MEET THE 20/21 EARLY-CAREER WRITERS’ GROUP

This program is generously supported by The Barbara Bell Cumming Charitable Trust.

Cristina Luzárraga is a playwright from New Jersey whose dark comedies tend to feature unruly women and an exploration of the grotesque and uncanny. Her plays include Critical Distance, Millennialville, Havana Syndrome, and La Mujer Barbuda (2019 Screencraft Stage Play Winner and Princess Grace Award Finalist). An alum of The Second City Conservatory in Chicago and Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Youngblood collective, she is a 2019-2020 Jerome Fellow at the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis where she currently resides. Her work has been developed with Playmakers Repertory Company, Teatro LATEA, Tantrum Theater, IATI Theater, The New Colony, and Chicago Dramatists, and her short plays are published in anthologies by Smith and Kraus. She holds a BA from Princeton and an MFA from Ohio University.

Allyson Dwyer is an NJ/NYC playwright who is interested in cycles, technology, navigating the world as a woman, and how being a woman and technology intersect. Sometimes I write about these things together, sometimes separate. I’m currently working on a podcast as part of the inaugural SoundLab at The Brick, and a member of Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writer’s Group. I received my BFA from Eugene Lang, The New School for Liberal Arts, in 2012, with a concentration in Writing, and my Playwriting MFA at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, MN, in 2018.

Nelson Diaz-Marcano is a Puerto Rican playwright based in New York City. Nelson’s main artistic mission is to raise awareness about the contrasting cultures that form the communities of this nation and in doing so, explore how they all fit together in the American experiment. His plays have been developed by Milagro Theatre, the William Inge Theatre Festival, Wordsmyth, Classical Theatre of Harlem, and The Parsnip Ship among others. His work has received awards from the Samuel French OOB FEstival (“Rabiosa”,) the Fresh Fruit Festival (The Diplomats,now published by OWP) and the Downtown Urban Arts Festival (Radical.) Other recent credits include: “Paper Towels” (Intar,) “I Saw Jesus in Toa Baja” (William Inge Theatre Festival,) “World Classic” (Ingenio Milagro 2018, The Parsnip Ship,) “Revolt” (World Premiere – Vision Latino Theatre Company,) “El Yunque in English” (Citi Theatre Shorts Finalist,) “Into The River I Went” (Step 1 Theatre Project) and “Prison Song” (Downtown Urban Arts Festival 2013.) ndmstrikes.com

Hanna Novak is a New York City-based playwright. Her plays have been presented as part of the New Ohio’s Ice Factory Festival and at the Performing Garage in New York City. She is a member of the 2020-21 Clubbed Thumb early-career writers’ group and has been a resident at the Ucross Foundation in Ucross, WY. Hanna graduated from the MFA Playwriting program at Hunter College in 2018, where she studied with Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Annie Baker. She holds a BFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts in Dramatic Writing.

Ruth Tang is a playwright & poet, raised in Singapore and based in New York City. They are a 2020/21 New York Theatre Workshop 2050 Fellow, and a member of the Clubbed Thumb Early Career Writers’ Group 2020-21. Their past work includes Bad Chinese (Samuel French Off-Off-Broadway Festival, 2018) and Building A Character (Wild Rice Singapore, dir. Mei Ann Teo, 2018). Their play FUTURE WIFE was presented in a Weird Hypertext version at Corkscrew Festival 2020. MFA: The New School for Drama.

Johnny Lloyd is a New York-based writer and producer. Recent productions include PATIENCE (Corkscrew Theatre Festival, Columbia University), ROUND (Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival), IT’S A GHOST STORY (Homebase Collective), PLANT THERAPY (Columbia University), PAWN (InVersion Theatre), A BRIEF HISTORY OF STAMPS (The Tank); THE EXTREME CLIMATOLOGICAL HAPPENING (TinyRhino); and IN THE WOODS WE RETURN (Fringe NYC). Other recent plays include OR, AN ASTRONAUT PLAY; RUINATION; ROUND, and STRIP HEARTS. His work has been seen and developed at 59E59, Dixon Place, Judson Memorial Church, The Kelly’s Writers House, TheatreLab in Boca Raton, and more. Johnny is a member of the 2019-2020 Liberation Theatre Company’s Writing Residency. Johnny was a semi-finalist for the 2018 Open-Application Commission at Clubbed Thumb and was the 2017-2018 Shubert Fellow for Playwriting at Columbia University. MFA Candidate in Playwriting at Columbia University. jglloyd.weebly.com

Kathy Ng is a playwright, librettist and hybrid theater-maker from hong kong (pls liberate), currently based in brooklyn (pls liberate). the content of my stuff-stuff changes day to day, but most of them often deal with the actions of magnification and collage. i like to disrupt, communicate accumulation, and chart the starry conditions of non-humanity. i like to write about bugs, food, and MOMENTOUS BOOBS.

Nazareth Hassan is a southern writer and musician based in Brooklyn, NY. He is the 2017 recipient of the Dramatist Guild Young Playwright Award and the 2019 recipient of the Himan Brown Writing Award. His plays have been shown and workshopped in cities including New York, London, and Berlin, at institutions including The Bushwick Starr, Theatertreffen Stuckemarkt, Horizon Theater Company, and the Royal Court Theatre, where he is currently under workshop and a part of their long form writer’s group.He is also a member of the Clubbed Thumb Early Career Writer’s Group. His essays and fiction have been published by Waif Magazine, ThreadMag and Without Further Adu. He has performed as a singer at venues including Boston Symphony Hall, Joe’s Pub, Atlanta Symphony Hall, The Fox Theatre, Mercury Lounge, NY Comic Con and Lincoln Center. He received an MFA in playwriting from Brooklyn College.