Bard at the Gate

Paula Vogel is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright whose plays include Indecent (Tony Award nomination for Best Play), How I Learned to Drive (Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Lortel Prize, OBIE Award, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle and New York Drama Critics Awards for Best Play), The Long Christmas Ride Home, The Mineola Twins, The Baltimore Waltz, Hot’n’Throbbing, Desdemona, And Baby Makes Seven, The Oldest Profession and A Civil War Christmas. Lifetime achievement awards include: American Theatre Hall of Fame Award, the Obie Award, and NY Drama Critics Circle Award. She is honored to have three awards dedicated to emerging playwrights in her name: The American College Theatre Festival's Paula Vogel Award in Playwriting, the Paula Vogel Award given annually by the Vineyard Theatre, and the Paula Vogel Mentor’s Award by Young Playwrights of Philadelphia. She was the 2019 inaugural UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television Hearst Theater Lab Initiative Distinguished Playwright-in-Residence. She is currently serving as judge for the Yale Drama Series 2021 and 2022 competitions. Her plays are published in six volumes by TCG Press and she teaches playwriting workshops throughout the United States and abroad. www.paulavogelplaywright.com 

Rosey Strub is Program Director of the Thornton Wilder Estate, and Manager for playwrights Paula Vogel and Ken Ludwig. She has worked in stage production, marketing, development and project management for a range of organizations including the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, Ars Nova, National Theatre Workshop for the Handicapped, Summer Play Festival (SPF), Soho Rep, and Yale University. She has produced the Kurdish Film Festival at NYU's Kevorkian Center and an international human rights and arts festival with Peru’s Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani and Yale Repertory Theatre. Rosey holds a BFA in Single Honours Drama and Theatre Studies from University of Kent at Canterbury, UK and an MFA in Theatre Management from Yale School of Drama. 

May Adrales is a director, teacher and newly appointed Artistic Director of The Lark.    She has directed at Manhattan Theatre Club, Lincoln Center, Signature Theatre, Second Stage, South Coast Rep, Milwaukee Rep, Goodman Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Portland Center Stage, Seattle Repertory, Syracuse Stage, Cleveland Play House, OSF, and Two River Theater.  She has developed musicals and plays at The Eugene O’Neill Theater Conference, NAMT, and numerous other New York and regional theaters. Awards include the TCG Alan Schneider Award, Josephine Abady Award, and Paul Green Directing award.  She served as Associate Artistic Director and Director of New Play Development at Milwaukee Repertory Theater; Director of Artistic Programs, Lark Play Development Center; Artistic Associate at The Playwrights Center and Artistic Associate at The Public.   Fellowships: Drama League, NYTW, Van Lier, Denham Fellowship, TCG New Generations. She has taught and directed at Yale, NYU, Juilliard, Fordham, A.C.T, Carnegie Mellon and Brown University.  MFA, Yale School of Drama. mayadrales.net

The Head of Directing and Playwriting at the University of Washington’s School of Drama, Valerie also serves as the Artistic Director for The Hansberry Project, an African American theatre lab. She has worked with theatres across the country including: The Guthrie Theater, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Intiman Theatre, Actors’ Theatre of Louisville, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Seattle Children’s Theatre, The Mark Taper Forum, New York Theatre Workshop, among others. She has been awarded the National Endowment for the Arts/Theatre Communications Group Career Development Grant for Directors, the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation’s Gielgud Directing Fellowship, Theatre Puget Sound’s Gregory Falls Award for Sustained Achievement, Seattle Times’ 13 Most Influential Citizens of the last decade, the Seattle Stranger Genius Award in Performance and the Crosscut Courage Award for Culture. 

Jill Dolan is the Dean of the College at Princeton University, where she is also faculty in English and Theatre.  She is the author of many books and edited collections on feminist, lesbian, and LGBT theatre and performance, and the award-winning blog THE FEMINIST SPECTATOR. 

Quiara Alegría Hudes is the Pulitzer-winning playwright of Water By the Spoonful and the author of a new memoir, My Broken Language. With collaborator Lin-Manuel Miranda she wrote the Tony-winning musical In the Heights and the film adaptation hitting screens this June. 

Isabella Star LaBlanc is a Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota actress and storyteller from Minnesota. Isabella has been seen at theaters across the country, including: The Shakespeare Theatre Company; Cincinnati Shakespeare Company; Jungle Theater; and Mixed Blood Theater. Her writing has been featured at the American Players Theatre, Guthrie Theater, and Penumbra Theatre Company. 

Joy Meads director of dramaturgy and new works at American Conservatory Theater. A.C.T. credits include Testmatch, Wakey, Wakey, Sweat, Men on Boats, Edward Albee’s Seascape, Her Portmanteau, The Great Leap, and Rhinoceros. Prior to A.C.T., she was literary manager/artistic engagement strategist at Center Theatre Group. CTG credits include Archduke, Good Grief, Appropriate, Forever, Marjorie Prime (2015 Pulitzer Prize finalist), A Parallelogram, The Royale, and Sleep (also: Brooklyn Academy of Music and Yale Repertory Theatre). Previously, Meads was literary manager at Steppenwolf Theatre Company and associate artistic director at California Shakespeare Theater. Meads is a co-founder of The Kilroys. www.thekilroys.org  

Gregg Mozgala is an award winning actor and playwright. He is the founder and Artistic Director of The Apothetae, a theatre company dedicated to the production of works that explore and illuminate the, "Disabled Experience." He is currently the Director of Inclusion at Queens Theatre. 

KJ is the founder and CEO of American Records, dedicated to making theatre that chronicles our time, theatre that serves as a bridge between people. She is also an Associate Professor at UT Austin and head of the MFA Playwriting/Directing programs. KJ recently directed Octavio Solis’s Quixote Nuevo which toured to Hartford Stage, The Huntington and The Alley. As a playwright, KJ’s been produced at (select list) Berkeley Rep, Baltimore’s Center Stage, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Playmakers Rep, Asolo Rep, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Two River Theater Company, Frontera Rep, Round House, Cornerstone Theater Company and Off-Broadway at Urban Stages and Here Arts. KJ has directed across the country, including Off-Broadway. As an actor KJ performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and internationally including the Toga-Mura Festival in Japan and the IberoAmericano Festival in Bogota, Columbia. She is the voice of many characters on the cartoons Dora the Explorer and Go Diego Go. KJ is a Fox Fellow, Douglass Wallop Fellow, and a recipient of the 2014 Rella Lossy Playwright Award. She is a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts/TCG Career Development Program, an Associate Artist with The Civilians, and a New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect.  

Regina Victor (they/them/pharoah) is a Black director, multidisciplinary artist, and cultural critic. Presently Sideshow Theatre’s Artistic Director, and one of Newcity’s “Fifty People Who Really Perform for Chicago”-- two years running. Victor has helped develop world premieres by Antoinette Nwandu, Anna Deavere Smith (Notes from the Field), Sarah Ruhl, and recently directed an all Trans and Gender Non-Conforming (TGNC) ACLU Benefit reading of The Wolves by Sarah DeLappe at Actors Theatre of Louisville. Works in development include Mallory Raven-Ellen Backstrom (Once in a Bleu Moon) Brynne Frauenhoffer (Pro-Am, Kilroys List 2020), Terry Guest (Marie Antoinette & the Magical Negroes), and Emma Durbin (landscape). They co-founded Rescripted in 2017, an arts journalism platform by and for artists, and have written for other publications including American Theatre, Playbill, and the Chicago Reader. Other notable artistic collaborations include Steppenwolf Theater, Jackalope Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theater, Timeline Theatre, California Shakespeare Theatre. In their spare time, they serve on the National Advisory Council for Howlround Theatre Commons and as a board member for The Sappho Project. Learn more at www.reginavictor.com. 

As playwright, his plays were produced at the Public Theater, Royal Court, Manhattan Theatre Club, Long Wharf, amongst others. As a director, he has directed for the Public, New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, Signature Theatre, Humana Festival, Goodman, and others. He was the Artistic Director of Victory Gardens. For more information: chayyew.com 

Pirronne Yousefzadeh is a director, writer, co-founder of Maia Directors, and the Associate Artistic Director and Director of Engagement at Geva Theatre Center. She has a passion for new work that centers and uplifts the stories of global majority communities and has developed and directed work extensively regionally and in New York City. Member, SDC. M.F.A., Columbia University. Representation: Ben Izzo at A3 Artists Agency. pirronne.com

TIMOTHY DOUGLAS (he/him/his) ... is a director, actor, and educator who has staged upwards of 100 productions for theaters off-Broadway, regionally, and internationally including Classic Stage Company (Frankenstein), Actors Theatre of Louisville (former Associate Artistic Director), Mark Taper Forum (former Director in Residence), Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park (Associate Artist), American Conservatory Theater, Alliance Theatre, Arena Stage, Berkeley Rep, Cleveland Playhouse, Denver Center Theatre Company, Guthrie Theater, Kennedy Center, Milwaukee Rep, Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre, Playmakers Rep, Portland Center Stage, Red Bull Theater, Roundhouse Theatre, Shakespeare & Company, Sundance Theatre Institute Morocco, Wooly Mammoth, Yale Rep (world premiere of August Wilson's Radio Golf), Downstage New Zealand, and The Great Theatre of China. Timothy currently serves as Distinguished Artist in Residence at Emerson College, and this spring he will stage Terence Blanchard's Champion for Boston Lyric Opera. timothydouglas.org