 And have fun and have fun. Okay. So we're live on howl round. Hold your, hold that thought. Holding it and we're recording now. So welcome everyone. My name is Brenda and I am the conference coordinator. I am happy to welcome you all to the playwrights under the radar session hosted by Brian Moore. This presentation will be in mostly in English, but some will be in Spanish. So remember to just download the oral simultaneous interpretation at web switcher pro and the volunteers will add that token, the access token to that on the chat box. Hello everyone. My name is Brenda Muñoz, coordinator of the LMDA Congress. I am happy to welcome you all to the playwrights under the radar session. This panel will be in mostly in English, but some will be in Spanish. So remember to just download simultaneous interpretation at web switcher pro and the volunteers will add that on the chat box. Muchas gracias a todos los presentadores por estar aquí. Thank you very much to all the speakers. I will leave it to you, Brian. Great. Thank you, Brenda. Thank you, Brenda, for the introduction and for all your work over this weekend and last couple years, I guess, yeah. Thank you very much for being here on behalf of the executive committee. Welcome to the 2021 LMDA virtual conference, whether this is your first session or your third of the day. And welcome to this year's playwright under the radar session. LMDA would like to thank HowlRound for live streaming this session and also thank the online playwriting resource page by page for sponsoring this session. We appreciate their support. I'm Brian Moore. I'm the president of LMDA. I am based in the ancestral land of the Pawnee in the Sioux currently known as Seward, Nebraska, but I am attending this week's conference on the current and ancestral homeland of the Ojibwe and the Dakota also known as Bemidji, Minnesota. I'm excited to share this presentation and these presenters with you as they share some of their favorite playwrights with you through this playwrights under the radar session. If you're familiar with our hot topics format, which we've been doing for quite a while, we use a similar format where each presenter will get a maximum of 5 minutes to share their playwright or playwrights with us. One of our volunteers will be keeping time so they'll have an idea of when they are running out of time and when they need to stop. So we will hope they respectfully do so. And we will plan to share contact information about the playwrights on the conference hub for future reference. They may mention some info during the presentation, but it'll be there at a later time and date as well. At the end of our presentations, we will have time to take any questions from the audience or from each other. If they have questions about each other's work and writers. And we'll also welcome the audience to share any additional names of playwrights and info that they want to share with us. Feel free free to post those either in the Q&A or in any chat functions that you have available. Finally, we will conclude the session with a special announcement from LMDA. So, I will leave it at that and so please stay tuned for that. As Brenda mentioned, we will have presentations in both English and Spanish. So, I'll be able to listen to the translations of each through the web switcher app. There's and there will be, there's more information on the conference hub. Alright. If there is nothing else, let us go ahead and begin with our 1st presenter. Who is the consulting dramaturg at Colleval Essence Theater project and Marie. Thanks, Brian. Thanks, Brian. I am coming to you from the unceded territory of the. Kikapu and Ottawa people, which is a colonially known as Bloomington, Illinois. And I am here today to talk to you about Amy Tofty. So I am going to share that with you. Is that sharing? Can you let me know if that's sharing? It is not. It is not. Let me try that again. Now is it sharing? Yes, just loading. Yes. Alright. Yes. Alright, Amy Tofty is a playwright and screenwriter. Her play righteous among us was a finalist for the 2020 Woodward and Newman playwriting award. And won the 2020 Todd McNerney playwriting award. Her play cardboard cardboard castles hung on walls was a semi finalist for the 2021 Bay Area playwrights festival. Her most recent live production was her sci-fi thriller. Women of 4G, which was premiered by Chicago babes and with blades in 2019. And her work has been presented and developed throughout the United States. Australia and New Zealand. She's a member of the dramatist guild and holds a BA from the University of Iowa and an MFA from Cal Arts. In her artist statement, she says, I write plays that center on female characters and experiences. I reclaim male dominated genres and stories and spaces for women. I'm currently exploring female villains. And I'm also trying not to kill so many characters. One of the things I like most about Amy is her extraordinary sense of humor, both in person and in her writing. I first became familiar with Amy's playwriting during the fall of 2019. When I was asked to serve as the on the selection committee for coal essence theater projects new play festival. Which took place in early February of 2020. Coal essence theater project is a small non equity theater in Bloomington, Illinois. Which focuses on producing new works for underrepresented voices parts and pieces is a new work. Which centers on to a strange siblings Parker and Melissa. Who meet face to face in the presence of a mediator to negotiate the settlement of their inheritance. Set in a small town Parker. Who is transitioning to gender neutral wants to use their proceeds from the estate for transformative top surgery. And their sibling Mal is reluctant to comply. But what initially appears to be a simple case of petty bigotry is revealed to have deeper and more painful roots. As the siblings unpacked decades of misunderstandings and resentments. They begin to build a new relationship. Something sometimes comically revolving around perceptions of body image and the presence or absence in one form or another of breasts. Amy is a passionate artist and generous collaborator, which earned her a place. On the playwrights advisory board for coalescence theater. A new initiative for that organization. I have links to the other playwrights for. And their NPX profiles on the final side for this presentation. And I recommend that you take a look at those as well. I think you'll find them also. As interesting as Amy. During the 2020 season for coalescence theater, Amy's play righteous among us was chosen for a full production for coalescence. But due to the pandemic. It was, it had to be presented as a zoom production. I see I served as the dramaturg for that show. Righteous among us is an emotionally charged play. That asks the question is a comforting lie more important than an uncomfortable truth. In righteous among us are researcher at a civil rights museum is researching. Workers who saved Jews during the Holocaust, as well as families of survivors. But when she discovers that one of the. One of the resistance family stories is a lie. She must not only break the news to all involved and shattered the myth. But also come to terms with her own need to find heroes with good intentions among regular people. Unfolding like a suspenseful mystery. Each character must make difficult moral decisions, which impact their standing in the community. And the way history is recorded, which leads to another question that the play raises. Can we really truly know history? Amy's characters are complex individuals exploring difficult situations and facing them with humor, tenacity and humility. Revealing a compassion and grace that most of us hope that we have when we face conflict. One of the things I appreciate most about Amy is her unique voice and perspective. Her intelligence and vivid imagination and come to encompasses a wide range of subjects and viewpoints. Just as her language and characters explore a variety of tones and experiences and genres. Replacing characters are intricate and nuanced. And that is what makes them rewarding to both watch and produce. Her social conscious is both compassionate and comes from genuine beliefs and personal experiences. And I look forward to working with her again in the near future. And you can too have the pleasure of working with her. Amy tofties plays are available on the new flight exchange as our other writers that work with coalescence theater project. Thank you very much. I look forward to looking up Amy's work. Appreciate it. All right. Let us move on to our next presenter who is as good as Guzman Gonzalez. Hi, Brian. Hi everyone. Thank you very much. I am very glad to be here. And since I panic when I try to improvise, I'm going to be reading everything. I'm going to let you know when my actual presentation starts. I'm just going to introduce myself. Now I'm starting my presentation. Now I'm starting my presentation. I'm going to introduce myself. El llama a esto desde limitar la dramaturgia. Como dramaturgista me parece que este espectro infinito es fascinante, pues su imaginación se manifiesta en maneras más amplias y flexibles que las que la escritura hace posible comúnmente durante la concepción de un universo. La materialización específica de todas estas infinitas posibilidades se vuelve exponencial. In 2007, Javier Fundol Editorial Antropófagos junto con sus entonces compañeros de escuela, Laura García, Mónica Perea e Iván Aris-Mendi, que en paz descansó. Todos estudiantes de dramaturgia del Colegio de Literatura Dramática y Teatro de la UNAM, que querían empezar ya a publicar sus textos para dar a conocer la dramaturgia joven mexicana. Se volvieron un colectivo que concibe la dramaturgia como el diseño de experiencias. Comparten esta concepción con otros dramaturgos, como por ejemplo su actual colega, Laura Muñoz, y otros colaboradores de la época más reciente de la editorial que tienen el objetivo de difundir dramaturgia contemporánea alternativa. Su concepción actual de la dramaturgia implica una expansión a otras disciplinas y a otros medios, por lo que invitaron a más artistas con quienes han ido reflexionando y poniendo en crisis el que hacer de la dramaturgia. Y han aprovechado la plataforma digital para darle a cada texto el espacio necesario para su pensamiento debido y en constante expansión. Pienso que el trabajo de Javier se distingue por un punto de vista desacomodado a propósito, por una postura disidente, una inconformidad no disimulada. Retomo las figuras de celebridades de personajes a cuyas reputaciones ya estamos predispuestos. De seres mitológicos cuyas historias marcaron a la humanidad y los lleva al escenario desde otro ángulo. En 2015 tuve la suerte de ver su pieza Jim Morrison, o mejor dicho, de asistir al concierto que él con la colaboración de Laura Muñoz, es significó al encarnar al rockstar que le da título a la obra. Desdibujando el escenario, mezclando apelaciones directas al público y largos monólogos en los que parecía sumido en un transe, consiguié que los espectadores fuéramos al mismo tiempo sus fanáticos, sus compañeros en un bar, invitados a la misma fiesta que él, testigos a su decadencia y acompañantes en su transformación en el famoso Ray Lagarto o Lizard King. Esta es una de mis obras favoritas creadas por él porque fue la primera en la que sentí que los espectadores dejábamos de serlo al estar inmersos en la misma situación que el personaje al verdaderamente acompañarlo en su travesía. En marzo pude ver virtualmente la lectura de Vampir, que engloba una pecumpecolar interés por los vampiros que yo también comparto, además de una exploración del uso del lenguaje, práctica común en su trabajo mediante la que busca explorar los juegos que se pueden hacer con la percepción. La obra Vampir recorre la historia de los vampiros de todo el mundo, incluye folklore, leyendas viejas y manifiesta también como se han representado con los iconos musicales más famosos del siglo pasado. Sus presentaciones se alejan de lo tradicional, son eventos inmersivos, pretenden involucrar al público de diferentes maneras. Los invito a sumarse a la página editorial antropófagos.com, donde está publicada la mayor parte del trabajo de Javier y la de muchos otros dramaturgos. Todos los materiales son de descarga gratuita y antropófagos dicen que quieren diálogo y quieren conversación. Creo que lo que destaca el trabajo de Javier es que en su poética equilibra contenidos que mezclan gustos totalmente personales y una perspectiva crítica sobre nuestro contexto con la permanente búsqueda de formatos y técnicas transdisciplinarios que complementen y permitan abordar dichos contenidos. Muchas gracias. Muchas gracias, Lores. All right, let us move on to our next presenter, who is Brad Rothbard. Brad. Yes, I'm here. Hi everybody. I'm Brad Rothbard. I'm a freelance dramaturg and a maker of hopefully good trouble. My pronouns are they them and I need to acknowledge that I'm working on the unceded land of the Lanapo Kink, currently known as Philadelphia PA by its conquerors. I have thin brown hair, brown eyes and brown oval glasses. My face is oval as well and I have a white soul patch. I'm wearing a pink shirt with white squares. I'm sitting in a black full leather chair at a roll top wooden desk. Behind me is a white wall. I'm about to start the presentation. Amazon said a five minute shop timer onward. Shop timer, five minutes, starting now. Today I'd like to discuss the work of two playwrights who deserve our attention. Hagen Bryce Walker, Kim, Amazon Stop, who deserve our attention, Hagen Bryce Walker, he, him and A.A. Brenner, they them. One, Hagen Bryce Walker, H-A-Y-G-E-N hyphen, B-R-I-C-E space, W-A-L-K-E-R. I'll let him speak for himself in defining his plays. Hagen Bryce's work is like if street car name desire, mean girls, Texas chainsaw massacre and beloved got shitfaced at a Buffalo Wild Wings happy hour and then stumbled into the neighborhood bath house while belching the soundtrack of In the Heights. The piece of Hagen Bryce's I'd like to discuss is Wolf Crush, a queer werewolf play. An honorable mention for the relentless award in 2018, Wolf Crush is a fully mature work. Walker takes what seems to be a fairly slim set of premises falling in love with for the first time in high school, livestock mysteriously being slaughtered, a coke-addled school principal, werewolves and turned into an epic about identity, discovery and ostracism. Reading it, there were multiple times I felt he had written himself into a corner only to discover that what looked like a wall was actually a door to an entirely new level of work. It's a truly remarkable achievement and one of the 10 best plays I've read in the last five years. And I've read a lot of plays in the last five years. Equally important for those of you who produce work is the fact that Walker knows who his audience is, writes for them, and gets them to show up. Ask me at the conference bar how I know this is a fascinating story. If you wonder how to get the next generation into the theater, here's your answer. Hagen Bryce serves as his own agent and can be reached at HagenBryceWalker at Gmail.com. All one word, all lowercase, no hyphen. Two, AA Brenner. A period, A period, B-R-E-N-N-E-R. This one is personal. From much of my life, I've identified variously as Jewish, non-binary and disabled as I have cerebral palsy. AA identifies variously as Jewish, queer, non-binary and disabled as they have cerebral palsy. AA Brenner writes the plays I needed in the world when I was in my 20s. I'd like to let them speak about the work for a moment. I don't just write plays about disability or queerness. I write plays that are inherently ontologically disabled and queer. This results in plays with disabled characters played by disabled actors where disability is never mentioned. Because disabled writers are still writing disability into existence, every piece that touched upon the subject either positions it as the subject of the work, this is me, not AA, a recurring theme in the work or the center of the disabled character's existence. Brenner's approach to the gigantic step forward. On to the work itself. AA is a still-development playwright whose work is becoming fuller and more nuanced with each new script. This work, Blanche and Stella, a sequela, is a modernized queer, is a quote, modernized queer disabled adaptation of a streetcar named Desire with no cis white men. End quote. It's a radical revision of Williams' work with the central premise being that two women were not actual sisters, but rather extremely close friends. Their last three works have been this radical adaptation of light comedy and a neo-absurdist short play and each work shows a full understanding of that particular form. Unlike Walker, who while centralizing the text makes the play part of a larger event, for Brenner, the script is the thing. The writing is crisp and with each word exactly where it needs to be. AA has been shortlisted and announced as a finalist for numerous awards, including the Larga-Pothete Fellowship and they have not yet graduated from their MFA program at Columbia University. They are so far ahead of any curve that it is ridiculous. If you want to produce a play by a disabled playwright and you should, AA Brenner is the one. AA is represented by Chris Tillard-Verve, email CTILL at VERVETLA.com phone number 212-506-0750 However, they are... Your show timer is done. Amazon Stop. However, they are still extremely interested in enlarging the non-binary and disabled theater communities. Therefore, if and only if you identify as non-binary and or disabled, you may contact me privately for their personal email. See. Thank you, Brett. Thank you. All right. Our next presenter is Jackie Goldfinger. Jackie. No sound, G-Hi. Hey, G-Hi. There's no sound. Yeah. Hello, this is Jacqueline Goldfinger bringing you some great new playwrights to check out. I was lucky to meet Zandra when she was finishing her MA in theater from Villanova University right outside Philadelphia. I really enjoyed her as a person. I thought she'd be a wonderful collaborator. I made a note to work with her one day. And then when I read her plays, they floored me. They're sophisticated and vibrant. They were powerful and thoughtful. She has a background in history and in cultural critique. And so all of her plays were layered with historical and cultural intersectionality that bloomed and that also banged into one another and made the characters come into some really deep, complex, interesting conflict. Zandra writes that she actively grounds her work in the voices of her community, black people and the African diaspora, Latinx folks, and spaces of queer expansion. She calls herself an optimistic and curious polymath. She thought she would grow up to be a human rights lawyer and she is now a human rights artist. Her work was adaptation with revolution, with history, pain with power, laughter with rage. I encourage you to check out her work on the New Play Exchange. Rachel is the unexpected laugh that you get at a dinner party when someone has accidentally said something very truthful. Her writing is complex. Her characters are likable and hateable and everywhere in between on the spectrum, often within the same play. And she is fearless in going to the heart of an issue and making you really look at what is happening with the characters behind the mask. Rachel writes that she writes plays about complicated, complex women of color. These women are neither saints nor villains. They are eternally both. The women are intelligent, listed, and most importantly, real. As these women navigate through the American landscape with a series of different issues, they also struggle with the complicated idea of what it means to be a woman today and layered complexity adds to their various dilemmas. She uses her play. She writes to invite the audience into her world using humor and creating a recognizable world. We sit together, we drink together, and we live in these spaces together. My work challenges what these spaces can accept and what absolutely must change so that the room where it happens can be increasingly more inclusive. Jared is the most emerging of our emerging writers for this under-the-radar session. His voice is warm and wonderful and understands pop culture but also understands the layer of history and time and culture that led to this pop culture moment. Keep your eye on him. He's gonna do great things for the American theater. Jared says that his work will always be about black queer people in order to normalize the idea of our stories through life being captivating and relatable. And his goals are to write for stage, television, and comic books. Keep an eye out. He's gonna blow your mind, folks. I've been participating in playwrights under the radar for 10 years now, so I thought we'd look back and check in with some of our writers from the past. Thank you very much, Jackie. It was great to see some new people and some recaps of some older, some previous playwrights from the radar, if you will. So I appreciate your assistance and you shared a lot there in those five minutes. I appreciate it. All right. Our next presenter is David Geary. David. Kia ora, koutarana ki tukuiwi, and nari pakeha. I am from the Indigenous nation of the Māori of New Zealand and I am also European. I'm hoping that this is sharing now and I'm going to start from the beginning. Can someone tell me if that's working? Yes. Awesome. Okay, so this is going to be a bit of a whirlwind. Tim Sinclair-Harvey is Silic's and Chacolton, and she has written a play called Kamlupa, which is called an Indigenous matriarch story. So I wanted to showcase her and this play Kamlupa, but I'm going to show you way too much information for five minutes. So you can get this PowerPoint off me if you want it. What Kamlupa is is about three women who go to a powwow. I would encourage you all to go to a powwow. And this is the Kamlupa powwow. It's very big and kids are invited. And you can learn how to throw horns properly. And one of the great things about powwow now is they're getting a lot of two-spirit people involved in them as well. Not so much under the radar anymore because she won the Governor General's Award. And in her speech, she said she wanted to write Woman Who Are Full and Funny and Sexy. And the judges also agreed that it was subversive and irreverent and brilliant. One of the things that happened while she won was that 215 graves unmarked were found of Indigenous children at Kamlups. So Canada as a whole is going, oh my goodness, what is going on here? Not everyone in the Indigenous community, everyone knew about these things. But I wanted to say this became a huge thing for Kim because people started asking if he is an example of an American graveyard at schools. But Kim was asked, like, is this a time to be celebrating? And she said, you know what? Personally, I will not let the failures of white people any more Indigenous joy. And Kim is all about joy. Her plays are very joyful. And here are some of the things. One of the matriarchs in her own family is big to her is her mother who said that she won't watch the plays unless they are capital F funny. Kim's background is she did a lot of work as an actor and ended up with what she calls cry, die, trauma drama. And she decided that there needed to be more stories and more joy. And this play is very joyful. It has a great designer. She's also a fire creator, which means that she also takes responsibility for the well-being of all the people in their cast. And she actually creates moments on stage where people can get together and have connection during the plays. So a lot of what I found when I discussed these women was that they had big political manifestos and ethics as well. Here she is. Kim actually is getting theaters to write a treaty with her now. And so I'm not going to get you to read all that, but she has a treaty with Citadel Theater. This is her new show, Break Horizons. And she also is using a great Indigenous designer who I'd ask you to follow called Scarlet Delirium. One of the things I want to do is like Yolanda Bernal is one of the women who's in the show, but she's also a great writer herself. And she is interesting. She only wants Indigenous reviewers to review her work. She welcomes you at the door and she talks a lot about carrying emotional weight with her audiences. Quilemia Sparrow is a person who's worked as a director. This is one of her shows. And she created the Pipeline Project, which I would ask you to check out, which also had speakers in the second half, like from the community speaking. Lindsay Lachance, I'd encourage you all to get in touch with, she did her PhD on Indigenous dramaturgy. Lisa Ravensberg, as well, started the Anti-Racist Canadian Theatre Exchange. Margot Kane, we were talking at lunchtime about what is a matriarch, runs the talking stick in full circle. And some of you may know Monique Mojica and her work. I wanted to do a shout out for Fallon Johnson. Does CBC podcast. I'm getting my one minute warning. Thank you. This is Nyla Capontier who does Power Bootcamps, which are really fun and is doing an excellent play called Debt Section of a Mixed Heritage Woman coming up. And then Tara Bagan, who you will have seen at other LMDA conferences. I would ask you to check out. Abette Nolan, Renelta Alouk, working at the Bant Centre. Santy Smith, doing these great dance shows and Raven John representing the Two-Spirit Tricks the World. And also, I know you did computer games yesterday, Dr. Elizabeth Leponse. So you can follow me and you can follow Kim. I would just say follow Kim. And you can actually get my Indigenous dramaturgy guide, too, if you write to me. I'll put my, I put my email in the chat. Stay curious, as Michael I said, about Canada. There's a lot of amazing women and matriarchs, matriarchs in the making really doing great things. Thank you to all the grandmothers, mothers, aunties and sisters out there. And Kiora and Heitschke, everyone. Thank you, David. Appreciate all the playwrights you shared and all the artists that you shared. Wonderful information there. Thank you. That's all right. Please do get in touch if you want any of that information. I will personally be getting in touch with you. But yeah, we will try to share some of that information on our conference hub as well. So, what we can to make that happen as well. Thank you, David, for contributing and your willingness to share more. So. All right. Our next presenter is. Susanna bazillion. Thanks, Brian. I'll bring this up as soon as I can. Can you see that? Yes. Yes. I just prerecorded this. So I'm going to let it run. The best ideas come to you when you're involved in something else, like taking a shower. On a surface level, your brain is occupied with the mundane tasks of rinsing, weathering, and repeating. And all of a sudden, it's conscious. It's free to make connections that wouldn't have made if you were actively working on them. It's like the parable of stories of Newton getting hit on the head with an apple. And suddenly, everything clicks. And he firmly wants gravity or, or arpanies getting into the bathtub. And when seeing the water rise around him, puts it together, the water he displaced must be the same as the volume of this submerged body. Here we go. It was suddenly living, watching in every process, and then all of a sudden out of nowhere, it all comes together. Click. Inspiration. The shower principle. The words of Ariel Mitchell. Ariel Mitchell. This was an excerpt from her latest work, a parenting podcast play called The Shower Principle. It's a two-person series featuring a young couple engaging in life's greatest experiment, Parenthood. They navigate their new, unsteady world while finding what they can really hang on to. Ariel has written several other plays, including Give Me Moonlight. It's a play inspired by Scotty's Castle in Death. Another play is A Second Earth. A story about an Afghan girl who was raised as a boy but must then marry a man from which Ariel was awarded the KCACC, F. Harold and Mimi Steinberg 2013 National Student Playwriting Award. Ariel was also named a new musical in 2017 New Voices Project finalist and has been featured in several developmental opportunities such as the 2018 Colson Ornages Arts Theater Accelerator, the Dramatist Guild 2017 Baltimore Footlights Reading Series, 2016 Artists Bight Midrash Group, Prospect Theater Companies Fall 2015 Musical Theater Lab, and the Cash Walk Residency Program. Ariel's ability to translate her keen observations into dramatic text began in her sophomore year of high school. She then earned her BA in play writing with a minor in music in 2013 from Brigham-Biam University. While there she earned third place for the 2013 David Mark Cohen Award and the 2011 Vera Hinkley Mayhew Award. She then obtained an MFA in Musical Theater Writing from the Tish School at New York University. She has been published with Samuel French and had a production with T. H. M. L. Theater Company in 2019. A visit to Ariel's website reveals an array of full length and 10-minute plays, plus musicals she has written and seen produced. One thing you will not find there, however, is the latest regarding Ariel's project, a musical. She has engaged in preliminary work with female magician of the decade, Arion Black, whose research has uncovered the stories of more than 200 female magicians. They will be featured in Ms. Black's upcoming book whose pages are filled with their amazing historical stories and images. Ariel is excited about the richness and diversity of the characters selected for the show. She especially identifies with the heart of the central story, which is inspired by Ms. Black's own life. It's rooted in the love of two sisters who have been divided by life, but to become reconciled and reunited to illness, death, and humanity. And so the ghostly ladies of magic says of Ariel, she gets it. It's easy to give notes to, knowing she can trust her to come back with story and characters that meet the standard she is looking for. The show is filled with music, magic, and heart. Keep an eye out for this one, folks. It's going to be absolutely amazing. To keep up on Ariel's work or commission her services, please see her website at www.ArielMitchellWriter.com Thanks for listening. Great. Thank you, Suzanne. Appreciate it. It's like we got some new work happening there as well. All right. Let us go to our next and final presenter for today, which is Adrian Centeno. Adrian. Hello. My name is Adrian Centeno. I'm speaking from the ancestral lands of the Chumash, the Gavrilina Tongvo, the Fernandino, and the Quiche peoples. Today I'm talking about Amanda L. Andre. She is an award-winning Filipino-Romanian-American playwright healing from Virginia and currently residing in Los Angeles. Amanda's work considers the body as a site of struggle. In her stories, bodies are marked by iron, by skin color, by perceived and actualized notions of gender, race, sexuality, by history, ghosts, creatures, and by actions intentional and otherwise. This attention to the body is embedded in her artistic process, which she describes as quote, digging around and finding where it hurts, end quote. Her playmaking is used to diagnose and ultimately provide a sense of where the body is on stage. And if we're so moved, the work offers us a potential model for our own healing journeys. I first met Amanda through my dramaturgical work at the University of Southern California where she was at that time a first-year MFA student in dramatic writing. A year later, I was invited to serve as workshop dramaturg on her second play, Black Sky. We were already friends at that point, but we were crucial to this moment in the American theater. Here, I'll briefly highlight three of her works. In Black Sky, a dystopian near future where teens are conscripted into a nightmarish version of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and sent to manage climate catastrophe. Amanda invites us to consider what it means to come at of age in what feels like the beginning of the end. Fierce leader Kayhawk leads her team mission to repair a regional electrical grid in the Appalachian mountains when suddenly disaster strikes. Was it a solar storm? Maybe a test scenario meant to assess the team's readiness for greater challenges? Or perhaps there's a saboteur in their midst. This may sound grim, but it's a credit to Amanda's outstanding work that the piece is as beautiful, funny, and tender as it is existentially haunting. It's also the winner of the 2020 U.S. Prize and is currently under auction in New York City. In Lena Passes By, an epic fairy tale fantasy, Filipino-Romanian-American Lena Bala travels to her alien father's homeland of Romania to search for a magical cure that might save him. In one mesmerizing scene shortly after arriving Auntie Ursa informs Lena that to go on this journey, she'll need to strip herself of the source of her strength, her tattoos. She'll connect Lena to her ancestors, who she draws on for guidance in times of trial, and she fears she won't succeed without them. Auntie Ursa asks what she drew strength from in the time before she had the tattoos, to which Lena replies, quote, I've always had them in my skin, the needle and ink just revealed them for everyone else, end quote. One by one, painfully, she strips the tattoos away. She stops short one, she can't bear that one. She offers a compromise which is accepted and she ventures into the Romanian forest to seek the heart of a wolf. Finally, mama I wish I were silver. Mama I wish I were silver commissioned just last year by the vagrancy in Los Angeles, tells the story of three soon to be four generations of women in the Remedios family. In the very recent past we meet Sophia, anxiously entering her third trimester of pregnancy. The only thing causing her more anxiety is the imminent arrival of her estranged half-sister, Ariel who is adventurous, independent and Sophia's senior by 22 years. The two were never close as their mother Dia gave Ariel up for around birth for reasons unknown to the two. In the not so recent past, young Dia and her mother debate whether or not they should flee Manila before time runs out. Grandmother insists that Dia must flee for the sake of unborn Ariel but Dia's commitment to the revolutionary struggle roots her to the Philippine soil like a Nara tree. Before grandmother leaves she offers Dia maternal wisdom that in the moments between birth and contractions Dia will slip away to the spirit world to look for her child. Quote, you call her name I could have followed you you hope that she listens. There's an urgency in this work to tell the stories of ancestors that they didn't get to share or that were shared but have since been forgotten. To close, I'll quote the playwright who said it better than I could. Quote, it's not enough for this to be in a book. These stories have to exist in people's bodies. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. There's some great playwrights in these presentations and I appreciate all of you for presenting and sharing your love of these playwrights and I look forward to kind of checking out many of these if not all of these myself. So we had 10 new playwrights shared with you all today including many, many more from the presentations from David as well as Jackie. We definitely encourage you and hope that you all find their information and check them out. We plan to share some contact information for I hope all of these playwrights on our conference hub and feel free to reach out to them if you want to see their PowerPoint presentations or get more information about many of the others that they've mentioned overall. So thank you for your time today. At this point, I want to take a moment and see if there are any additional playwrights that people would like to share at this time. Maybe there are some that you have been working with over the past year or so especially as we are watching theaters open up slowly over these next few months or so. Maybe there are some playwrights that you've been working with during this downtime. Also, maybe looking into as we begin to figure out what playwrights should be next. We're seeing a lot of work from we're seeing a lot of productions that are obviously bigger productions, more popular productions but we definitely want to make sure that we're continuing to support the new playwrights as well as we are getting back into the theater and figuring out what kind of shows we want to do. So if you've got any playwrights that you would love to share at this time that might be under the radar or just getting some buzz. As you heard, a few of our playwrights here have been winning some awards recently over the last year or so including, it sounds like Kim got one last month. So please feel free to share that at this time. I'll give you a moment if you want to share that through the chat or Q&A see if we get any response that way. If our volunteers or anybody have years of any, feel free to share. Or if there are others that any of our presenters have in mind that would like to share. I do actually Brian. If that's okay. Last year I presented George Nelson and I was saying how his show was opening but it was delayed obviously because of COVID but it is launching this summer. If you go back to last year and look at his one sheet that was provided, you'll be able to see a video clip and get the updates on that show that's opening. Great. Thank you. Looks like Jackie shared info about her playwrights in the chat. Do you want to share more Jackie? Yes. A wonderful Philadelphia playwright named Alex Rosenfeld just got accepted into the American Jewish theater conferences mentorship program and so if you're looking especially for Jewish theater I'm going to put her information in the chat box as well and she actually worked to develop her new Jewish plays but she doesn't have to pull to stage them or anything like that so I'm sure she'll be looking for producers and other opportunities. Again that will be in the chat. That sounds great. Thank you Jackie. We'll look out for that information. I'm going to share a couple of things I'm seeing in the chat here. Adrienne shared Amanda's MPX info Amanda sharing her love of the work of Emilio Rodriguez some info there. It's the co-founder of Black and Brown theater company in the Detroit area so there's a couple links there to check out there and looks like Jihei mentioned I think it's Lyra Yang a mixture of mythical nature with storytelling and there's a web address LyraNelon L-Y-R-A-N-A-L-A-N .com Great, thank you. There's Alex's info and Suzanne I shared a link from what she talked about as well. Great, thank you everybody. I'd like to say something for a sec. Yeah, go ahead. One other playwright I'd like to mention is a woman named Caitlin Turnage. Caitlin now teaches at Texas State but she is an ex-charismatic Christian and writes from that perspective. She writes a lot about faith and aging. Faith in being in high school, faith in being in college faith and lesbianism and I don't know anyone who approaches faith A, so straightforwardly and B, from such a complex position because of her own positioning in her life and the work is Southern Gothic in addition to you know the subject matter she's handling it's I met her when I was drama turned at KCACTF where she won one of the 10-minute prize the 10-minute play which our play was a 19-minute 10-minute play but yeah, I don't know anyone who's doing what she does and she does what she does quite wonderfully so she's on a new play exchange look her up Caitlin Turnage, T-U-R-N-A-G Okay, great. Great, thank you Bray. Are you able to put the name in the chat? Great, thank you. All right, I'm going to share these last couple because we want to give some time for our announcement here at the end Jihei mentions representation of, I think it's Hei Young Guang that she presented a couple years ago and there's a new play exchange information for that playwright and then Amrita is shouting out Jasmine Sharma a playwright who recently graduated from Northwestern University she has a play, Radio Gradient a political drama that examines the power of complicity through three women's journeys uncovering the historical roots of a campus hate crime it had a profound impact on Amrita and she immediately connected with Jasmine to get to know her and her work more deeply she continues to find her plays authentic nuance and filled with memorable three-dimensional characters she has a website jasminesharma.org thank you, thank you for all of that Amrita, I appreciate it let's see Jackie is mentioning Infilii in the 2021-22 season Stephanie Kim Soon-Walters has a new play Esther Choi and the Fish that Drowned and that'll be produced looks like next season so if you're in town, let Jackie know and she'll get you a comp and she shares information there okay with that being said let us move on and I want to give a little bit of time to share an announcement and give some time for our final presenter to talk about a little bit more about it so I think Jihei is starting the video so I'm going to let Jihei do that thank you Jihei I hope that the sound came through for some of you but just to reiterate the LMDA 2022 conference will be in Philadelphia we are incredibly excited to host all of you here on the traditional lands of the LaNay-Lanape we have already begun putting together resources and program ideas and we're thrilled to have you join us a little bit of information about the conference coming up and this information will also be sent out on the listserv today so if you want to review it it'll be there for you the next LMDA conference will be July 21st through 24th 2022 in Philadelphia the traditional lands of the LaNay-Lanape and the theme will be theater in the wild performance outside the proscenium so we are talking burlesque, we're talking cabaret we are talking a lot of educational theater we're talking site specific work we're talking digital theater all of those wonderful types of performance and more will be covered I'm going to be the conference chair I'm Jacqueline Goldfinger most of you know me as Jackie G from Philly and I'm so excited to welcome you to our community I'm having English, Spanish and ASL interpretation available next year's conference having all that kind of interpretation does cost money we're going to have a packet we send out this fall about conference sponsorships if you or someone you know or organization you know you think might want to throw us a little bit of money and be a conference sponsor and get all kinds of special things and benefits I hope you'll let us know the sponsorship packet comes out for those of you you know have may be asking why this area why on these lands and it's a great vacation location you can come and do almost anything there's the historic district there is traditional performance there is the Lancaster beautiful Amish country there is we have a wine valley now believe it or not so we will be sending out information about Philly in the surrounding area if you want to build a vacation around your conference everything in the old city area as it's now called is accessible and updated to national park service standards it's one of the great things about having a conference in Philly is that because so much of our event spaces are run by the national park service especially in the old city district you're going to have all kinds of accessibility physical accessibility there's translation headsets all kinds of things which are going to be great and it's easy to maneuver there are hotels amenities and it's easy to access from out of town they're actually expanding our airport right now it's already an international airport but they've added two terminals and we will be coming a delta airline hub as well so by the time you guys are ready to come in you're going to be able to fly in from anywhere many many times a day of course we're also connected to the national highway system the national rail system and the buses and if you're coming from New York especially you can get a $3 bus ticket as long as you plan in advance we'll send out those links this fall with our planning packet what if I can't make it in person Philly sounds awesome but I don't know that I can actually physically make it there will there still be online content yes yes yes I love the accessibility that online content provides you'll be able to provide you'll be able to buy a virtual pass to access online resources and a limited number of presentations we are looking at getting an app specially made for us so instead of having to deal with 9 million links you would literally open the app and everything would be there for you when you need it super excited I know the interpreters need a break I apologize what I'm going to do is I am going to send out everything today on the listserv it'll be just a very 5 page with pictures and some information about what we already have planned for the 2022 conference and a timeline for when you can expect information from us about the conference so thank you so much thank you for letting me have this time thank you to the interpreters you're doing an amazing job and I will hand it back to you Brian thank you very much Jackie thank you for the presentation and for the information and look forward to the additional info that you'll share on the listserv and in the future as we work on coordinating and organizing the conference for next year so alright with that we are going to wrap things up but I wanted to take another minute or two to again thank our presenters during this session I want to thank you all for sharing your additional playwrights that you all are thinking about at this time I want to thank our volunteers and our translators as well as HowlRound for the live streaming today as I mentioned much of this information is going to be on the conference hub if you are not yet registered for the conference there is still time to get registered and I'm kind of putting on my president hat here but all the information from this session but as well as all the other sessions that are happening over these next two days we have a few more today and we have many more tomorrow will be available for those who register for the conference so please go to lmda.org and register for the conference there is additionally asynchronous information asynchronous content which has been available throughout this entire month and will continue to be for the rest of this month and maybe a little bit longer for you to check that out as well we also do have our conference in Mexico City at the end of the month and if you are not able to join us in Mexico City you can still get access to the content that will the presentations that will be happening in Mexico City as well we will make that available digitally as well so feel free to register for that as well with that all said thank you again for your time over this past hour or so thank you again presenters and all those who have assisted us during this session and will continue to do so throughout this week throughout this week and these next couple of days and we look forward to seeing you at future sessions and maybe even able to talk to you at the various conference happy hours at the end of today and tomorrow so with that take care everybody and be well and we will talk to you soon bye