Resident Playwrights

Piloted in January 2008, and launched in September 2008, the goal of the Resident Playwrights initiative is to grow and sustain the Bay Area as a vibrant and fertile center for new plays. Tailored towards the specific needs of local Bay Area mid-career playwrights and early career writers of exceptional talent, the Resident Playwrights Program is a three-year residency that provides resources for the pursuit of individual career goals and creative projects, increases the visibility of Bay Area writers, and fosters community. The six playwrights who comprised the first class of residents are now entering their second full year; and are joined in 2009/10 by four new members, who will also complete a three-year cycle. Playwrights meet regularly over 8 months of each year to advance new creative projects, with the support of PF Staff, studios and access to directors, dramaturgs and actors. The project is coordinated by PF's Staff Dramaturg, Maryanne Olson. For more information contact amy (at) playwrightsfoundation (dot) org

Resident Playwrights: 2009/10

Erin Bregman [Incoming Resident 09/10] is the recipient of the 2008-09 June Ann Baker Prize, a Dilling Yang Fellowship in Dramatic Arts, and is a 2009-2010 resident playwright at the Playwrights Foundation. She was also a finalist for the Princess Grace Award, and the Jerome Fellowship. Erin has had work produced or developed with Just Theatre, The Lark, the Playwrights Foundation, FuryFactory, UCSB New Plays Festival, and PlayGround, and has received commissions from the Magic Theatre/Sloan Foundation, Just Theater, and PlayGround (2009).

Eugenie Chan's plays include Kitchen Table; Daphne Does Dim Sum; Rancho Grande; Emil, A Chinese Play; Bone To Pick; Novell-Aah!; Pilgrim; Consent; Tour Sino, a radio play; and the original story and libretto for Snakewoman, an opera. Her work has been produced or developed on the East Coast at the Public Theatre, Ma-Yi Theatre, Pan Asian Rep, Perishable Theatre, Centenary Stage, Duke and Columbia Universities; in the Midwest at PlayLabs; in Seattle at the Northwest Asian American Theatre, the Group Theatre; Los Angeles at East West Players; and in San Francisco at the Magic Theatre, Cutting Ball, Thick Description, San Francisco Mime Troupe, Brava! For Women in the Arts, Opera Piccola/StageBridge, and the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. DAPHNE was produced this February at Centenary Stage. Bone to Pick was part of Cutting Ball’s 2008 Avant-Garde-a-Rama, and will be remounted during their current season. Current commissions: the Magic Theatre/Sloan Science Initiative, Cutting Ball/SF Foundation. Education: B.A., Yale in Literature. M.F.A., NYU in Dramatic Writing. She is a Resident Playwright at the Playwrights Foundation, New Dramatists, and an Associate Artist at Cutting Ball Theatre in San Francisco.

Christopher Chen [Incoming Resident 09/10] is a native San Franciscan. His play Into the Numbers premiered at the Beijing Fringe Festival in September 2009 (translated into Chinese), and won second place in the 2008 Belarus Free Theatre International Contest of Modern Dramaturgy (translated into Russian). It was previously featured at the 2007 Bay Area Playwrights Festival, The Lark, hotINK Festival, Theatre Mu, and Silk Road Theatre Project. Other plays include The Window Age (Central Works Theatre Ensemble, 2009), Anomienaulis (Bay Area Playwrights Festival, 2009) and Maya (Asian American Theater Company New Works Festival, 2004). Chris is the winner of a Ford Foundation Emerging Writers of Color Grant, and was a semi-finalist for both the Princess Grace Award and the O’Neill Conference. He is currently a member of the Magic Theatre Artist’s Lab and Asian American Theater Company. He is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley, and holds an M.F.A. in Playwriting from S.F. State.

Garret Jon Groenveld is a San Francisco based poet and playwright. The author of many plays, his work has appeared in BAPF 1999 (The Blood of Winter, now called The Absence of Birds) and 2004 (Missives). Missives premiered at Theatre Rhino in 2005 and will receive its New York premiere in March 2008 by Animated Theatreworks at 59E59, in no small part to his participation in the Sister Cities Project through the Playwrights Foundation. Missives was originally commissioned by PlayGround, which also commissioned the full lengths plays The Grand Divorce and his current play, The Serving Class. He has an MA in Poetry and an MFA in Playwriting from San Francisco State University and has worked with Edward Albee in his advanced workshop at the University of Houston.

Julia Jarcho is a playwright, director, and performer. Productions include Take me Away (Il faut brûler pour briller festival, Paris, 2007), A Small Hole (Performance Lab 115, FringeNYC, 2006), All I Do is Dream of You (Sophiensaele and English Theatre Berlin, 2006), Delmar (Berlin, 2005), The Highwayman (NTUSA performance space, Brooklyn, 2004), and Nursery (Young Playwrights Festival, Cherry Lane Theater, New York, 2001). She was a writer-in-residence at the 2002 Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference and won a Berrilla Kerr award the same year. She is board member of Young Playwrights Inc., a participant in Just Theater's New Play Lab, and a founding member of the New York-based playwrights' collective 13P.

Aaron Loeb [Incoming Resident 09/10] has had plays produced in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Ft. Worth, San Jose, Connecticut, Virginia Beach and Atlanta. He was won two “Best New Play” awards from the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle for his plays, First Person Shooter and Abraham Lincoln’s Big, Gay Dance Party, and seven Emerging Playwright Awards from PlayGround. His 10-minute plays have been extensively published. He is also an award-winning game designer. He has BfAs in Dramatic Writing and Dramatic Literature from New York University. He is also an award-winning game designer and CEO of Planet Moon Studios, a leading independent developer of videogames. Aaron is a member of the Dramatists Guild, Inc.

Peter Sinn Nachtrieb is a San Francisco-based playwright whose works include boom (TCG's most produced play 2009-10), T.I.C. (Trenchcoat In Common) , Hunter Gatherers (2007 ATCA/Steinberg New Play Award, 2007 Will Glickman Prize), Colorado, and Multiplex. His work has been seen off-Broadway and across the country including at Ars Nova, SPF, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Seattle Repertory, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Cleveland Public Theatre, Brown/Trinity Playwrights Rep, Wellfleet Harbor Actor’s Theatre, Dad’s Garage, and in the Bay Area at Encore Theatre, Killing My Lobster, Marin Theatre Company, Impact Theatre, and The Bay Area Playwrights Festival. He is under commission from South Coast Rep, A.C.T., and is a Resident Playwright at the Playwrights Foundation, San Francisco. Peter holds a degree in Theater and Biology from Brown and an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. He likes to promote himself online at peternachtrieb.com.

Tanya Shaffer's [Incoming Resident 09/10] plays and original solo performances include Baby Taj, Let My Enemy Live Long!, Brigadista, Miss America’s Daughters, and The People in the Park. Her work has been produced by TheatreWorks, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, San Diego Repertory Theatre, A Contemporary Theatre (Seattle), and has toured to more than forty cities in the U.S. and Canada. She also co-wrote Social Work for the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Tanya’s play Baby Taj was selected by the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News, and the Oakland Tribune as one of the Top Ten Shows of 2005, and will be published this year by Samuel French, Inc. Tanya is also the author of the book Somebody’s Heart is Burning: A Woman Wanderer in Africa, which the San Francisco Chronicle selected as one of the Best Books of 2003. She is currently at work on Sid Arthur, a musical collaboration with composer Vienna Teng. Tanya has received Bay Area Theatre Critics’ Awards and been nominated for an American Theatre Critics Association Steinberg Award. Visit her online queendom at tanyashaffer.com.

Brian Thorstenson's plays include: Shadow Crossing (Central Works Theater Ensemble), DROP (Alternative Theater Ensemble), Tuesday (a collaboration with Stephen Pelton Dance Theater), Summerland (Alternative Theater Ensemble, 2000 Bay Area Playwrights Festival, 2000 Z Space Festival of New Performance, Wings Theatre Co., NYC, published in the anthology Plays and Playwrights 2002), and Over the Mountain (2003 Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Z Magic Monday, Tournesol Residency, The Global Age Project) . His radio adaptation of Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here was broadcast nationally on the Pacifica Radio Network. His new play Wakefield; or Hello Sophia will open in February 08 at Central Works and his work will be part of Stephen Pelton Dance Theater’s 15th Anniversary season in June 08. He is a lecturer at San Francisco State University and Santa Clara University. He received a B.A. in Theater from Willamette University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. He lives in San Francisco.

Marisela Treviño Orta received an MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco. Her first play Braided Sorrow was read at the 2005 Bay Area Playwrights Festival, the 2006 [Inside] the Ford Summer Reading Series and won the 2006 Chicano/Latino Literary Prize in Drama. Currently Marisela is working on American Triage, a play commissioned by Marin Theatre Company; Ghost Limb, a new play in development with Just Theater's '08 Play Lab; and Woman on Fire, a play commissioned by the Latino Playwrights Initiative. Her poetry has appeared in BorderSenses, Double room, 26: A Journal of Poetry and Poetics and Traverse.