Phillip Christian Smith is a semi-finalist for The American Shakespeare Center’s Shakespeare’s New Contemporaries for his play Comedy, Errors, Vanity, and Stupidity, a sequel to The Comedy of Errors, and a finalist for Trustus Playwrights’ Festival for his play Minding Miss Mae Mae. He is a founding member of The Playwriting Collective, and playwright in Residence of Brooklyn’s Exquisite Corpse Company; he co-wrote their production of A Ribbon About A Bomb on Governor’s Island, and his first full production: The Chechens (directed by Tess Howsam), about the 2017 rounding up of homosexuals in Chechnya was produced at The Parlour in August. He’s directed readings at The 53rd Street New York Public Library and Jimmy’s #43 among others. His work has also been supported by Fresh Ground Pepper, The Cherry LaneESPA, Forge, and NY Madness. In October he directed Stephen Adly Guirgus’ The Motherf**ker with the Hat at Matthew Corzine Studio Theatre. He has a BFA in acting from The University of New Mexico and an MFA in acting from Yale School of Drama.

Alexis Roblan is a playwright and WGA Award-nominated screenwriter. Her plays have been produced and developed by and at Clubbed Thumb, Ars Nova, Dixon Place, Project Y, FringeNYC, Exquisite Corpse Company, New Perspectives Theatre Company, The Tank, The Dennis & Victoria Ross Foundation, The Blank Theatre (Los Angeles), Theatre 503 (London), Edinburgh Fringe, Festival de Teatro Alternativo (Bogotá), World Interplay (Australia), and more. Originally from Coos Bay, Oregon, she is a graduate of the University of Southern California’s MFA in Dramatic Writing program. Alexis’ plays include SAMUEL (Finalist, Clubbed Thumb Biennial Commission), DAUGHTERS OF LOT (Edinburgh Fringe), AND IT SPINS TWICE (Finalist, Seven Devils Playwrights Conference), YOU FEEL SO FAR AWAY RIGHT NOW (Finalist, The O’Neill National Playwrights Conference), LILIYA (Exquisite Corpse Company), THE ANDREW PLAY (Thomas Barbour Playwrights Award), and RED EMMA & THE MAD MONK (NY Times Critic’s Pick). Her work as a screenwriter can be seen on the Hulu series "Guidance" and "Love Daily." www.alexisroblan.com

Matt Minnicino is a Virginia-born, Manhattan-based playwright, actor, teacher, and theatre-maker. He is a current member of the Writers Room at The Flea, the Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group, and Fresh Ground Pepper’s PlayGroup. He is an alumnus of the Great Plains Theatre Conference, Pipeline’s PlayLab, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Joust Writers’ Round Table, Everyday Inferno Writer/Director Lab; and been playwright in residence for (among others), Artilliers, Letter of Marque, Wandering Bark, Traumaturgy Productions, and more. He is an O’Neill New Play Conference Semi-Finalist, a Jeffrey Melnick New Playwright Award Nominee, and winner of the Arts & Letters Prize and Clay Delauney Playwriting Prize. He has professionally adapted Chekhov, Ibsen, Strindberg, Gorky, Moliere, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Homer, Rilke, and the Book of Genesis. His work has been performed in schools and universities across the country (and in Ireland) and in the New York Fringe, Shenandoah, and FauxReal Festivals, and the inaugural Polar Group’s Fridge Festival and Barn Arts Chekhov Festival in Maine. His essays on theatre have been published by HowlRound, Gathering of the Tribes, and The Dramatist; he served as Literary Assistant for the Dramatists Guild in New York; and is a perennial teaching artist at the American Shakespeare Center. MFA. Columbia. www.mattminnicino.com

Laura is a Pittsburgh born, Brooklyn-based playwright. Her plays have been developed or produced in New York at 59E59 Theaters, the Signature Theatre, Gene Frankel Theatre, HERE Arts Center, the Flea Theater, and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. Regionally, her work has been produced in New Orleans, Colorado Springs, and Bloomington, IN, and internationally at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Laura is a member of the Orchard Project’s 2019 NYC Greenhouse and Project Y’s 2018 Playwrights Group and was a resident playwright with the Exquisite Corpse Company. She has won the Woodward/Newman Drama Award (Happily After Ever) and the Chameleon Theater Circle's New Play Contest (The Light in the Refrigerator) and was a finalist for the Jerome Fellowship, the Princess Grace Award, and the MFA Playwrights' Workshop at the Kennedy Center. Her production of Happily After Ever received Honorable Mention in The Advocate magazine's "Top 10 New York Theater of 2016." The list counted down the year's best LGBT-inclusive shows on and off-Broadway. Laura Wrote for the web series Tuesday Nights starring Tony nominees Daphne Rubin-Vega and Michelle Wilson.

Michael Bradley is a writer, director, producer, and all around fun guy! As a playwright, his work has been seen and heard in New York and beyond with Tiny Rhino, Less Than Rent, Dream Up Festival at Theater for the New City, and PTP/NYC to name a few. He is the founder and artistic director of Rhapsody Collective where he brings a group of artists together to create new work from the ground up. Most recently, his play The Illusory Adventures of a Dreamer was part of the 20th Annual New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC Excellence in Acting Award- Taylor Turner) and his musical, The Girls in White received a concert at Feinstein’s/54 Below. He also is the founder and editor of Theater in the Now (theaterinthenow.com).

Darcy Parker Bruce is a playwright from New Haven, CT, and a graduate of the MFA Playwriting program at Smith College. Her work has been produced or developed through Smith College, the Great Plains Theater Conference, The Bechdel Group, Strange Sun Theatre's Greenhouse Series, 20% Theatre Chicago, Sewanee Writers' Conference, 2cents Theatre, NYC's Fresh Fruit Festival, Otherworld Theatre, and Dixon Place Lounge. Her plays have been 2016 Semi-finalists for the Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference and for Kitchen Dog Theatre's New Works Fest. Her play All We Know Is Not Enough was a finalist for the 2016 Seven Devils Playwrights Conference. She is the co-founder of Dangerous Play Theatre Company. 

Charlotte Lang is a New York-based playwright whose work has been seen at the Clurman Theater, Brooklyn Winery, Naked Angels, and the Staten Island Shakespearean Theater Festival. She has been a finalist for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, and the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab.  She has volunteered or interned for Clubbed Thumb, Second Stage, Double Edge, and Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company.  She is a fan of strange plays.  BFA: NYU Tisch 

Danny Wilfred is thrilled to be working with Exquisite Corpse Company. A University of Michigan graduate with a BFA in Musical Theater, Danny was last seen on the international tour of Flashdance the Musical in Auckland, New Zealand and with ECC in The Enchanted Realm of Rene Magritte and the Colorado Springs production of Untitled #3. Other recent credits include A Chorus Line (Richie Walters), How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Palm Springs/Papa Who understudy), and A Christmas Story (Ensemble).  "The art of making art... is putting it together." -Stephen Sondheim

Josh Young’s work has developed or produced at: The HERE Arts Center, Dixon Place, New York Madness, Naked Angels, Primary Stages, FringeNYC, MITF, and Planet Connections.  His work has been supported by The 2015 Playwrights Horizons/ Kenyon Institute Playwriting Conference and The 2015 Dramatists Guild Conference: #WriteChange.  He’s a proud member of the Dramatists Guild as well as an IATSE technician, designer and editor.  He is a founding member of The Playwriting Collective, a playwright driven initiative designed to support writers from lower economic backgrounds.   He is thrilled to be a part of ECC’s Writers Group!  http://www.JoshuaDYoung.com

Emily Krause is a NYC-based playwright, actor, and occasional songwriter originally from Portland, Oregon. She attended the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Spring 2014, and earned her B.A. in Theatre from Whitman College in 2015. Her plays include t h r o u g h o u t i v e n e s s, (fall 2015 reading produced by Sarin West and CloseUp NYC), We Were Always Our Own Thing (Tiny Rhino, July 2016), POSITIVE (The Bechdel Group's 24-Hour Challenge), and BRAKE (NTI Playwrights Week, Spring 2014). Performance credits include: The Revolution (Exquisite Corpse Company's Corpse Revival Series), This is Not a Subway Ride (Upcoming PodPlay by This is Not a Theater Company), Given the Present, the Future Does Not Depend on the Past (En Garde Arts' BOSSS Festival), HAIR: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical, Rosencrantz in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, [if you knew him] (NTI Company Debut), The Tempest, and Camino Real.

Stephen Cedars is a writer, director and teacher originally from south Louisiana.  In New York, his work has been seen through the NY Fringe Festival, Incubator Arts Project, Brick Theatre, the Downtown Urban Theatre Festival, chashama, Theatre for the New City, and through several years of community programming which he co-produced in south Williamsburg through Brooklyn Arts Council funding.  Additionally, his plays have been produced throughout the country, and have been published by Original Works and IndieTheatreNow.  Amongst his awards are the Theater Masters Visionary Playwright Award, a Fellowship with the Target Margin Institute for Collaborative Theater Making, a Residency with America-in-Play, and the John Golden Playwriting Prize.  He has taught myriad subjects in the liberal arts to kids grade 2 through 12, and is a creative writing instructor with Writopia Labs.  He earned his MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU, which he attended as a Rita and Burton Goldberg Fellow.

Benjamin Katz is a playwright, actor, director, film producer and teacher. He recently developed a new play, Philanthropist, about Sharon Stone, on Fresh Ground Pepper’s BRB Artists' Retreat. Recent acting credits include Summer and Smoke (BASiC Theatre), Wallop (Robert Moss), Matchstick Series (Pipeline Theatre Company), and workshops with Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, New Dramatists, The O’Neill Center, Huntington Theatre and Theatre Reconstruction Ensemble (TRE). 

Monica Trausch is a New York City based writer whose work includes The ABCs; Border Crossing (semi-finalist, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference); Emily the Artist; and Trans-Siberian Railway. Her plays have been developed with The Pantry, Rule of 7x7, UglyRhino, the Bechdel Group, Primary Stages Detention Series, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the UCSB Studio Theatre, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and more. Monica is affiliated with Theatre Without Borders and has worked with New Dramatists, Women’s Project, and New Georges. BA: UC Santa Barbara.

Alisa Zhulina is an artist-scholar and Assistant Professor Faculty Fellow in Drama at NYU Tisch. Her plays have been produced at the Manhattan Repertory Theatre and the Theater Project. She’s the founder and director of Cacolet Collective, a performance group dedicated to exploring alternative economies through performance and public art.

Emily Zemba is a New York based playwright and performer. Some of her plays include Have You Been There?, I’m Sorry I Brought up God, and Deer and the Lovers. Her plays Look up, Speak Nicely, & Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers all the Time, and We Know Edie La Minx Had a Gun received productions at The Yale Cabaret in its 46th and 47th seasons. Also at the Yale Cabaret, she produced and co-hosted the Third Annual Yale School of Drag.  Emily’s work has been developed with Rattlestick Theater’s F*ck!ng Good Plays Festival (2015), The Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis (Core Apprenticeship 2015), Great Plains Theater Conference PlayLabs (2015),  LAByrinth Theater Company’s One Act Experiment (2014), and Theater Masters National MFA Playwright’s Festival (2014).  She is a member of The Middle Voice, and co-founder of The Party Line Theater Company. Look for her play We Know Edie La Minx Had a Gun in Brooklyn this May produced by The Party Line. Emily has taught Playwriting at Wesleyan University. MFA, Yale School of Drama.

Ran Xia is a playwright, director, and interdisciplinary storyteller. She is interested in the immediate, collaborative, and political nature of theatre, often drawn to the romantics of both arts and science. Visual arts projects include Art Takes Times Square, Stories of the Creative (SEE.ME), Dacia Gallery (Times Square Arts Centre), Spiegel Me (Installation at Fountains Foundation, Columbia College, Chicago). Her theatre credits include Word Play (Radioactive Festival & MITF 2016), Drunk 24 at Exquisite Corpse Company, [ai] (An adaptation of Ayn Rand's Novella Anthem at Brick Theater). She's done several projects at Dixon Place: North (Playwright), They Lived in the Attic (Playwright, Dir.), [ai] (Script/Director), Tabula Rasa (Playwright / Director / Production Sound Designer), and Word Play (Playwright, Dir. Florence Le Bas). Her shorts: Heavenly Bodies Move in Space and The Invisible of the Sidewalk both won first prizes at MITF's short play lab. Set design credits in NYC: Animals Out of Papers (by Rajiv Joseph, set designer); July House (Fringe NYC 2015, Set Design). Upcoming projects include Princess Anybody (A physical performance piece/forum theatre), and Harmony (a prerecorded virtual audio play).

T. Adamson's plays have been performed in New York, Colorado, California, Ohio, Texas, Washington DC, and Emerald, Australia. He is currently developing a new full-length play with Spring Street Social Society, which will premiere in NYC this November. Taylor is an alumnus of Fresh Ground Pepper NYC’s Playground Play Group and is currently enrolled in the MFA Playwriting Program at Hunter College with instructors Annie Baker and Brendan Jacobs-Jenkins. He was born and raised in Texas, lives in NYC, and collects small figurines of birds. BFA: NYU Tisch. 

Leah Barker's work has been performed at Hartford Stage's Brand:New Festival and the Experimental Theater Wing, and as part of ECC's Secession 2015. Her acting credits include A Presentation by the People of Lake Victory for Our Leader (The Gym at Judson), The Cripple of Inishmaan (Centenary Stage Company), and Sugar!, an upcoming film starring Alice Ripley. Future projects include indie feature X55. Recently, Leah assistant-directed Macbeth for Lincoln Center Education and Don Giovanni for Amore Opera. Education: NYU Tisch's Experimental Theater Wing and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.www.LeahBarker.com

Gina Doherty is a playwright and an actor based in Brooklyn. Her most recent full length play, Don't Look, has been workshopped with Turn to Flesh Productions in Manhattan, at the Boston Playwrights' Theater, and at Skidmore College. Her short plays THE WHOLE WORLD/the other place and Swept have also been produced at Skidmore College, where she studied under Stephanie Fleischmann. Gina also writes for the screen; she recently created, produced, and starred in the mini-series Lucy Doesn't Know What She's Doing. As an actor, Gina has trained with Shakespeare & Company and New York Stage and Film. In New York, she has performed with a plethora of groups, including Caps Lock Theatre at Theater Row and with the Lower East Side Shakespeare Company. She is currently working on a new play, Spank Me (Wearing Only Your Yarmulke), that she began developing at Primary Stages' ESPA. www.ginadoherty.com

Reina Hardy is a playwright from Chicago. Her plays, which usually contain magic and sometimes contain science, have been seen across the country, including at Rorschach Theatre in DC, the Vortex in Austin,  and the 2013 NNPN National New Play Showcase.  She’s a Michener Fellow at UT Austin, winner of the 2014 KCACTF TYA Prize, finalist for the Terrence McNally Prize and the recipient of an Interact 20/20 Commission. This spring, she has worked on her plays at the Kennedy Center, the Write Now Conference at IRT, Inkwell in DC, and Route 66 in Chicago. She can make things happen with her mind.

Sarah Matusek's work has been presented by Dixon Place, Everyday Inferno, FronteraFest (Austin), The Dirty Blondes, TinyRhino, Fresh Ground Pepper, Title:Point at The Silent Barn, Vermont Arts Exchange, Bennington College, Cherry Lane (Cherry POP), The Public (Bennington College Alumni 24 Hr. Plays), and Gowanus Art + Production. Sarah also leads the performance group Small Claims Court. As an actor, Sarah has appeared with Buran Theatre, Small Claims Court, Exquisite Corpse Company, Other Forces Festival, Meta-Phys Ed. and at the Museum of Arts & Design. Sarah is a proud member of the educational body-positive acting troupe Realize Your Beauty as well as The Brooklyn Generator's current season.

Lia Romeo is a playwright, novelist, and comic writer. She earned her B.A. from Princeton University and her M.F.A. from Rutgers. Her plays have been produced or developed at 59E59, the Lark Theatre, the Kennedy Center, Project Y Theatre Company, Abingdon Theatre, Unicorn Theatre, HotCity Theatre, Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey, Orlando Shakes, New Jersey Repertory Theatre, Kitchen Dog Theatre, Stillwater Theatre, Renegade Theatre Experiment, Forward Flux Theatre, New Origins Theatre Company, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for the ATCA/Steinberg Award and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. She has been a finalist for the O’Neill, PlayPenn, WordBRIDGE, the Reva Shiner Comedy Award, the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, and the Heideman Award. She was the National New Play Network Emerging Playwright-in-Residence at Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey, and she is currently a member of the Project Y Playwrights Group, the Abingdon Theatre Playwrights Group, and the BMI Librettists Workshop.  She is also the author of a novel,Dating the Devil(BelleBooks), and a humor book, 11,002 Things to Be Miserable About (Abrams Image), which has sold over 35,000 copies worldwide.

Blake Bishton is a Brooklyn-based playwright, founding member, and Literary Director of Exquisite Corpse Company.  His plays have been performed in upstate New York, as well as at the Williamstown Theatre Festival and in NYC.  His most recent short play, No Baby, was performed at New York Theatre Workshop’s 4th Street Theater.  His latest long play, Unequilibrium was performed at HERE Arts Center.  He is currently serving as the co-producer and leader of the ECC Writers’ Lab.  He has also worked as an assistant producer for 13P and PreludeNYC, been a substitute teacher of creative writing at Rutgers University, and was assistant to the Literary Associate at NYTW.   He is a graduate of Bard College, the British American Drama Academy, an NYTW Usual Suspect, and will be pursing his MFA at The New School for Drama starting next fall.

Simon de Carvalho is a New York based playwright. Writing credits include: 1969: The Second Man (ARS Nova’s ANT Fest), The Great Parade of Upper Kennington (Manhattan Repertory Theatre, Loeb Experimental Theater), Daisy (Loeb Experimental Theater), Olduvai (Harvard Playwrights’ Festival), Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (Davenport Ten-Minute Play Festival), and music for Grassroots and Trailblazers (NYMF). Executive Producer credits include In Concert: Jason Robert Brown, Carousel, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and RENT (Club OBERON). Simon is a recent graduate of Harvard College where he received the Robert E. Levi Prize for outstanding arts management skills.

Jean Grant's recent work is This Brooklyn Lyfe, a web-series comedy and spoof off of This American Life and her thoughts on "beat poetry". Currently, she's writing her first feature film, The Magical Narrative of Imogen Wellington, alongside a couple shorts Palm Dreams and JennY. Jean was a featured ECC Black Box Artist for her debut film as writer and producer, A Short Film By Shauna Lee (2014). Before relocating to Brooklyn, she ventured to Australia to explore Melbourne's vibrant theatre scene for four years. A graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts in drama, Jean was featured in the sell out season of Assassins (Watch This), It's An Earthquake in My Heart, Romeo and Juliet, All About Eve, Five Kinds of Silence, Ship of Fools, The Cherry Orchard, and Elektra (VCA). She also co-devised and performed in Do Not Enter, a theatrical experiment of actors and their egos. She was also featured in Cineversations (Exit Films), which was part of Melbourne International Film Festival. Jean couldn't be more jazzed to collaborate with ECC in her first Writer's Lab.  Keep up to date with her news and blog at www.jean-grant.com.

Select plays: Scenes of Ascending (PTP/NYC’s After Dark Series; Healthy Oyster Collective); Lady Bird Heads West (Drama in the Down); ‘Neath Shuttle Clicks (developed and presented by Rhapsody Collective); Lamb, and Other Considerations (Bennington College 24-Hour Plays at the Public); Zurich (Buffalo United Artists); Towards the Heart of the Forest (Between Us Productions). A co-founder of and resident playwright of the Healthy Oyster Collective, he wrote their debut production, If the Saints Arrive in Germany, and is currently developing Kingdom Crosses Over with them. Select stage management: Gertrude (PTP/NYC); Good Person of Szechwan, The Tempest (The Public Theater); A Beautiful Day in November… (New Georges). B.A.: Bennington College.

Jona Tarlin is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College. His plays include: Private Browsing, In Antarctica Where it is Very Warm, Do You Have a Backup?, and Offal. His work has been presented by IRT Theater, Pipeline Theater Co., Wide-Eyed Productions, Caps Lock Theatre, the One-Minute Play Festival, The Brick (winner, 2014 Winter One-Act Festival), Amios NYC, Blowout Theater, and Forward Theater Company of Madison, WI. He is the recipient of the 2008 Lipkin Prize for Playwriting.

Alexis Schaetzle is a Brooklyn-based playwright. She is a native of Los Angeles and a graduate of The University of Oregon where she studied acting and playwriting. Full length plays include: Transplant (Available Light Theatre, University of Oregon’s Pocket Playhouse) and Blessing in the Sky (Foundry Theatre, Chicago). Short plays include: Astral (University of Oregon-Pocket Playhouse, Winner of New Voices Competition, KCACTF National Playwriting Finalist), Lightning Bugs (Foundry Theatre, Chicago) and Carmela in Hell. She’s taken playwriting intensives with José Rivera (Noor Theatre, Torn/Page) and a master class with David Lindsay-Abaire.