Alexandra Collier
Charity Henson-Ballard
Andrea Kuchlewska
Dominique Morisseau
Kristen Palmer
Melisa Tien
Stefanie Zadravec
Click here for a list of Playwrights Lab Alumnae.
ALEXANDRA COLLIER
Contact: www.alexandracollier.com
Alexandra is a playwright from Melbourne, Australia, based in Brooklyn, New York. Her play Deathless has been developed at Synchronicity (Atlanta) as a finalist for the SheWRITES series, the Lark Playwright's Development Center (New York) and Centre Stage (New York). The Will of the Cockroach (The Production Company, New York) was directed by May Adrales as part of the Australia Project. She performed in the premiere of Still Waiting (La Mama, Melbourne), which subsequently toured to the Adelaide Fringe Festival and was awarded the RE Ross Trust National Playwrights Award, profiled in the Australian Scriptwriting Centre's collection of the best Australian plays of 2006 and in their Stand Alone monologue audition collection. Other awards, fellowships and grants include: MacDowell Fellowship, Ian Potter Cultural Trust travel grant (Australia), the Dame Joan Sutherland Award (New York) and Highly Commended in the Marian Eldridge Women's Writing Award (Australia). She was a writer for the Monarch Theatre Company’s one minute play festival (New York) and for a series of monologues written by female playwrights, So She Said (Abingdon Theatre, New York). She is currently undertaking Mac Wellman’s MFA in Playwriting at Brooklyn College.
CHARITY HENSON-BALLARD 
Contact: www.charityhensonballard.com
Charity is an actor and playwright who lives in New York City with her husband, Donald. Her first full-length play, The Quiver of Children (directed by Louis Scheeder and published in Out of Time & Place: An Anthology of Plays by the Women's Project Playwrights Lab, Volume 1 © 2010) was initially developed with the support of Voice & Vision Theater, where she was selected to be one of 2008’s core artists at their Bard College Retreat. Quiver, set in Chattanooga, was later selected to be a part of Voice & Vision’s 2008 Play Development Showcase at the Ohio Theatre (NYC). Her current projects include Muddy the Waters, originally produced by Women’s Project as part of Global Cooling at the World Financial Center, and is currently in development with Rising Circle Theater Collective; Pete the Girl, which is to be showcased in the 2010 PlayRISE Festival (Rising Circle, NYC), and the second play in the Quiver cycle, The Deep Things of God. She is also the author of Little Strong Girl (Screenplay), Memoirs of a Blactress (Screenplay), and Anniversary, a short piece. Charity’s television and stage credits include Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Rescue Me, Guiding Light, and Dance Mania Fantastic (winner of the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival –Short Film Category). Her stage credits include the American premiere of Luminosity (Playmakers Rep.), in which she won the 2004 Triangle Theatre Award for Best Actress in a Drama, Caesar and Cleopatra (Playmakers Rep.), Grace (Rising Circle), The Serpent Woman (Theater Mitu/ NYU) and many others. In addition to writing and acting, Charity conducts actor coaching and workshops on playwriting. Charity received her M.A. in English from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and a M.F.A in Acting from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. She is a member of SAG, AFTRA, Rising Circle Theater Collective, and Women's Project Lab.
ANDREA KUCHLEWSKA
Contact: www.andreakuchlewska.com
Andrea’s plays include Complete (FringeNYC, NYC; Bay Area Playwrights Festival, San Francisco; finalist, Princess Grace Award 2009), And So We Became American (FURY Factory Festival, San Francisco), Penultimate (Safe Mode Productions, NYC), Why (The Barrow Group, NYC), Now (Amnesia Bar, San Francisco), Happy (Woman’s Will, San Francisco). Her work has also been developed or produced in San Francisco at The Z Space Studio, The Marsh, Venue 9, Climate Theatre, El Teatro de la Esperanza. Andrea is a recipient of a Theatre Bay Area CA$H Grant and the Tournesol Residency for Emerging Playwrights. She is a member of the 2010-2012 Women’s Project Lab, the Dramatists Guild, the League of Professional Theatre Women, and FAB Women at The Barrow Group Theatre Company. Andrea is also a former artist in residence at The Z Space Studio (San Francisco). She holds a BA in linguistics from UC Santa Cruz and an MFA in playwriting from San Francisco State University.
DOMINIQUE MORISSEAU 
Contact: dominiquemorisseau at yahoo.com
Dominique is a writer and actor in New York City, and a current member of the 2010 Public Theatre Emerging Writer's Group and the 2010-2012 Women’s Project Lab. Her produced plays include: Black at Michigan (Cherry Lane Studio/DUTF), Socks (Center Stage NY), Roses Are Played Out (Center Stage NY, American Theatre of Harlem), and Love and Nappiness (Center Stage NY, American Theatre of Harlem). Her play, Retrospect For Life, has been workshopped with the Frank Silvera Writer’s Workshop, the National Black Theatre Festival, Lark Play Development Center, Hip Hop Theatre Festival, and the Classical Theatre of Harlem. Her latest play, Follow Me To Nellie’s, was selected for the 2010 Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference, and has received readings with the Black Mondays Reading Series, The Standard Theatre Collective, Penumbra Theatre Company, and the Classical Theatre of Harlem. Dominique has performed as an Actress with such companies as New York Stage and Film, McCarter Theatre, Lark Theatre Co, MCC Theatre, and Women’s Project Her literary work has been published in the New York Times bestselling series- Chicken Soup for the African American Soul, the Harlem-based literary journal, Signifyin’ Harlem, and featured on Robert Townsend’s MBC Networks poetry series, Spoken. Dominique has a passion for writing stories with strong Women of Color as protagonists, and beautifully human stories- no matter who the protagonist.
KRISTEN PALMER 
Contact: krispalmer at gmail.com
Kristen is the author of seven full length plays. She was a 2008-09 Jerome Fellow at the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis. She is an associate artist of New Georges, and an alumna of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab and P73’s writing group. In Fall 2008 she was the Writer in Residence at the William Inge Center for the Arts. Her produced plays include: Local Story (Overlap Productions, NYC; Theatre of NOTE, LA; and MadCap Players, Washington DC); Departures (Blue Coyote, NYC); All The Girls Love Bobby Kennedy (Marist College, Poughkeepsie). Her plays have been developed and presented by SOHO Rep, the Playwrights’ Center, New Georges, P73, the William Inge Center for the Arts, Circle X Theatre, Orlando Shakespeare Festival, Printer's Devil Theatre and Blue Coyote Theatre. Her shorter plays include quiet killers, Marina and the Space Cowboy, Seattle/Siberia, The Ruby Red Wrench, Fort Bragg, and Sad (written with Adam Szymkowicz) as well as commissions from Blue Coyote Theatre Company, FLUX Theatre Ensemble, Bedlam Theatre and Cardboard Box Collaborative. She received a BA (I.i. Hons) in Dramatic Arts at Bretton Hall College in Yorkshire, England and an MA from NYU’s Gallatin School. From 1997-2002 she was a member of Printer’s Devil Theatre in Seattle where she served as co-curator of the New Play Bonanza, directed a touring garage rock musical and produced evenings of short new works, among other things. She is a theatre arts educator and teacher.
MELISA TIEN
Melisa is a California transplant whose plays have been developed/produced here and there--in New York City: Daughter of Heaven (Theater for the New City, Manhattan Theatre Club Creative Center), Familium Vulgare (New Dramatists, Under St. Marks Theatre), Ginger (Ensemble Studio Theatre), The Secret Life of the Office Worker (Theater at Riverside Church), Yes, Madly (Second Stage), The Hiding Place (59E59 Theatres), Azad Nazem [Free Verse] (Manhattan Repertory Theatre), and Odyssey (The Tank/Collective Unconscious); in Garden City, NY: Hindsight (Adelphi University); in Baton Rouge, LA: Hindsight (Hatcher Theater); in Aspen, CO: The Hiding Place (Black Box); and in Mumbai, India: Daughter of Heaven (Mumbai University). She has presented work at the Women Playwrights International Conference and the Great Plains Theatre Conference co-founded by Edward Albee; she was a 2007 Winner of the Theater Masters MFA Playwright Award; and she has taught playwriting to young children, undergraduates, and graduate students. Melisa holds a BA in English from UCLA and an MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University. She is also a recent graduate of the French Culinary Institute, and works at the French Culinary Institute and Gramercy Tavern, in addition to writing. Melisa is currently at work on a short play as part of a larger project entitled 7 Sins in 60 Minutes, which premieres at HERE in July 2010, as well as a new comic strip featuring a strong, smart, ethnic-American female protagonist. She is a proud member of the New York Women’s Culinary Alliance, the League of Professional Theatre Women, and the 2010-2012 Women’s Project Lab.
STEFANIE ZADRAVEC 
Contact: www.szadravec.com
Stefanie is a performer and writer whose plays have been produced and developed at the Kennedy Center, Theater J, The Barrow Group, Working Theater, Bay Street Theater, Vital Theater, The Phoenix Theater, Theater of the First Amendment and Jackson Rep. Honey Brown Eyes, (Theater J, Washington DC) won the 2009 Helen Hayes Award for Best New Play, and was published in American Theatre magazine. It was a finalist for the 2007 Smith Prize and a Semi-finalist for the Princess Grace Award. Stefanie made her Off-Broadway debut in 2006, as a contributing writer for the critically acclaimed, The Fear Project (The Barrow Group, NYC). Her play Save Me won the the Phoenix Theater’s National Playwriting Competition, Baltimore Playwright’s Festival’s Carol Weinberg Award and was a nominee/finalist for the Cherry Lane Mentor Project, Futurefest, and the Jane Bingham Award. Stefanie received both a Dakin Fellowship and a Tennessee Williams scholarship to the Sewanee Writer’s Conference and was a contributing writer on 167 Tongues (Jackson Rep, NYC) Her works-in-progress include, The Electric Baby (First Light Discovery Program, Washington DC) and Colony Collapse. She is an associate artist with Theater 167 (NYC) The Barrow Group (NYC) and a member of The Dramatists Guild.
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