NGOZI ANYANWU. Education: University of California San Diego’s (MFA Acting), Point Park University (BA). Acting: The Mark Taper Forum, La Jolla Playhouse, Rattlestick Theatre, “The Deuce,” “DeadBeat,” “Law & Order: SVU,” “Women Who Kill.” Playwrighting: Good Grief, Nike and The Homecoming Queen. Good Grief (Kilroy’s List 2016, semi-finalist, Princess Grace) was presented as part of the Rising Circle Collective’s 6th annual Ink Tank. Most recently, Good Grief won the Inaugural CTG/Humanitas Playwrighting Award and had a world premiere at the CTG/Kirk Douglas Theatre in the 2016-2017 season. Nike (Kilroy’s list 2017) was recently presented as part of the National Black Theatre’s Keep Soul Alive Monday Reading Series and The New Black Fest in conjunction with The Lark Playwrighting Development Center. The Homecoming Queen(2017 Kilroy’s List, Leah Ryan Finalist) was developed at Space on Ryder Farm, The Fire This Time’s Inaugural’s Writers group, Page 73’s summer residency, The New Harmony Project, Rattlestick’s actors/writers Lab and New York Stage and Film. Anyanwu is also a recipient of the Djerassi Artist Residency, as well as Space on Ryder Farm, LCT Playwrights Residency and The Founders Award with New York Stage and Film. Anyanwu is currently commissioned by The Old Globe and Atlantic Theater Company.

GUADALÍS DEL CARMEN is an Ars Nova Resident Artist and Co-Artistic Director of the Latinx Playwrights Circle NYC. Her plays include Not For Sale (UrbanTheater Company, Jeff Award New Play Nominee 2019), My Father’s Keeper (part of Steppenwolf Theatre’s The Mix, The Kilroys Honorable Mention 2019), Bees and Honey (The Kilroys List 2019, LAByrinth Theater/The SOL Project 2020 production postponed due to COVID-19), Daughters of the Rebellion (Montclair State University 2019, The Kilroys Honorable Mention 2017, 50Playwrights Project Best Unproduced Latinx Plays 2017), A Shero’s Journey or What Anacaona and Yemayá Taught Me (Yale Magazine 2019, The Parsnip Ship Podcast Season 4), Blowout (Aguijón Theater 2013). She has performed as an actor in Chicago, NYC, and most recently The Repertory of St. Louis in Luis Alfaro’s Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles.

RICARDO COKE-THOMAS. Hailing from London, England, Ricardo landed in the US in 2018, leaving behind a budding career on London’s West End; playing roles such Simba in Disney’s The Lion King, Donkey in Shrek, The Musical for DreamWorks, Tyrone Jackson in Fame and Lucky Gordon in the world premiere of the musical Stephen Ward composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Now a swing and understudy on The Book of Mormon, both the Broadway & National Tour sectors, Coke-Thomas has gone on to thrive on American soil, while continuing to run Square Mile Management; a boutique theatrical agency he founded in 2013, in the heart of London, representing performers in all aspects of show business.

A proud Alumni of Middlesex University and Sylvia Young Theatre School. His love for performing led him to the world of education, where he taught dance and Audition Technique at Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts in London for 6 years.

Other favorite credits include Hairspray, Fela!, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, One Love: The Bob Marley Musical, The Pajama Game, Oliver, A Chorus Line, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat both on stage and on film alongside Donny Osmond. Films: Age of Ultron, Gulliver’s Travels.

JESSICA FREY is an actor/singer/writer/comedian/teacher located in NYC. She has had the pleasure of teaching with Atlantic Acting School, with Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festivals teaching artist program, and as private acting and on camera coach. Some favorite acting credits include: Sense & Sensibility, Bedlam (in both the Off-Broadway and ART productions); Clown Bar and Giant Killer Slugswith Pipeline Theatre Co; Pride & Prejudice (Lizzy Bennet) with Dorset Theatre Festival; All’s Well That Ends Well (Helena) and King Lear (Cordelia) with Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival; Twelfth Night (Viola), Esperance Theater Company. Film/TV: “The Characters” (Netflix); “BASIC WITCH” (star and co-creator). (NYT Critic’s Pick). She’s also a proud member of Partial Comfort Productions, Pipeline Theatre Co, and the award winning sketch group, Uncle Function. She got her BFA from NYU/Atlantic Acting School. jessicafrey.com

KAREN KOHLHAAS is a New York-based theater director, teacher, author, and filmmaker. Director: Karen is a founding member of Atlantic Theater Company, where her credits include mainstage and Atlantic Stage 2 productions by Harold Pinter, David Mamet, Annie Baker, Keith Reddin, Shel Silverstein and Kate Moira Ryan, and shorts by Hilary Bell, Joe Penhall, Kia Corthron, and many others. She has also directed for the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater, Naked Angels, Ensemble Studio Theatre, New York Live Arts, 24 Hour Plays on Broadway, the Alley Theatre, Houston, New Dramatists, Menagerie Theatre in Cambridge, UK, The Culture Project, Practical Theater Co. in Sydney and others. Teacher: Karen has over 30 years teaching experience and is a senior teacher at Atlantic Acting School. She teaches her own NYC classes in The Monologue Audition; Fearless Cold Reading & Audition Technique; Advanced Acting; and Directing. She has taught guest workshops around the country and internationally including USC, Drama, Inc of Atlanta, Austin Shakespeare, University of Houston’s 3-summer MFA in Theater Education, Florida International University, Theater Educators of Texas Association, Oklahoma City University, University of Central Oklahoma, Colorado College, Seattle University, Baldwin Wallace University, the University of the South at Sewanee, Rose Bruford College, UK and others. She also teaches Monologue Teacher Training to university and high school teachers. Author: Karen’s books and DVD are The Monologue Audition: A Practical Guide for Actors (foreword by David Mamet and a Backstage Must-Read); How To Choose A Monologue For Any Audition; The Monologue Teacher’s Manual; and, The Monologue Audition Video (DVD). Filmmaker: Karen’s short films include two with acclaimed performer/playwright Taylor Mac, several short documentaries, and she is currently finishing a feature documentary about Tennessee Williams in the Mississippi Delta. (TennWmsDelta.com). She is the founder and curator of the Tennessee Williams Rectory Museum in the former Clarksdale, Mississippi rectory rooms once occupied by Williams and his family (TennesseeWilliamsRectoryMuseum.com), and co-director of the Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festival (DeltaWilliamsFestival.com).

Jacquelyn Landgraf acts, writes, and directs across various mediums and genres, and recently moved from New York City to Los Angeles. Jacquelyn is the creator and writer of the serial fiction podcast It Makes A Sound on the Night Vale Presents/PRX network, and the voice of Deirdre Gardner. She produced (with sound engineer Vincent Cacchione and composer Nate Weida) the original soundtrack album of the show, Wim Faros: the Attic Tape, which charted on iTunes and Amazon in its debut week. She has been a podcast panelist at Austin Film Festival, IFC Center, and the NYPL Performing Arts Library. As an actor, she has performed and toured extensively on Off-Broadway, downtown, cabaret, and regional stages. She is an alumna of the New York Neo-Futurists, the prolific writer/performers of Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind and The Infinite Wrench. Jacquelyn is on the acting faculty of Atlantic Acting School in New York City, where she is a Master Teacher of Practical Aesthetics. She taught Script Analysis for Atlantic’s NYU Studio, working intensively with the Tisch School of the Arts undergraduate actors for nearly fifteen years. Jacquelyn frequently works on project development with screenwriters, playwrights, and directors, including as script/creative consultant to Bank Street Films. She teaches performance and writing workshops throughout the country and internationally, including: Williamstown Theatre Festival, The Austin Film Festival; The United States Department of State; Brave Studios, Melbourne, Australia; Hollins University M.F.A. Dance Residency in Berlin, Germany; Roadmap Writers; The Susan Marshall Dance Company; Brooklyn College; NYU Gallatin; Boston University; London’s Central Film School; and Improv Olympic West. Her short plays and writings are published in 225 Plays by the New York Neo-Futurists, How To Be A Grown Up: the Complete and Definitive Answer, and Loose Lips.

ANNIE MacRAE is Atlantic Theater Company’s Associate Artistic Director. MacRae previously worked in Manhattan Theatre Club’s literary department. She ran MTC’s Ernst C. Stiefel 7@7 Reading Series and MTC’s partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. She featured work by Annie Baker, Amy Herzog, Ayad Akhtar and Matthew Lopez in MTC’s reading series. Through the Sloan Foundation, MacRae commissioned a range of American, British, Australian and Irish writers, including Lucy Kirkwood, Simon Stephens, Nick Payne and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.

TATIANA PANDIANI is a NYC based director-choreographer and writer who works in English and Spanish. Her work combines live performance, dance, and music to challenge and entertain; it is inspired by the legacy of Maria Irene Fornes, Frida Kahlo, Pina Bausch, Bob Fosse, and Bertol Brecht. She serves as the Associate Director for the First National Broadway tour of What the Constitution Means to Me by Heidi Schreck which recently closed on Broadway. Recent: When My Mama was a Hittite By Melis Aker (Park Theatre, London), Christina by Alexis Sheer (Cleveland Playhouse, workshop), Dike by Hannah Benitez (Urbanite), Friends with Guns by Stephanie Alison Walker (NYTW, workshop), Nanas by Leonardo Gonzales (IATI, La Micro). Tatiana directed the international tour of La Negrophilie by Zakiya Markland (Frank Collymore Hall, Bridgetown, Barbados; Ubumuntu Festival, Kigali, Rwanda; Kampala International Festival, Kampala, Uganda). As a choreographer, Tatiana develops and produces concerts & music videos with Latin Indie music artists. She has developed Azul, Otra Vez [Blue, Revisited] at Musical Theater Factory, Tofte Lake, NYTW, BRIC, The Drama League. She is also developing new plays with Alexis Scheer, Melis Aker, Monet Hurst-Mendoza, Hannah Benitez, Whitney White and other exceptional writers with the support of institutions such as Long Wharf Theater, Cleveland Playhouse, Urbanite Theater, NYTW, Miami New Drama, Westport Country Playhouse, Pipeline Theatre Co.,The Park Theater (UK). These collaborations are her favorite part of the work. Upcoming: Torera by Monet-Hurst Mendoza (Long Wharf Theater),  LEMPICKA (Associate Director to Rachel Chavkin, La Jolla Playhouse), Whitewashed by Hannah Benitez (Island City Stage) and many stops of the Constitution tour. Tatiana is an adjunct professor at Hofstra University, a Teaching Artist at the Atlantic Theater Company and an Associate Artist at Miami New Drama. She is an alumna of the NYTW 2050 Fellowship, and a 2018 recipient of the National Directors Fellowship. MFA: Columbia. Proud Member of SDC. Representation: Paradigm Talent Agency. tatianapandiani.com

HEATHER RAFFO is an award-winning playwright and actress whose work has taken her from the Aspen Ideas Institute to the U.S. Islamic World Forum in Qatar, and from The Kennedy Center in D.C. to classrooms nationally and internationally.  Her work has been supported by the State Department, Doris Duke, Mellon and Annenberg Foundations and has been seen off Broadway, off West End in regional theater and in film.  An American with Iraqi roots, Raffo’s plays have been hailed by The New Yorker as “an example of how art can remake the world”.   She is the author and performer of NOURA (Weissberger Award, Helen Hayes MacArthur award Best Original New Play) which premiered in D.C. before moving to Abu Dhabi, Cairo, NYC and theaters across the nation, and 9 Parts of Desire (Lucielle Lortel award, Blackburn commendation, Helen Hayes, Drama League and Outer Critics Circle nomination) which ran Off Broadway for nine months and has played across the U.S. and internationally for over a decade.  9 Parts of Desire was the first play in the English language to feature an Iraqi female protagonist and its commercial success helped birth a whole new genre of Middle Eastern American theater.  Raffo’s libretto for the opera FALLUJAH, the first opera about the Iraq war and the first to openly confront the alarming rates of veteran suicide, was part of Kennedy Center’s International Theater Festival, received its world premiere at Long Beach Opera and opened at New York City Opera in 2016.  A film of the opera aired on PBS accompanied by a documentary titled Fallujah: Art, Healing and PTSD.  Her forthcoming anthology, The Things That Can’t Be Said, will be released in 2021 and brings together Raffo’s groundbreaking contribution not only to the American Theater but to a deeper national conversation, giving voice to nearly two decades of rarely examined traumas that have reshaped cultural and national identity for both Americans and Iraqis since the events of 9/11.

LLOYD SUH is the author of The Chinese Lady, Charles Francis Chan Jr.’s Exotic Oriental Murder Mystery, American Hwangap, The Wong Kids in the Secret of the Space Chupacabra Go!, Jesus in India, and others, produced with Ma-Yi, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Magic Theatre, NAATCO, Children’s Theatre Company, ArtsEmerson, Milwaukee Rep, Denver Center, and others, including internationally at the Cultural Center of the Philippines and with PCPA in Seoul, Korea. He has received support from the NEA, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, NYFA, NYSCA, the Helen Merrill Award, the Lilah Kan Red Socks Award, the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, the Horton Foote Prize, and the Guggenheim Fellowship. An alum of Youngblood and the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, he served from 2005-2010 as Artistic Director of Second Generation and Co-Director of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab. He is a Resident Playwright at New Dramatists, served from 2011-20 as Director of Artistic Programs at The Lark, and was elected in 2016 to the Dramatists Guild Council.

AWOYE TIMPO. Regional theater: Paradise Blue at the Long Wharf Theatre. Off-Broadway: Good Grief at Vineyard Theatre; The Revolving Cycles Truly and Steadily Roll’d at Playwrights Realm, The Homecoming Queen at Atlantic Theater. Other theater: Carnaval at the National Black Theater; Sister Son/ji at the Billie Holiday Theatre; The Vanished at site-specific locations; Skeleton Crew at Chester Theater Company, Ndebele Funeral at 59E59, the Edinburgh Festival/Summerhall, and South African tour. Additional credits: Timpo is the producer of CLASSIX, a series exploring classic plays by Black playwrights. She received her M.A. from the University of London/British Institute of Paris.