THE 23/24 EARLY-CAREER WRITERS’ GROUP

Each year we gather eight playwrights over the course of a season to develop work, commune with each other and meet various industry professionals, culminating in a reading series during Summerworks. We’re pleased to introduce you to the writers from the past season and their work. Click the titles to download their scripts. This program is generously supported by The Cornelia T. Bailey Foundation and The Barbara Bell Cumming Charitable Trust.

jose sebastian alberdi is a Mexican-Basque-American playwright (with TV aspirations) originally from San Diego, CA. He is the 2024 Page 73 Playwriting Fellow. Plays and writing developed with: the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center (National Playwrights Conference), MacDowell (Fellowship), Page 73 (Fellowship, Writers’ Group), Clubbed Thumb (Early Career Writers’ Group), Ensemble Studio Theatre (Youngblood), Colt Coeur (Residency), The Orchard Project (Greenhouse Lab, Episodic Lab, Homegrown x Sony TV Lab), Fresh Ground Pepper (BRB Eco-Week), the Huntington Theatre Company (Dream Boston), South Coast Repertory (Elizabeth George Commission, NewSCRipts), Exquisite Corpse Company (Writer’s Lab), Lambda Literary (Writer’s Retreat) and more. MFA: NYU. @milk_jello on (most) social media

adoration
Balthazar, Melchior, and Caspar are three kings. Balthazar gave a baby myrrh, Melchior gave a baby gold, and Caspar gave a baby frankincense. Balthazar, Melchior, and Caspar are all in love with each other. A play about growing up, loving your exes, and getting further, and further away from your biggest accomplishments in life for everyone who loved Three Kings Day.

Kallan Dana is a writer originally from Portland, Oregon. Her plays include RACECAR RACECAR RACECAR (2023 O’Neill NPC Finalist, 2023 Bushwick Starr Reading Series Finalist, 2024 Fault Line Theater Irons in the Fire Semifinalist. Upcoming productions with The Hearth/Connelly Theater Upstairs and Bramble Theater Company), LOBSTER (2024 Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival Finalist. Upcoming productions with Northwestern University and The Tank) Lying (2024 O’Neill NPC Finalist, 2022 Princess Grace Award Semifinalist), Episodes (Clubbed Thumb Early Career Writers’ Group) Love Story (2022 Bramble Theater Unfinished Works Festival Winner), The Great Hunger (The Tank), and Playdate (Dixon Place, funded by Jerome Foundation Grant). She was a member of the Clubbed Thumb 2023-2024 Early Career Writers’ Group, is a New Georges affiliated artist, and is a founding member/co-leader of the writer-director group TAG at The Tank. She also makes work with her companies Needy Lover and Trove. She received her MFA in Writing for the Screen and Stage from Northwestern University.

Episodes
Kelly is rich; Carly is not. Carly’s mom is making lasagna, beef stroganoff, sloppy joes, potato salad, green bean casserole, actually never mind she’s on a diet—Wait, what? Kelly’s mom didn’t hear what you just said.

Alexa Derman’s plays include THE CREATURE (Runner-up, Princess Grace/New Dramatists; Finalist, O’Neill NPC and Playwrights Realm Writing Fellowship; Winner, Kernodle New Play Award), PSYCHOPSYCHOTIC (Honorable Mention, Relentless Award; Finalist, Playwrights Realm Writing Fellowship), GIRLISH (Fresh Ink), ZIONISTA RISING (Winner, Jewish Plays Project National Competition; Finalist, O’Neill NPC) and I’LL BE IN MY HANUKKAH PALACE (Ars Nova ANT Fest). She has been twice nominated for the Blackburn and Weissberger Awards, is a former Playwrights Center Core Apprentice and current member of the BMI Lehman-Engels Librettists Workshop, and is currently under commission from MTC/Sloan. There are some TV/film things in the works, too. BA from Yale in Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies; MFA from Brown, where she studied under Julia Jarcho. You can call her Lex. alexaderman.com

Beauty
Net is having a baby and Riley is getting older and their little brother CJ doesn’t want to be 5’8” forever. So he won’t be. This play is about [the bodies of] your siblings.  

Daniel Holzman is a playwright and artist from San Francisco. His plays have been produced and developed through the New York Foundation for the Arts, Clubbed Thumb, The Workshop Theater, LPAC, The Brick, The Tank, Fresh Ground Pepper and more. Recent work includes: Me & Who (2023 O’Neill NPC Finalist), Berlindia! (2022 Bay Area Playwrights Festival Finalist), Middle School Play (2021 NYFA Grant Recipient), and Adelia, or the Nose Play, co-written with Nigel Berkeley (Dixon Place). He graduated from NYU’s Playwrights Horizons Theater school and will start at Brooklyn College’s Playwriting MFA Program in the Fall. He frequently collaborates with his sister Neena, who illustrates all his plays, and was with him when he found the bodybuilder. @hellanovella 

OLIVES
A band broke up (years ago). A bodybuilder is in our house (and he won’t leave). Nothing is going how we wanted it to go (and we can’t stop eating olives).

Ashil Lee (they/he) NYC-based playwright, actor, director, and sex educator. Korean-American, trans nonbinary child of immigrants, and #1 bestie to iconic pup Huxley. Ashil cannot stop talking about gender, sex education, mental health, identity, and intersectionality (and also apparently, as it keeps showing up, trashy television). Selected Playwriting Credits: Current Member of Clubbed Thumb’s 2023-2024 Early Career Writer’s Group, 2024 recipient of Japan Foundation’s Artists International Creations in Performing Arts Grant, Echoes Emerging Writer’s Group at Primary Stages, Pataphysics led by Clare Barron. Selected acting credits: 2023 Lucille Lortel nominee (Outstanding Ensemble: The Nosebleed), The Nosebleed (LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater, Woolly Mammoth, US Tour), world premiere of Gina Femia’s The Virtuous Fall… in rep with Measure for Measure (Spicy Witch Productions), theatrical premiere of Dogville (dir. Robert O’Hara). NYU: Tisch. BFA in Acting, Minor in Youth Mental Health. In their spare time, Ashil squeezes in courses toward their Master’s in Mental Health and Wellness (NYU Steinhardt: 20eventually), with intentions of incorporating mental health consciousness into the theatre industry. www.ashillee.com 

DOKKAEBI: A Work in Progress (aren’t we all?)
Puberty may be universally awkward but Sunhee is seemingly the only one  in the entire universe whose adolescence comes with a full blown demon. (How unjust!!) ‘DOKKAEBI: A Work in Progress (aren’t we all?)’ is a journey into internalized racism and transphobia, as well as the external and internal experiences of…being perceived.

Nikhil Mahapatra is a multi-disciplinary writer based in Brooklyn. They are a fan of low-quality jokes and high-quality food, hold a staunch and likely incorrect belief that most literature could be improved by the addition of dragons, and have been known to make a very good omelet. Their written work draws on queerness and race sometimes, power and love often,  but most of all encircles the place where grief and joy meet together, which, as one audience member once said, had “mixed results, but I guess I liked it”.  They have been a Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellow, O’Neill National Playwright’s Conference Finalist, SPACE at Ryder Farm Creative Resident, Yaddo Resident, a finalist for a bunch of other important-sounding stuff. Their work has been showcased at The Road theater company, Buck’s County Playhouse, Gingold Theatre Company, The Tank, Cherry Lane Theatre, The Brick, The Wild Project, Pace university and more. Latest theatrical works include SWEETFISH!, American Hunger, CARNAL, Lost in the Fire, The Fields, Bali Babes and an untold amount of other things of questionable quality. Other media includes the short film SPF (NYITFF 2019), and select short stories and poems published in America and Singapore.

unfortunately people will die but that’s okay because they might come back later if you believe in that sort of stuff personally i don’t but you should do what you need to do even if it means leaving me behind
Two people sit upon a castle’s walls, staring across the great darkness beyond them, physically, mentally and spiritually. They die. And the action repeats, till it does not, till it does again. A play about the cycle of existence and our understanding of what makes us our own selves.

Alle Mims is a Black genderfluid artist living in NYC. They are a cultural archeologist and political satirist who writes about Black, Queer, and Radical History. Mims earned their BA in Drama from Texas Woman’s University (’16) and MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University (’23) under the instruction of Lynn Nottage and David Henry Hwang. While at Columbia, they also studied early 20th century Black Radical history. Mims was recently a part of Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writers Group (‘23/24) and was a semifinalist for the O’Neil (’24) as well as a finalist for the Van Lier New Voices Fellowship and Ars Nova’s Play Group (’23). Mims and their play, “The Strip Club Manifesto,” were semi-finalists for Queercat Procution’s Black Trans Artist Offering (’22). Mims’ full length audio drama, “Pink,” was a finalist for the Columbia@Roundabout New Play Reading (’21). Mims currently works as a researcher for the August Wilson Society and has been commissioned by theGrio (“Harlem and Moscow,” audio drama), Bishop Arts Theatre (The How To Be…Project), and Imprint Theatreworks (“The Tree: An American Musical”). www.allemims.com & @allemims everywhere you can scroll 

His Majesty, Her Self
After a lifetime of predictability, Queen Hatsheptsut’s life implodes when the Pharaoh dies, forcing her to tap into her own masculinity in-order-to take over ruling Egypt. Caught in a world of power and performance, Hatshepsut reinvents herself with a drag persona, fully stepping into the title of Pharaoh, causing those closest to her wonder if she’s gone too far

Marissa Joyce Stamps is a Black, Haitian-American NYC-born and based writer, director, actor, and educator who creates vortexes that center, celebrate and amplify Black folks through an Afrosurrealist lens. She was the recipient of the 2023 Princess Grace Playwriting Award/New Dramatists Residency. She is a member of EST/Youngblood, The Lortel’s 2024-2025 Alcove, Roundabout’s Directors Group (Cohort 6) and is a New George’s Affiliated Artist; she was a member of Clubbed Thumb’s 2023-2024 Early-Career Writers Group, a Finalist for The National Black Theatre’s 2023 I AM SOUL Playwrights Residency, and a Mercury Store Fall 2023 Lead Artist. Select plays: BEING UP IN HERE… (Exponential Festival 2024), LETICHE AND THE [WONDROUS] PURSUIT OF ELVIS (2024 O’Neill Finalist, National Black Theatre Special Project 2024, Bushwick Starr SRS 2023), …TWISTED JUNIPER (2022 O’Neill Finalist; Chautauqua Theater Company’s 2021 NPW), BLUE FIRE BURNS THE HOTTEST (Exponential Festival 2022; Orchard Project’s 2021 Performance Lab), ST. NICHOLAS’ ANNUAL WALK-BIKE-SKATE-A-THON (New Dramatists 2024 Workshop) and DEADBODYDEADBODYDEADBODY (Ars Nova ANT Fest 2022). Marissa has also collaborated with The Public Theater, 24 Hour Plays, The Fire This Time Festival, Conch Shell Productions, 48 Hours in Harlem, Moxie Arts, Dixon Place, Irondale, The Anthropologists, New Ohio Theatre, Keen Company, Wild Project, BUFU, and more. She is a proud member of The Dramatists Guild. Marissa serves as Literary Manager at The Workshop Theater, Co-Resident Dramaturg at Conch Shell Productions, and has taught at Brooklyn College. MFA: Brooklyn College. marissajoycestamps.com @marissajoycestamps

Rollback
After reports of a flying man shut down coveted coaster The Demolisher 3000, attendees on the ride’s 3-hour wait leave the queue. Keisha and her friends, on the other hand, stay put and wait it out until it’s back up and running. But, does thrill rely on potential or on kinetic energy?