Jesse Cameron Alick

 

is a poet, playwright and Zen Master.  Jesse works as the Artistic Director for Subjective Theatre Company (www.subjectivetheatre.org), the Executive Assistant to the Artistic Director at the Public Theater (www.publictheater.org) and is Assistant to the playwright Suzan-Lori Parks.    Jesse is also the east coast editor of High Contrast Review (www.highcontrastreview.com), freelance journalist and essayist.  Jesse studied writing with playwright Adrienne Kennedy. 
Jesse has had essays, articles and poetry published by High Contrast Review, XY, A&U, POZ, The Errorist, Courier Life, Smokin Word Publications and Random House.  He has been commissioned to write work for Streetlight Productions, Freedom Train Productions, Working Man’s Clothes and Subjective Films.  His work has been heard at locations that include Cherry Lane Theater (Downtown Urban Theater Festival), Asian American Writers Workshop (co-produced by New York Theater Workshop), Collective Unconscious, Brooklyn Borough Hall, Museum of the City of New York (produced by Harlem Arts Alliance), CSV, Blue Heron, Bowery Poetry Club, Ensemble Studio Theater, The Ohio Theater, Dixon Place, 78th street theater lab, The Crystal Theater (MT), The Columbus Performing Arts Center (OH), The Poetry Café (UK) and Hip Heaven (UK).  Jesse’s newest play was workshopped at the Old Vic Theatre in London as part of their young artist exchange program and this fall his play COME BACK TO ME will be in the Shakespeare in Paradise festival in the Bahamas. 

Yusef Miller

 

Yusef Miller, Playwright. In 2006, Yusef suspended his acting career to pursue Playwriting. He was accepted as a Lila Acheson Wallace Playwright Fellow at The Juilliard School, mentored by Marsha Norman and Christopher Durang. In 2007, he was awarded the Le Comte Du Nouy Prize for Excellence in Playwriting. In 2008, he was subsidized for the entire year, being awarded the inaugural Frederick Fellowship.
Plays:
Hookyjook, the Land of...: Lark Roundtable Reading; Classical Theatre of Harlem and The Ford Foundation Future Classics Reading; Arnold Weissberger Nominee (Williamstown); Lincoln Center Theater’s Directors Lab Workshop/Investigation; Reverie Production’s Next Generation Playwriting Contest Semi-Finalist; The Juilliard School Reading. Aaron&Tekla: The Juilliard School Reading; The Dramatists Guild of America, Inc., Reading. The House of Buddy Baines: It Takes a Village: Lark’s Playwrights Week, Semi-Finalist; The Juilliard School Workshop Reading. Songs of My So-Called Masculinity: NYU Workshop Reading.
Films:
Ding-Dong, (Short film, 2009), written: Ripfest #10 Short Film Festival;
Patent Leather Scars, (Short Film, 2009), produced, written, starring.
Memberships: AEA, SAG
Training: BA, English, Morehouse College; Certificate of Acting, Alliance Theater Professional Acting Intern Company; MFA, Theatre and Dance, University of California, San Diego.
For acting and other information, log on to www.yusefmiller.com

Christine Jean Chambers

 

is a published playwright – (oh! and also a photographer.) Write story, see story, same thing. Her plays have been produced, yes. Once at The Flea, once in a barn, and once under a mimed tree. She went to Columbia University to get her MFA in Playwriting, and she misses Eduardo and these other names you might recognize... Theresa Rebeck with her brilliant smile, Christopher Shin and his piercing eyes, and Kelly Stuart with that awesome giggle and super long hair. She would miss them more but most of them are on Facebook. Christine once had a near death experience when she thought she could put down the pen, but then…She is extremely honored to be with such a group of kick-ass writers.

Pia Wilson received a 2009 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She is a member of the 2009 Project Footlight team of composers and librettists and a member of the 2008 inaugural Emerging Writers Group at The Public Theater. Pia is also a 2009 resident in the Women's Work Lab at New Perspectives Theatre. Her full-length drama, Red Rooster, was a part of the Emerging Writers Spotlight Series at The Public Theater. All the Pretty Girls was featured in The Looking Glass Theatre's Spring 2009 Writer/Director Forum. The River Pure for Healing was part of the 2008 Resilience of the Spirit play festival. Her play, Tree of Life, received a 2007 workshop production at The Red Room Theater. Short plays and one-acts: The Things Tom Left Behind (The Drafts 10 Minute Play Festival: Six Plays About Hope); End of the World (New Perspectives Theatre's "By Popular Demand" festival); Dressed In Your Dreams (Stagecrafter's New Works Play Festival); Do You Proud (Eclectic Theater Company's "Got a Minute?" play festival); Whatever and Delicately (Groove Mama Ink; The Looking Glass Theatre's Spring 2008 Writer/Director Forum); The Rooster Never Crows (OneHeart Productions).

Germono Toussaint is a playwright, composer, arranger and lyricist. Toussaint knew upon seeing the musical Dreamgirls at the age of eight that he wanted a career in theatre.
In 2005 Toussaint wrote the book, music, and lyrics for his original musical Caged, based on interviews he conducted with thirteen women at a halfway house. Caged premiered at the Broadway Theater Center in Milwaukee and was featured in the Not for Broadway Theater Festival in New York City in 2006. Toussaint and Marcus Gardley have also had a workshop of their new musical (L)imitations at the Lark Play Development Center. An article about this musical was featured in American Theatre Magazine.
As an active composer/arranger he has arranged music for such artists as Nhojj, Kenya Sollas, Steinman Dean and Chante Brown. He has transcribed original music for Katori Hall Inc, Common Thread Theater and was the arranger/producer of the Verve concert series with The Well Entertainment Group.
Toussaint has composed music for Skylight Opera Theatre, Handful Players, Fishgrease Productions, New Dramatist’s Nocturnal Commissions, Tripping: The Musical and productions of The Pied Piper, Hansel and Gretel, The Laramie Project and Love Rides the Rails.
Toussaint has a BFA in composition and has received grants and awards from The National Alliance for Musical Theatre, The Wisconsin Arts Board, The Helen Bader Foundation, The Community Chorale for Christ, The Center for Performance and Excellence of Music, and Cardinal Stritch University.

Derek Lee McPhatter Originally from Pickerington Ohio, Derek Lee McPhatter has lived in Atlanta and Japan and calls Harlem home. Derek is a 2009 Resident Playwright with Brooklyn-based Freedomtrain Productions, which commissioned Mr. McPhatter to draft a new play, Bring the Beat Back, premiering at Freedomtrain's Fire Festival in August 2009. Derek’s additional  accomplishments include publications in the journals Anamesa and Flash Fantastic, and the Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History. He is the co-author of It Goes Unsaid, the signature show for Under the Spell Productions. He was a quarterfinalist in L. Ron Hubbard’s Writer’s of the Future Contest, and is a member of the Harlem Arts Alliance and the Speculative Literature Foundation. He holds degrees from Morehouse College and NYU, where he completed his master’s thesis—Let the Kids Say Amen: Black Gay Spaces and the Hybridity of Gospel House Music. By days, Derek works at the Apollo Theater and hosted the 2009 Apollo Salon Series, a works-in-development program presented weekends in April. He invites you to check out his blog: www.itsdmcp.blogspot.com for more.

Radha Blank began her career with her one-woman Hip-Hop b-ball ‘dramedy' Kenya (Dixon Place, Hip-Hop Theater Festival, Public Theater’s New Works Now, HERE; awards: New Professional Theatre's Annual Writers Award for Best Script, The NY Foundation for the Arts Artists Fellowship and Nickelodeon's Writers Fellowship). Radha later wrote for Nickelodeon shows The Backyardigans and Little Bill, debuted her original animated short, Papa Moco Jumbie and wrote a pilot for TeenNick based on her life as a young comic in NYC called My Life Is A Joke. 
Radha returned to theater with seed, which was developed through Classical Theater of Harlem’s Future Projects initiative and will be presented in conjunction with The NYC Hip Hop Theater Festival in 2010. seed garnered Radha membership into the Public Theaters Inaugural Emerging Writers Group (2008) where she developed the satire nannyland. Her latest project is Happy.Flower.Nail, a solo show that explores gentrification through the women who inhabit a Bed-Stuy nail salon. Happy.Flower.Nail was developed at Voice & Vision’s Envision Retreat at Bard and most recently performed at the Grantmakers in the Arts Conference. Radha was also recently nominated for the Wendy Wasserstein prize in playwriting.  
Seeing writing as a path to self-discovery and self-empowerment, Radha has instructed NYC youth in poetry and playwriting for over fifteen years. She finds inspiration in both the rhythm of youth culture and the pulse of social justice issues facing urban American communities of color. 

Kelley Nicole Girod is a 2008 graduate of Columbia's MFA playwriting program where she was named the Stein and Liberace scholar as well as the John Golden fellow for her artistic merit.  Kelley hails from Louisiana where she attended Louisiana State University and works extensively with the artistic community of Baton Rouge, most recently serving as a panel judge for Louisiana's artist in residency program.  She has had plays produced in Los Angeles, New York, New Orleans, and Columbus, Ohio and has had readings at Primary Stages, the Labyrinth studio and Horsetrade Theatre Co.(NYC) which produced her play "Parabolas" as part of their downtown theatre festival.  She is also a resident playwright for the Horse Trade's Drafts this year as well as a staff member of the theatre.