Playwriting and Directing Cohort

Matt Thekkethala is a playwright and performer based in Austin, Texas. He writes absurdist comedies that are cheekily curious about our capacity to forgive one another. He has developed work with Pittsburgh New Works Festival, the Sewanee Writers Conference, and The NOLA Project. In 2020, he released Now More Than Ever, an episodic radio play / comedy album hybrid, on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Matt holds a B.A. in Political Science from Yale University and is currently pursuing a M.F.A. in Theatre (Playwriting) from The University of Texas at Austin's Michener Center for Writers.

Plays

ROM.COM

Malak, an estranged son, returns home to his dysfunctional parents with his new wife, Ai, a sex robot. His mother, Trishna, relishes having Malak home, but his father, Victor, remains suspicious of his new android daughter-in-law. Ai's uncanny presence unearths long-held family secrets, as all three fall under her cybernetic spell.

Adrien vs. Predator

Single mom Adrien falls hard for the gallant Fred when he saves her son from certain death. There's only one thing holding her back: Fred is a registered sex offender. A dicey rom-com about breaking all the rules, and forgiving the unforgivable.

Vultures Awakening

Draino, a corpse bearer, refuses to accept that his elderly cat Zara is dying. In his beloved feline's last days, Draino is forced to grieve her, his buried past, and his decaying world.

Chih-Ching Chester Tsai is a playwright/director from Taipei, Taiwan. He is currently pursuing a M.F.A. in Theatre (Playwriting) at The University of Texas at Austin. From 2019 to 2023, he served as the resident director at Tainaner Ensemble. Chih-Ching's writing mainly investigates the essence of individual and family identities under Taiwanese culture and intercultural contexts. His directing approach foregrounds the literary texts and incorporates multimedia and cross-disciplinary materials. His mission in theatre is to examine/explore specific cultural contexts and, in this specificity reveal the possibility of what it means to be human. Chih-Ching’s works have been produced by Tainaner Ensemble (Taiwan), The Funny Old Tree Theatre Ensemble (Macau) and Performosa Theater (Taiwan). His latest work, Dancing through Formosa (2023), a musical for which he wrote the book and lyrics, was produced by Tainaner Ensemble and National Theater and Concert Hall and has just finished a national tour in Taiwan.

Plays

Best Way to Eat a Cow

Three nameless women are imprisoned in a basement of a mansion and are asked to do nothing but chop cabbage. One evening, one of them sneaks out and brings back a cow. In an attempt to find out what is the best way to eat this cow that could effectively “maximize” their enjoyment, they imitate the pre-meal rituals of their imprisoners, Monsieur He and Madam She. However, it gets more and more dangerous as the “real” and the “performative” becomes intangible….

The Reunion Dinner

On New Year’s Eve, a homecoming of the youngest son stirs the traumatic memories of the Wei family. As the mother, daughter and son prepare for the coming reunion dinner, they engage in a story-telling race, competing for who has suffered the most from the absent father. During the performance, the actors cook at the same time. As the smell of New Year’s Eve fills the theater, The Reunion Dinner takes the audience to trip down the familiar memory lane.

Slipping through Fingers

This is a story about father and son of a Bodehi family troupe. Bodehi is a form of traditional glove puppet theatre in Taiwan, and its art relies mainly on the artist’s puppeteering crafts and improvisation skills. When an aging Bodehi puppeteer is faced with Dementia and imminent death, an artist who has devoted his entire life to the pursuit of this art form, how can he bear to say goodbye?

More info: https://www.chihchingtsai.com

Kaia L (they/she) is a Black queer playwright and memoirist from Murfreesboro, Tennessee. They're a current member of Ensemble Studio Theatre's OBIE-winning collective, Youngblood and a former member of Clubbed Thumb's Early-Career Writers' Group (2022-23). Their work has been seen and/or developed with The Fire This Time Festival, Fresh Ground Pepper, and Possibilities Theatre Company.

Plays

On Either Side of All the Late Unpleasantness

Clay County, Missouri, 1860. Civil war is brewing in the United States, and the nation’s turmoil has spread to the Pearson household. Eddie, an abolitionist, is firmly on the side of the Union; his brother Charlie sympathizes with the position of the southern states. As pressures mount inside and outside the home, the brothers feel they have no choice but to join the fight—on opposite sides. Their decision to go to war permanently alters the fabric of the family, and everyone--including the family's two slaves--has to face the consequences.

Killing Gloria

A woman named Gloria commits suicide. Her mother, father, boyfriend, priest-friend (a friend who's a priest), and psychiatrist are blindsided. They try to figure out what went wrong--where they went wrong. How someone they cared about could be gone.

A woman named Gloria is on life support, and the people she's left behind sit by her hospital bedside, alone and together, and try to sort out their grief. They try to figure out if they killed her--if they killed Gloria.

Rodolfo Robles Cruz (he/him) is a director, playwright and play-maker from Morelia, Michoacán Mexico with strong roots in Fresno, California. He is a Latinx Theatre Specialist holding knowledge and experience of Teatro Campesino, Theatre of the Oppressed and Devised Theatre. His work is visceral and highly physical; he has a keen interest in how bodies react on stage in both ensemble based work, or intimate small cast plays. Select credits include Oedipus el Rey (2022) with the Selma Arts Center; Anna in the Tropics (2023) with Madera Theatre Company; Sanctuary City (2024) with Texas Theatre and Dance. His original play, La Norteña, was the 2020 winner of Region 8's National Playwriting Program's One Act Category, and was most recently produced with Teatro Espejo in Sacramento, California. He graduated CSU, Fresno in 2020 and is currently a graduate student at The University of Texas at Austin pursuing a M.F.A. in Theatre (Directing). 

Director Reel: Directing Reel / Rodolfo Robles Cruz

Website for Production Photos: www.rodolforoblescruz.com

Nick Hart (he/him) is an alumni company member of Playmakers Laboratory, a non-profit theater and education organization serving Chicago Public School students. He performed regularly in their flagship show That's Weird Grandma for over a decade. He is also an alumni company member with The Neo-Futurists.  He has written and performed over 350 short plays for The Neo-Futurists for their flagship show The Infinite Wrench from 2015-2023.  He is the creator of The Neo-Futurists productions of Remember The Alamo, 60 Songs in 60 Minutes, and the co-writer of the Jeff nominated production of Wildcats with Ida Cuttler. Nick graduated from Columbia College Chicago with a BA in theater in 2010. He is an MFA playwriting candidate at University of Texas at Austin. Nick once challenged Charles Manson to a game of correspondence chess, but that terrible coward never even bothered to respond.

Plays

Wildcats

In 1960, Lucille Ball took to the stage in her very first Broadway musical. Despite having been on television for over a decade, she found herself extremely unprepared for the demands of live theater. In WILDCATS, power house duo Nick Hart and Ida Cuttler bring this moment in Ball’s career back to life, infusing into it their own personal stories of bursting out of isolation. WILDCATS is a multimedia drag spectacle with a mix of  live moments, audience interaction and bizarre-o filmed I Love Lucy episode recreations.

Remember the Alamo

In this world premiere production, an ensemble will take over The Neo-Futurist Theater, refuse to leave, and obstruct all production in the theater until the audience, actors and management work to recreate the Battle of the Alamo in its entirety, leading to its sad bloody conclusion. Created by Neo-Futurist Ensemble Member Nick Hart, Remember the Alamo is Neo-Lab’s 2017-18 commission.

60 Songs in 60 Minutes

Created by a team of experimental musicians and led by Ensemble Member Nick Hart. In a race against the clock, the cast attempts to perform all 60 original songs in under 60 minutes, using instruments, technology and found objects. Audiences are invited to stay for the post-show “Wrench Karaoke” which incorporates the Neo-Futurist tenets of chaos, randomness and chance into the act of singing your favorite song.

Mikala Gibson (she/her) is an award-winning stage and screen actor,  director, writer and scholar.  Her directing credits include Blood at the Root, A Maroon’s Guide to Time and Space (The Houston Press- Best New Play/ Production Finalist)  and Our Lady of the Sacred Part: Vulva Pope (B. Iden Payne Nominee -Best Digital Theatre Production).  As a 2nd year Theatre Directing MFA candidate at The University of Texas at Austin, Gibson is excited to direct  the upcoming UTNT production of These. Are. The. Keystrokes. Mikala has performed in over 30 stage productions including, The Piano Lesson (Giorgee Award- Best Supporting Actress), Gem of the Ocean (Fort Worth Weekly Magazine - Best Female Actor -Honorable Mention), Twelfth Night (ATAC Globe Nominee) and Picnic (ATAC Globe Winner - Best Supporting Actress). Although she has appeared on major platforms such as HBO, Showtime, BET, PBS, AMC and Netflix, Gibson is most recognized for her portrayal of “Doris” in season five of Fear the Walking Dead. Her film acting work has also been featured at the Cannes International Film Festival, Sundance, SXSW, Austin Film Festival, Urbanworld Film Festival and The American Black Film Festival, to name a few. She is the founder of The Black Artivist Collective, LLC and the host of the platform’s podcast.  Mikala is a member of Women in Film and TV Austin, SAG-AFTRA and Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated.  

Gabi Girón-Vives (She/They) is a 26 year old, transfemme nonbinary, and Texas/Los Angeles based multi-hyphenate theater maker and playwright. Her recent work history includes— directing the premiere of “Let Me In” as the debut production of the new SheDFW Theater Festival in 2024, Assistant Stage Managing "Elm Thicket" for Soul Rep Theatre Co./ATTPAC Elevator Project in 2024, writing and performing her one person show“The Last Puerto Rican…" at CalArts Latin Fest 2021, Dramaturgy for “Kubrick’s Aryan Papers,” at the REDCAT NOW Fest in 2021, and music for “Horse Play” at Coaxial Arts LA in 2021. She holds a BFA in Acting from the California Institute of the Arts and is currently a Michener Center for Writers MFA Playwriting Fellow at The University of Texas in Austin.

Plays

Sofia

High school can be a difficult place for any girl. Hormones raging, bodies changing… Indeed, Roxy has changed a lot in the past year. Her transition left her isolated and bullied by an obnoxious group of "Funny Boys," led by Ted Bishop, the star quarterback who used to be her best friend. Instead of living in the gym as your typical Texas cross-country runner like she used to, she now spends her lunches with the only group of Queer (and Queer adjacent) nobodies who go to Aledo High School. Together they form "The Squad," each with the expressed personal goal of helping the only out trans girl on campus. What that "protection" might entail shocks the newly bound Squad when Roxy asks them to give up something the group may not be ready for. Sofia is a play about love, community, and the sacrifices it takes to be true to ourselves.

the discreet charm of CEOs

Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos are reunited at a small, dank soundstage in Los Angeles to record a YouTube interview for an unspecified Condé Nast property. Much to the chagrin of Daria, the director, Sunny, the DP, and Lucky, the 1st AD, The rest of the criminally underpaid crew has walked out, seemingly in protest of 'recent actions' made by some in the trio. The interview begins as planned, but the balance of power between the CEOs and the underpaid crew twists when the CEOs realize that they all are mysteriously unable to leave the sound stage. Here is a farce of little consequence. A take on the new genre of "eat the rich" style commentaries, but with just a little more praxis.

hookup, A Fetish Dialectic 

Dave, a young man, meets with George--a married older man who has never had a tryst, for a classic internet hookup. Despite Dave continually disassociating out of the action and out of the 4th wall during sex through desperate soliloquizing of past trauma, things seem to be going well! Disturbed yet intrigued, George desperately tries to unravel the mysteries his new partner holds, at the cost of losing himself. 'hookup' is a tragic, absurdist dream play about the stranger within all of us.

Anthony Anello (he/him) is a graduate of NYU Tisch's Dramatic Writing program and a current MFA Playwriting student at UT Austin. He served as a Writing Advisor for Out of the Box Theatrics’ Off-Broadway and Drama Desk-nominated revival of Baby and has been a member of PlaygroundNY Writer’s Pool for the past three years. His work has been showcased at Playwrights Downtown, Rattlestick, the Cherry Lane, Loading Dock, the Tank, Dixon Place, Weathervane Theatre, and Murmuration Theater Company. Beyond the stage, he is the creator and host of his original reality-competition web-series, Fight or Flight (@fightorflightshow).

Plays

let's talk about anything else 

A group of friends escape to the Berkshires for a week-long getaway, almost a year after one of their member's untimely passing. A play about bugs, strangers in the woods, and the unrelenting grasp of guilt.

WannaBillions

An ambitious executive assistant is whisked off to the most expensive resort in the world by his billionaire mentor, employer, and lover. At the resort, the elite are able to role-play minimum wage jobs in a Wannado City replica (an indoor role-playing amusement center) as a form of humbling. A farcical meditation on wealth, power, and (net)worth, this play examines how we make ourselves larger (or smaller) than we are to succeed in a capitalist world.

A Dog Dies

Jenny and Daryl have a dog. His name is Toby. Toby is dying. But when the Vet says it is time to put the dog to sleep, Jenny decides she isn't ready to lose him.

You can find Anthony's plays on New Play Exchange.

Caitlyn Waltermire is a Kentuckian playwright/songwriter and MFA Playwriting candidate at UT Austin. She writes strange, expansive, pain-filled little things with lots of women and 1960s references. Since 2017, her plays have been developed and produced at the Midtown Theatre Festival (“Outstanding Ensemble Award”, nominated for “Best Music”), Leeds Center for the Arts, Seat of our Pants Theatre (“Judges’ Pick” and “Best in Festival”), WUKY Radio (commissioned alongside new work by NYT best-selling author Silas House), Colorado New Musical Festival, Hickory Community Theatre (“Pamela Livingstone Outstanding Ensemble Script Award”), and Greenbrier Valley Theatre, West Virginia’s state professional theatre. Persephone Palmer Steps Out will premiere in Theater for the New City’s 2025 summer season.  

Plays

Persephone Palmer Steps Out 

A nuclear family in the 90s, raising their son as a teenage boy and their daughter as a housecat. A play with a blizzard and a minotaur, about sexuality, motherhood, and how much of the world we'll sacrifice to protect (control) the ones we love (possess). 

by the beautiful beautiful sea

Laura takes a free art class instead of attending her little sister’s funeral. In the following weeks, silver scales sprout on Laura's legs and she develops a taste for raw fish. She recalls a mermaid book that her poet father read to them as children and confronts the nature of his relationship with his daughters. 

Dreary, Dearie

Adelaide is trapped in a black box theatre (or supermarket), rehearsing her one-woman show on opening night (or dinner with in-laws). After her husband, Tom, corrects a minor detail, he inserts himself into her play. They meet a stranger in the condiments aisle and four Actual Minutes expand into outer space, a British bomb shelter, a 60s variety show, and a superhero comic book. A play about the theatre of abusive marriage, billed as a one-woman show. Tom is a surprise. He always is.

https://newplayexchange.org/users/86180/caitlyn-waltermire.

Sunghyun Lim is an award-winning theatre director and playwright based in Seoul, South Korea. He creates plays to tear apart myths and fantasies, confront nasty realities and curse the distorted world we live in. He is the founder of the theatre group “Kkungjjak Project” and was a 7th-season member of “Hyehwadong 1”, a collective of young directors based at the small theatre “TheatreLab Hyehwadong 1” in Seoul. In 2023, he received the Best New Director Award at the 59th Dong-A Theatre Awards, the oldest and most prestigious theatre award in Korea. Selected credits include: Where is Jesus's Dick? (2017), Outspoken (2018), Samil-ro Changgo Theatre Consecration Service (2018), The Great Revival Service at the Namsan Arts Center (2020), Mother & Son (2021), Who the Hell Ate the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge? (2021), Muffin and Chihuahua (2022), Blooming (2022), The Rich Theatre (2022), Sogapalag (2023), Times Square (2024) and Macbeth (2024).

Maxine Dillon is a playwright and stage manager who is doing her part to Keep Austin Weird. Her plays include THE NEGROES HAVE RISEN (O'Neill NPC Finalist, BAPF Finalist), unbury your gays and Strange Flesh. Her work has been developed by Broad Theatre, Ground Floor Theatre and The Road Theatre. She is a proud alumna of GFT Writes and 24 Hour Plays: Nationals. Maxine graduated with a B.A. in English from Yale University, and she is a first year M.F.A candidate in Playwriting at the University of Texas at Austin.

Plays

THE NEGROES HAVE RISEN 

Welcome to the Edwards Estate, as presented by its Living History Interpreters - the group of Black twentysomethings who work there as plantation museum tour guides. As the work of giving costumed tours becomes too much, the Interpreters struggle to stay in character and remember their lines. That is, until they find evidence of a failed slave uprising that appears nowhere in the history of the estate and with it, the chance to make another kind of Living History.

unbury your gays 

At a sleepover the night before their first middle school dance, Sawyer declares she will kiss a Boy while the chaperones aren't looking. A pinky promise leaves Carolina with no other choice but to help. Meanwhile, a 19th century Necromancer unearths a Corpse and her last secret as she digs up the truth of what they were to each other. Historians will say They Were Really Good Friends.

Strange Flesh 

In the winter of 1674, Eleanor Bradshaw carries the secret of an unfathomable act. Her mother Rebecca and the venerable Reverend Mathews, with only their fears, begin to think the worst. As they edge nearer to the truth concerning an encounter in the woods, they all must confront the nature of desire and the way an unspoken thing becomes unspeakable.

Find Maxine’s plays at:

https://newplayexchange.org/users/42249/maxine-dillon

Eliza Frakes is a writer, theater artist, and educator. Her plays have been produced at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland, The Echo Theater in LA, CA, 21ten Theater in Portland, OR and St. Lydia's in Brooklyn, NY. Her screenwriting has been awarded by Wildsound Film Festival and BIFF, and her poetry and prose have been published by the Portland Review and Rocksalt Journal. She is currently a playwriting M.F.A. candidate at UT Austin.

Plays

Girl Time

Jocelyn has had a bad night. Like, a really bad night. She needs a little Girl Time. Luckily, she has a thousand dollars to burn and a babysitter with a drinking problem. Total win-win! This real-time dark comedy explores femininity, class, and accountability through cookies, hair braiding, and karaoke.

Certain Death and Other Considerations

The world will end in 80 years. Just enough time to have a baby! Certain Death and Other Considerations is a dark comedy grounded in eco-anxiety that follows two couples (and a surrogate) as they navigate bringing life into a dying world. 

https://www.elizafrakes.com/

Nathan Joe is a playwright and performance poet of Chinese descent, born and raised in Aotearoa (New Zealand), and currently based in Austin, Texas. His work often deals with the contested nature of belonging and desire as a Queer and East Asian body in a diasporic context. He was the 2020 National Slam Champion in his home country and winner of the 2021 Bruce Mason Playwriting Award (for outstanding emerging playwright in New Zealand). His work has been developed and staged across New Zealand and Australia. He is currently a M.F.A. in Theatre (Playwriting) candidate at The University of Texas at Austin's Michener Center for Writers.

Plays

Scenes from a Yellow Peril

The demure, soft-spoken and subservient East Asian has long populated the imagination of the Western consciousness: the model minority, the submissive schoolgirl, the kung fu master, the maths nerd. Taking a scalpel to these outdated and orientalist images, Scenes from a Yellow Peril violently smashes performance poetry, documentary theatre and political discourse together to create a kaleidoscopic vision of contemporary identity politics. A doom scroll disguised as a play.  

Losing Face

On Christmas Eve, a white man and his younger Chinese boyfriend are waiting for the older white man’s half-Chinese daughter to show up. What could go wrong?

In Losing Face, the domestic drama is deconstructed into a series of Groundhog Day-inspired failed reconciliations. A love story grappling with race, sexuality, love and fatherhood. 

& Other Personal Essays 

Hot off the release of his debut collection of personal essays, Gordon must confront the collateral damage he’s left in the wake of his success, including the friends, family and exes he’s implicated in his writing. & Other Personal Essays prods at the complexities and contradictions of mining your life for your art until there’s nothing left but scar tissue. 

nathanjoe.com 

KR Riiber (she/they) is a theater maker with a particular interest in the DIY approach. For 12 years she wrote/performed/directed over 300 short plays as a member of The Neo-Futurist Ensemble in Chicago, where she served as Artistic Director from 2020-2023. In 2017 she wrote her first full-length play, Tangles & Plaques, to critical acclaim. She was awarded the Creativity Connects grant from the National Endowment of the Arts for Tangles, which enabled them to tour the show and develop educational workshops for schools across the country. 

Plays

Tangles & Plaques 

Based on her experience working in an eldercare facility, KR leads a group of performers through an in-depth exploration of dementia. In this interactive show, Tangles utilizes proven therapeutic techniques on the audience, aiming to demystify what we know about this all-too-common condition.

www.krriiber.com 

Bennett Kirschner is a New Orleans-based playwright and director. Since co-founding Intramural Theater in 2015, he has directed and produced multiple site-specific and original plays throughout New Orleans. His original devising methodology, which has generated five of Intramural’s works, integrates free-writing exercises and improvised physical composition into nonhierarchical ensemble settings. As a playwright, his work tends towards dark comedy, touching on themes of the ills of consumerism, environmental politics, and the emotional price of compassion. Theatre credits include: The Bermuda Can Company by Intramural Theater (2024), The Trees by Agnes Borinsky (2024), CAVE by Intramural Theater (2023), The Canopic Jar of My Sins by Justin Maxwell (2022), The Cuck by Sam Mayer (2022), Apostles of Everest by Intramural Theater (2021) and What Difference Does It Make? by Deb Margolin (2015). He received his M.F.A. in Playwriting from the University of New Orleans in 2019, and sometimes he makes goofy music with his 12-piece funk band, TV Pole Shine.