Meet the Full-Length LAB Members!

2024-2025 Women’s Work Full-Length LAB Members.

Gena Bardwell

Joan CAstagnone

Joan Castagnone earned her MA in English and Creative Writing from the University of North Dakota. She received an ATA award for an adaptation of The Three Sisters for the Drama Department’s main-stage and had a number of her plays produced throughout the state. A former playwright member of the Women’s Project, she was invited to New York for the development and reading of her full-length, Blackbirds, as part of their Midwestern Voices Project. She has published poetry and short fiction in over twenty quarterlies and literary magazines and was the founder and editor of Bloodroot, a literary magazine dedicated to the publication of women writers and artists. Joan was one of the first abridgers at Random House Audio Books. During a long hiatus from the creative writing life, she worked in corporate communications and, later, as an acquiring/ developmental editor at Church Publishing Inc. She was selected for the WW Short Play LAB in 2014, with her short play Occupy Bronxville produced in the ON THE MARGIN festival that year. Her play LEDA'S CHILDREN was featured in the 2019 WW May Mini-Fest, and recently received an in-depth workshop process for further revision.

Jennie Contuzzi

Jennie Contuzzi is the Managing Director of Speranza Theatre Company and a long-time member of NPTC's Women’s Work Full Length Lab. Recent shows for Speranza include A Chain Around the World, Votes for Women, Unveiling Liberty (co-written by Charlotte Rahn-Lee), History Alive: The Revolution Comes to Jersey City, and Women Rising: Stories of Hope. Jennie holds an MFA in Playwriting from The New School for Drama.

daphne Greaves

DAPHNE GREAVES is a playwright living in New York City. Her play Day of the Kings had its world premiere at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia and was directed by Susan Booth. It is published by Dramatic Publishing. She was a co-author of The Audience which was produced by Transport Group and was a nominee for a Drama Desk Award for best new musical. Other plays include, The Men, Killing Time, Good Lessons from Bad Women, and Crash! From staged readings to workshops and full productions she has worked with such organizations as The Public Theater, Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, The Lark, Women’s Project, StageWorks and others. Her radio drama The African Grove aired on National Public Radio. Daphne has a BFA in acting from New York University and was a Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwriting Fellow at Juilliard where she worked with Christopher Durang and Marsha Norman.

deniz khateri

Deniz khateri is a multidisciplinary artist (actor, director, playwright, shadow puppetry artist and animator) based in New York. Her works experiment with form and focus on memory, grief, immigration and the concept of home. Deniz has performed extensively in Tehran, Boston and New York and her plays have been performed in several national and international festivals. She has designed and directed international shows and shadow puppetry visuals for opera companies & contemporary classical composers. A NPTC playwriting lab resident and former artist in residence at Center at West Park, she has trained in master classes with prominent international artists including Peter Brook, Krymov, Paul Zaloom and Gardzienice theatre company of Poland. She is an adjunct lecturer at Hunter college and Queensborough Community College of CUNY. Deniz is also the recipient of a NYSCA-funded NYFA award for her Oscar-qualified documentary animated web series, “Diasporan”, for which she is the writer, director, animator and singer and explores the daily struggles of immigrants. (www.denizkhateri.com)

Alison Lowenstein

Alison Lowenstein is a playwright, freelance writer, and author of children’s books, and guidebooks. Her plays have been produced in New York and California, including productions and readings at the Abingdon Theatre’s Benefit Challenge, LIC One Act Festival, San Diego Center for Jewish Culture Short Play Festival, and many others. Her writing has been published in The Washington Post, Brooklyn Magazine, Success Magazine, Huffington Post, Fiction, Lilith, Narratively, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, TravelandLeisure.com, NY Daily News, and other publications and websites. Alison leads creative writing workshops for the New York Writers Coalition and is a lecturer at Hostos Community College. Alison is also a ghostwriter and has worked on many non-fiction books. She’s currently working on a book of short stories and a play.

Lynn Marie Macy

LYNN MARIE macy– Recent: Sister Resisters, (Luna Stage Short Play & Equity Library Theater Festivals), Three Seasons NJ 1 Minute Play Festival, Lady Susan, A Jane Austen Bodice Ripper (Reading, Theater 2020), Doubt & Deliberation (Reading, Theater for the New City), script commissioned by JASNA. Productions: Northanger Abbey, A Romantic Gothic Comedy (Distilled Spirits, Blue Room Theatre & Theater Ten Ten, published by New York Theatre Experience in Playing with Canons, Explosive New Works From Great Literature); Innocent Diversions, A Christmas Entertainment with Jane Austen & Friends(Distilled Spirits, Theater Ten Ten), A Thousand Merry Conceits, A Private Audience with Nell Gwyn (Theater Ten Ten, Bedlam Theatre, Edinburgh Fringe), Crunching Numbers (Distilled Spirits, published in Plays and Playwrights for the New Millennium), and a translation of Schiller’s Intrigue & Love (Jean Cocteau Repertory). Macy is Resident Playwright at Theater 2020 and a Member of the Dramatists’ Guild. She wrote The Color of Justice for the 2018 festival, RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, which has been subsequently produced in New Jersey and Louisiana festivals. Her new full-length, The Last Transit of Venus, is in progress in the LAB

Michele A. miller

Michele a. miller is a writer of plays, screenplays, fiction, and occasional poems who also makes a living writing grants and other documents for her non-profit clients. Many of her plays have centered on simultaneously strong and vulnerable women trying to thrive in a turbulent world. Michele’s first full-length play, Real Estate, was a semi-finalist in the 2002 American Theatre Coop Playwriting Contest and received readings at Women's Project Theatre, Word of Mouth and Vital Theatre. Her one-act, Products of Conception, was produced as part of the Estrogenius Festival in 2003, the Strawberry Festival in 2004, and was a 2012 semifinalist for Eden Prairie Players Collection of One-Acts. Her full-length comedy Bedtime Stories, was produced at Manhattan Theatre Source in 2004. Her short play Power Girls Support Group was developed and produced by the New Perspectives Theatre Company (NPTC) in 2008 and 2011 and at the Pied Piper Theatre Company in 2019. NPTC also presented a showcase of her full-length comedy, Mother of God! at the Richard Shepard Theatre in 2011. MOG! was developed in NPTC's Women's Work LAB. With that play, Michele was also a finalist in the 2010 Princess Grace Awards. Her one-act comedy, Crazy for you, Baby was a finalist in the 2012 Estrogenius Festival and has since been read by numerous other theatre companies. During the pandemic Michele’s short plays have been featured in numerous virtual festivals and readings, including with Primary Stages (Detention 50), Naked Angels (Tuesdays@9), Theatre Resources Unlimited (TRU Speak), Fringe Black Box Festival, The Drawing Board and ScriptRead. Audio plays of her work have also been featured on the On Stage/Off-Stage podcast and (upcoming) The Theatre of Others podcast. The 2021 short film based on her play, Change of Plans, is an award winner of the Paris International Shorts Festival, finalist in Berlin Shorts, and semi-finalist in London Indie Shorts and San Francisco Indie Shorts Festivals, and recently screened at the Chelsea Film Festival and Diversity at Cannes Film Festival. Her new full-length play, A Final Toast, currently in development in the WW LAB, was a semi-finalist at the 2021 Garry Marshall New Works Festival. Michele is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, the League of Professional Theatre Women, and NPTC's Women's Work LAB.

Joanna Pickering

JOANNA pickering is an award-nominated writer, playwright, and actress. Her trilogy Truth, Lies and Deception, played to sold out houses in Paris at Le Pave D'Orsay in 2021, earning national press and strong reviews. The trilogy is published by Next Stage Press alongside a roster of Tony award-winning and debut playwrights, and was first performed as a staged reading with Dan Lauria ("The Wonder Years") and Caroline Aaron ("The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel") in NYC. Joanna has been awarded a full scholarship to adapt her play Beach Break as a mini-series with mentor Kelly Edwards, VP of HBO talent development and programming. It was a top five finalist radio broadcast for HBO's ITV 2018 and aired on British radio. Joanna’s debut film Boardwalk was screened in 2018 at The Anthology Film Archives (NY), and was nominated for best film and best suspense thriller at NYC Web Festival, 2019. Joanna has written for the stage with Primitive Grace Theater ensemble since 2018 and is a current member of Theatre 68, The International Centre of Women Playwrights and The League of Professional Theatre Women. She has also worked as a script doctor and consultant for some of the industry's leading talent and award-winning scripts. An activist and participant speaker for UN Create2030, Joanna is represented by 3 Arts Entertainment.

AMALIA OLIVA ROJAS

Amalia Oliva Rojas is a Mexican poet, performer and theater artist raised and based in Nueva York. Her work centers and archives the stories, myths, and legends told by her family, her community, and fellow immigrant women. She is a proud alumnus of the Vassar College Powerhouse Theater Apprentice Program and CUNY Lehman College. Residencies include Pen America's DREAMING OUT LOUD fellowship, NPTC's Women's Work Short and Full-Length Play Labs, NYU Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics, EmergeNYC Program, Culture Hub's Thriving Changemakers, Beam's Center Lighthouse Artist Residency at Governors Island, among others. In February 2023 her Women's Work-developed script, How to Melt ICE, was produced by NPTC with Boundless Theatre Company. Amalia received the 2024 LATA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Playwriting and the play was also nominated for an HOLA Award for Best Production. Previously, an excerpt of her play A Step-by-Step Guide on How to Succeed in the Myth-Making Business was produced by Lehman College. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Playwriting at Columbia University as an inaugural Lily's Lorraine Hansberry Fellow and as the recipient of the Dean Carol Becker Scholarship.

Jane Denitz smith

Jane Denitz Smith resides in western Massachusetts. Most recently, an excerpt from her work-in-progress The Village Beautiful was performed in NPTC's May Mini Fest. My Own Flesh and Blood received a staged reading in Hudson, NY and Our Lady of Broad Street, which began at NPTC's Short Play Lab (Melody Brooks: Dir.), was in Road Theatre’s Summer 2021 Playwrights Festival and at Festival de Teatro Alternativo in Bogota, Colombia. I Am, You Are, We Were saw a staged reading at Berkshire Voices/Berkshire Playwrights Lab, and her short musical, The Marrow in the Bone, workshopped at Barn Arts Collective. Additional credits: collaboration with Workshop Theatre (NYC), Tiny_Theatre, Capital Region 24-Hour Theatre Project, Boston Theatre Marathon, Philadelphia Primary Stages, Curio Theatre. From 2013-2022, she was a Playwright in Residence for Barrington Stage Company's Playwright Mentoring Project, a collaboration of theater artists and under-served teens. Additionally, Jane published three YA novels with HarperCollins. Website: www.janedenitzsmith.com

uzunma udeh

UZUNMA UDEH is a writer/actor/former D1 athlete/almost pageant girl based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been presented at Riant Theatre, Manhattan Repertory Theater, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, and the Corkscrew Festival. More recently, she co-wrote the short film Valid Glitter, which recently debuted at the Greenpoint Film Festival, and was shown at Tallgrass Film Festival and Chicago International Children’s Film Festival. Her latest short film Me, Myself, vs. I will debut as part of the 2023 NYC Indie Theatre Film Festival lineup. Her voice has been described as “strong” and “unique”, and she considers that the highest compliment.

emily welty

EMILY WELTY is an artist and activist in Rockaway Beach. She has worked with The Civilians, the Acting Studio, Chelsea Rep, The New Group, the Bechdel Group, the Fail Better Collective and the Einhorn School of Performing Arts. Her plays The Interstitial and Boundary Waters were published, and What Do You Say at the End of the World? was a finalist for Best Play in the Long Island City One Act Play Festival. Her full-length plays include: Petroglyphs, Luminescence, Appalachian Trail and The Prize. When not writing plays, Emily serves as the Director of Peace and Justice Studies at Pace University and was part of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons team that won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.

Resident Director-Dramaturgs

kathy curtiss

DR. KATHY CURTISS: Director/Producer, Artistic Director of Renaissance Now Theatre & Film with a Ph.D. in Directing for Stage & Screen. Kathy has directed readings and produced new works for the Oracle Theatre, The Oberon Theatre Company, and The Scandinavian American Theatre Company (The Undiscovered Country, Iceland, We are the Voice of the People, Norway). New York City Off-Broadway Directing Credits include Theatre Row productions MacBeth Redux for Renaissance Now, and Beloved for SATC, a decade of comedies for Shakespeare in the Parking Lot, The New York International Fringe Festival, The Michael Chekhov Theatre Company, Double Helix, Protean, The Drilling Company for New Works, including an original translation of The Seagull. Her instruction at 10 BFA programs include University of California, University of Utah, Ball State, the New York Film Academy and Division Chair of Film at Five Towns College. Her feature length documentary on “Renaissance Now” focuses on how Shakespeare contributes significantly to saving the culture and quality of language expression. Her film documentary work has aired on National PBS stations and the Global Education Network. Short films as director/producer include Ghost Story, Das Kapital, The First Day of Tomorrow, and in-progress feature length The White Stone.

Teresa Fischer

TERESA FISCHER is a director, actress and cabaret performer. She has an M.A. in Theater Directing from the University of South Carolina. Teresa appeared in Night of the Working Dead at NPTC in 2014 and joined the Women’s Work Lab as a director in 2016. She previously directed Stillwater for the Venus/Adonis Play Festival and several cabaret shows featuring Paul and Rochelle Chamlin. Teresa won the 2017 Tomatoes Got Talent Show - a contest celebrating women over 40. Teresa received the Hanson Award in 2019 from the Board of the Manhattan Association of Cabaret for her excellent work in cabaret.  Her recent cabaret shows include: Sing Again!, More Than You Know – A Tribute to Rosemary Clooney, andWhat’s Next? Fun fact: Teresa was featured in Andy Warhol’s Secret Girlfriend at Theatre de Neslé in Paris, France!

Zoya Kachadurian

ZOYA KACHADURIAN directed a staged reading of Sonya Hayden’s THE DICTATOR’S DENTIST at New Perspective’s 2023 May Mini Festival.  In Washington DC, she directed SURVIVOR’S SYNDROME for Voices Festival Production’s Ukrainians Under Siege II Festival.  She recently directed LITTLE JIMMY, a solo show written and performed by Jimmy Noonan.  Last year, she directed a video adaptation of her award-winning production GEORGIA AND ME written and performed by Sarah Ford.  Other works:  NJ Rep’s world premiere of APPLE SEASON;  the Majestic Theater (MA): STICK FLY, THE 39 STEPS, THE MIRACLE WORKER, AN INSPECTOR CALLS, STONES IN HIS POCKETS and more.  She has directed many new works at Manhattan Theater Source’s Estrogenius Festival, the EST Festival, and is a member of the Lincoln Center and the EST Directors’ Labs, and La Mama’s International Theater Symposium.  www.Zoyazk.com.

Bianca lopez

Theater is rebellion. To become a trailblazer of expression in pursuit of universal truth, while embracing rebellion; rebellion against stereotypes, non-conformity, limited thinking, narrow mindedness and above all freedom of expression is what motivates Bianca.

After having extensively traveled to over 43 countries she proudly amassed a plethora of experiences and wealth of knowledge to be showcased in her body of works. Bianca’s main source of influence comes from the many years of theatrical studies in different programs such as with Jeremy Geidt at Harvard University’s Tony Award-winning American Repertory Theatre, undergraduate studies at Columbia University Theatre, method acting at The Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York City and London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art’s Shakespeare Intensive. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film/Television Production as a Magna Cum Laude at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Bianca is a recent alumni of the extremely competitive Yale Writers’ Workshop. She now looks forward to her next venture with New Perspective’s Theatre Company for this year’s upcoming Women’s Work Lab."

jennie reich litzky

JENNIE REICH LITZKY is a director, actor, production manager, and theater artist. She graduated from Hunter College, where she received the Tyrone Guthrie Award for Most Promising Student Director. Jennie is a co-creator of The Yiddish Shakespeare Project, which recently produced a version of Hamlet completely in Yiddish, where Jennie played the titular role. She was recently an apprentice at the Apocalyptic Artists Ensemble, and her past directing credits include The Cocktail Hour, Ludlow Fair, and Staff Meal. She is honored to have the opportunity to work with New Perspectives for the first time, and is so grateful for this positive experience. Thank you to Chelyn for trusting me with your beautiful work, Hunter McIlvain for all of your help, and everyone else I worked with! Follow @jenniereichlitzkytheater for more. 

Playwright Members on Sabbatical

CHARLOTTE ORTIZ COLAVIN

CHARLOTTE ORTIZ COLAVIN: Full lengths Beautiful Fig and annie & betty: 2 Birdshave had staged readings at Performance Space, Santa Cruz, and in New York at the Barrow Group Theatre. Beautiful Fig received honorable mention at Ashland New Play Festival, OR and at Pandora Productions, L.A. One acts, Sweet Stuff(developed and produced in NPTC WW Short Play LAB 2014 and reprised in the WW Retrospective in 2016); Frankie and Ednaand JINX (workshopped at The Barrow Group Theatre); georgie(Festival Ten VIII, at The College at Brockport, Rochester); Pause (MSNBC) and Cece(The Performance Works, NY). Charlotte has also been a collaborative playwright for many years in California and in New York, most extensively with Joseph Chaikin on his Disability Project at the Public Theatre with John Belluso, Bill Hart and Charles Mee. She was a co-founder of Lilitheatre in San Francisco, co-writing 2 premiere scripts at its origin, and she conducts playwriting residencies for teachers and students in NYC and NJ High Schools, including with incarcerated youth. NPTC is producing her LAB-developed script, Splendid Graceat Theatre for the New City in Nov/Dec 2020.

Sonya hayden

SONYA HAYDEN is an award-winning composer, lyricist, and playwright. Her work includes the plays Cassie Goes to Congress (New Perspectives Theatre), There’s Always Tomorrow (Piccolo Spoleto Festival; Finalist, Tennessee Williams Festival Play Contest), Just Like Magic (Little Fish Theatre), and The Clumps (Pittsburgh New Works Festival MainStage Series); musicals Wanda Does the Water Cycle (book/music/lyrics, Lincoln Center Festival), Sing a Song of Six Pants  and It Ain’t Over ‘Til the Bat Lady Sings (co-book/music, NY Public Library for the Performing Arts); and songs “If I Didn’t Know Better” (Lotte Lenya Competition Songbook, $1,500 award) and “The Plant Song” (Winner, MAC 2023 John Wallowitch Award). She is a member of the BMI Advanced Musical Theatre & Librettists Workshops and was previously a member of the Recording Academy’s Mentorship Program, Maestra Music’s Mentorship Program, and the Princeton Triangle Club Writers Workshop. Master’s in Playwriting, University of Edinburgh; B.A. Music, Princeton University. sonyahayden.com @sonyahayden11

Rebekah lopatto

zakeia tyson-cross

leela velautham

LEELA velautham was born and grew up in the UK. She is currently writing up her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology at UC Berkeley. She was a member of Playground SF’s Playwright Residency Program (2020-21) where she worked on a prequel to Macbeth that focused on Lady Macbeth’s fertility issues (‘Take my Milk for Gall’) and was featured in the Best of Playground SF 24 (‘The Evocation’) and 25 (‘Curry and Crumpets’). She is also a two-time semi-finalist of the Bay Area Playwrights Festival 2021 and 2022 (with The Empty Crusade and Modern Love respectively) and won the 2011 University of Oxford’s New Writing Festival for her play Schroedinger’s Hat.

Alumnae and Their LAB-Developed Scripts