Hosted by

Catherine

Whiteman

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Produced by

Echo

Theatre

Season 2 Guest Circle

Produced by Eric Berg, Jonathan Villalobos, and Kateri Cale

Reina Hardy / Season 2: Episode 6 

Reina Hardy is a playwright whose work explores elements of magic and science! Her play, The Other Felix, was a finalist for Echo’s Big Shout Out play contest in 2010, was honored by the Killroy List in 2020, and will receive its regional digital premiere April 3rd as part of Echo’s main stage season!  Her other plays include Annie Jump and the Library of Heaven, Glassheart, and many other titles.  Her plays have been produced across the country, including at Rorschach Theatre in DC, the Vortex in Austin, and the NNPN National New Play Showcase.

She’s a Michener Fellow, winner of the Kennedy Center ACTF TYA Prize, finalist for the Terrence McNally Prize, and the recipient of an Interact 20/20 Commission.  She is a graduate of Columbia University and she holds an MFA in Playwriting from UT Austin.

Hayley Finn / Season 2: Episode 5

Hayley Finn is the Assoc. Artistic Director at the Playwrights’ Center and is one of seven co-artistic directors at Red Eye Theatre. She is also a director, producer, playwright, and advocate for new work. She has directed nationally and internationally including at the Cherry Lane Theatre, Edinburgh Fringe, Guthrie Theatre, Flea Theater, The Kitchen, Labyrinth Theater Company, New Dramatists, O’Neill Theater Center, Public Theater, Playwrights’ Horizons, South Coast Repertory Theater, and the Nine Gates Festival in Prague.

Finn is an alumna of the Drama League Director’s Program and recipient of the Ruth Easton Fellowship, TCG Future Leader Grant, NEA support, and a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant. She received her BA and MA from Brown University.

Kay Richardson / Season 2: Episode 4

Kay Richardson is an award-winning sound designer and engineer, who serves as the Sound Supervisor at Princeton University. She is best known for her work on Eclipsed at Synchronicity Theatre (Suzi Bass Award nominated), Thurgood at Theatrical Outfit, Between Riverside and Crazy and Gut Bucket Blues (Suzi Bass nominated) at Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre Company.

She was named one of the "Six Theatre Workers You Need to Know" by American Theatre Magazine in 2018.  She has done sound work for national tours, opera, Six Flags, and Royal Caribbean Cruises.

Mia Chung / 03.10.21 Season 2: Episode 3

Mia Chung is a playwright whose works include You for Me for You, Catch as Catch Can, and This Exquisite Corpse. Catch as Catch Can was produced at Steppenwolf in 2020 and will be part of our Echo Reads season this July! You for Me for You has been performed at the Royal Court Theatre (UK), the National Theatre Center of Korea, and the Woolly Mammoth Theatre (DC).

Her work has been supported by awards, commissions, and fellowships including: the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Clubbed Thumb, Kennedy Center, LAByrinth Theatre Company, Ma-Yi Theatre, the NEA, Playwrights' Center Jerome Fellowship, Stella Adler Studio, TCG, and many others. She is an alumni of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab, the Huntington Theatre playwright fellows, and New Dramatists. She attended Yale (BA), the University of Dublin, Trinity College (M.Phil.), and Brown (MFA).

Becca Chapman / 03.03.2021 Season 2: Episode 2

Chapman is the Executive Director of Prescription Joy, a healthcare clowning nonprofit in New Orleans that promotes healing through human connection and education. She holds a Masters in Education from The University of New Orleans, a Bachelor’s of Performing Arts from the University of Southern Mississippi, and has taught at Trinity Episcopal School for over a decade.

She trained in static trapeze, aerial sling, and partner acrobatics at Fly Circus Space and New England Center for Circus Arts. She is also certified by Dueling Arts International in broadsword, rapier dagger, unarmed combat, and quarter staff.

Madeleine George / 02.24.2021 Season 2: Episode 1

An award-winning playwright and author, Madeleine George's play, Hurricane Diane, received the Obie Award, and The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. She is a founding member of 13P (Thirteen Playwrights, Inc.), an Obie-Award-winning playwriting collective, along with notable writers such as Anne Washburn,Young Jean Lee, Sarah Ruhl, and many others.

Echo audiences will be familiar with her work: Precious Little, a drama about a linguist who learns that her unborn child may never speak, was produced by Echo in 2015; Hurricane Diane, which "combines suburban New Jersey housewives, climate change, and Greek tragedy," was also produced by Echo as part of Dallas Pride Month in 2018.

Season 1 Guest Circle

Produced by Eric Berg, Jenna Richanne Burnett, and Kateri Cale

Anyika McMillan-Herrod / 11.30.2020 Season 1: Episode 6

 featuring Tonya Holloway

Author... Essayist... Playwright... Poet... A native of Dallas, Texas, Herod is co-founder of Soul Rep Theatre Company and former editor of The Dallas Examiner. Herod’s play about her journey through breast cancer, THE MONARCH, made its world premiere in June 2018, in a co-production with Echo Theater.  She adapted two Latin American short stories by Juan Rulfo and Alfredo Cardona Peña for Teatro Dallas’ 2017 Day of the Dead production –AN EVENING WITH TWO GIANTS. Herod was commissioned to write a play - DO NO HARM - inspired by three enslaved women who served as "guinea pigs" for" the "Father of Gynecology." DO NO HARM makes its world premiere in 2021 as a film. Anyika is a 2019 Public Voices Fellow with the OpEd Project, holds a BFA in Theater from Prairie View A&M University, and studied acting in California Institute of the Arts’ MFA program. 

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Anyika is joined on the podcast by her Soul Rep colleague, Tonya Holloway, who served as cinematographer when the play DO NO HARM was produced as a film instead of onstage.  

CQ (Christina Quintana) / 11.15.2020 Season 1: Episode 5

Playwright... Television Writer... Consultant... Poet... Queer with Cuban and Louisiana Roots... SCISSORING via Dramatists Play Service... CQ's poetry, fiction, and lyric nonfiction are published in Santa Clara Review, Wildness Journal, OnCuba, Nimrod Journal, Foglifter, great weather for MEDIA, and beyond... Author of poetry chapbook The Heart Wants (Finishing Line Press)... fellowships and residencies from WP Theater, MacDowell (Ernest and Red Heller Fellow), Playwrights Realm, Van Lier/New Voices at The Lark, CubaOne, Queer/Art, and Lambda Literary, as well as commissions from Audible, The Civilians, Palo Alto Playhouse, EST/Alfred P. Sloan Project, Peppercorn Theatre Company, and more. She holds an MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University.

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There is "other" and "in-between" in all of us; CQ tells stories that mine the misconception of dissimilarity and proclaim, "You are not alone." (In 2021, the Echo Reads play reading series will present her play THE GREAT LONELY ROAMER AND THE NIGHT THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING.)

Deborah Zoe Laufer / 10.31.2020 Season 1: Episode 4

Playwright... Director... BFA in acting from SUNY Purchase... Graduated Julliard Playwriting program under Marsha Norman… Plays produced at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Cleveland Playhouse, Geva Theatre Center, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Portland Stage, and The Humana Festival…Recipient of the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award, the Lilly Award, grants and commissions from The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, The Edgerton Foundation, The National New Play Network, the NEA, and the LeCompte du Nouy grant (Lincoln Center Foundation.) Echo Theatre has produced Deb’s plays: End Days (2010) and Leveling Up (Echo Reads play reading series.)

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On writing during the COVID pandemic: “With playwrighting, these are very tough times, and I know a lot of writers who are saying, ‘Why write right now; what do I have that’s important enough to say, am I of service in writing this?’ ...I don’t know my place in the world and can’t understand what’s happening around me unless I start writing about it, so it’s not even a choice anymore.”

Rhiana Yazzie / 10.15.2020 Season 1: Episode 3

Navajo playwright... filmmaker... director... performer... producer...based in the Twin Cities and founded New Native Theater in 2009...2018/19 Bush Leadership Fellow...2017 Sally Award Winner for Vision...2016/2017 Playwrights’ Center McKnight Fellow, 2010/2011 and 2006/2007 Playwrights’ Center Jerome Fellow...Playwrights’ Center Core Member for three years.  She is in post production with her first feature film, A WINTER LOVE (writer/director/starring). 

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New Native Theatre is a new way of looking at, thinking about, and staging Native American stories.  NNT produces, commissions, and devises authentic Native American stories for the stage which means NNT’s artists are intricately connected to the concerns and voices of their communities. Meant to be played for its most vital audience, Native people, because stories made for the Native community become undeniably powerful for the broader community too, no translations required.

Ann Timmons / 09.30.2020  Season 1: Episode 2 

MFA in Acting, University of Illinois...NYC to seek her fortune...honed playwriting skills at Playwrights Horizons Theatre School. Produced one-woman show, Off the Wall: The Life and Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Off-Broadway; toured it nationally for 16 years. Other productions explore accepted history, featuring protagonists who upend the status quo. …actor…director…playwright...communication coach...producer.

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Ann is a proud member of Actors' Equity Association, SAG-AFTRA, the Dramatists Guild, Honor Roll!, The Playwrights Circle, and is a founding producing playwright of the Pipeline Playwrights, a collective of five women committed to supporting, promoting, and presenting each other’s work, with the goal getting more women’s stories onstage and into the local and national theatre pipeline.

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Caridad Svich / 09.15.2020  Season 1: Episode 1 

2012 OBIE for Lifetime Achievement Playwright… 2018 ATHE Ellen Stewart Career Achievement in Professional Theatre… 2018 Tanne Foundation Award… songwriter…translator…editor…educator.

Born in the US of Cuban-Argentine-Spanish-Croatian parents.   

"As a playwright, songwriter, editor and translator living between many cultures, including inherited ones, the idea of departure has always been not only an actual or metaphorical basis for writing the work, but also an idea made manifest through the enactment of writing, its performance, and my living of it."