young University where she graduated magna cum laude, and she has just finished an MFA in musical theatre writing at NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

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