Dave Osmundsen is autistic playwright / dramaturg / actor whose article “Finding Autistic Theatre Artists Is a Challenge (If You Make It a Challenge)” appeared in Howlround this past February. It’s a terrific article and I wholly recommend reading it because it will definitely broaden your knowledge base around autism. In the article Dave addresses several questions of how the theatre world could include, accommodate, and better understand autistic theatre artists while also allowing those accommodations to enhance and strengthen not just the needs of autistic theatre artists but the needs of everyone involved in the theatre company.

Robert Weibazahl is a playwright and a teacher whose play ”Doughnut Disturb” is the third of our 2025 Diversity/Equity/Inclusion series.

Nick Maynard is a playwright from the UK who’s worked professionally within the performing arts industry for a number of years, both commercially and academically, creating and facilitating over 300 different stage shows as writer, director or producer. His play “Things You See in the Rain” is the second of our 2025 Diversity/Equity/Inclusion-themed plays.

Cris Eli Blak is an emerging proud Black playwright and screenwriter whose work has been performed and produced around the world, from Off-Broadway; across the United States; on university stages; as well as in London, Australia, Ireland, and Canada. He is the winner of the first Black Broadway Men Playwriting Intiative, the winner of the 2024 Charles M. Getchell New Play Award, and the first place winner of Atlanta Shakespeare Company’s inaugural Muse of Fire BIPOC Playwriting Fesitval.  His short play, “Impact Turn,” was an immediate standout in the tidal wave of submissions for our 2025 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion plays.

Our guests are playwright Laura Shamas and multidisciplinary artist Harriette Feliz, who are here to talk about Laura’s play “Four Women in Red” which recently finished a run at the Victory Theatre in Burbank, CA. Harriette is one of the four cast members. “Four Women in Red” addresses the ongoing epidemic of violence against Native American women. Some of the material in this podcast may be unsettling to some audience members.

Philip Middleton WIlliams has been produced around the world and published in many anthologies and seven of his plays by Next Stage Press. He has an MFA in playwriting from the University of Minnesota and a PhD in playwriting and dramatic criticism from the University of Colorado-Boulder. He also serves on the national advisory board of the William Inge Theatre Festival and the board of directors of the Midwest Dramatists Center.

This month’s guests are Diane Quinn and Bill Fuller, co-founders and driving force behind Unseen Theatre, an audio podcast showcasing (unproduced), original plays, featuring---something very much after my own heart---strong female protagonists, performed by SAG-AFTRA actors. Diane is Artistic Director/Co-Producer, and also has been an actor and playwright for Unseen Theatre, (and is additionally the podcast’s marketing director). Bill, her Co-Producer, audio engineers every sonic second, composes and arranges the podcast’s original music,(and handles web design, graphics) and is also a playwright.

Svetlana Arestova is a literary translator and professor of translation at HSE University in Moscow, Russia. Her list of accomplishments is extensive, including translations of books by Andrew Sean Greer, Daniel Mason and Elizabeth Strout. We talk about the intricacies of translating not just words, but intent, meaning, and finding ways to make the differences of two linguistic cultures meet, especially for rthe genre of theatre, where the words—or is it the story?--are paramount. Find her on Facebook! #translation #playwriting #theatre #russian #svetlanaarestova

SCOTT is an LGBTQ/neurodivergent/biracial Korean American writer. He has received five consecutive Writers Guild of America Awards for the daytime serial General Hospital, and numerous Emmy Award nominations. For over thirty years, his plays have been performed in New York City, his native Pittsburgh, across the United States, as well as internationally in Canada, Australia, the UK, Hungary, Singapore, Indonesia, Lebanon, and Dubai. His ”Second World Trilogy,” a speculative alt-history political/environmental love story, consists of three full-length plays spanning nearly 50 years. In addition, his sequence of short plays, ”Playing on the Periphery,” which tells the story of four LGBTQ+ third-graders, was previously presented as a concert reading by Reading Theatre Project, deep in red Pennsylvania. Monologues and scenes from the piece have been performed in “Don’t Say Gay” Florida.

Gene Kato is the mastermind behind Next Stage Press, an online boutique publishing house that has grown exponentially over the past few years. Gene has singlehandedly created a showroom for hundreds of playwrights to market their creative opuses. A lively, fun interview with lots to talk about!

Donald Loftus is a playwright/lyricist whose work has been performed around the globe and is one of the masterminds behind the online play reading group New York Pages. He’s has written the book and lyrics to several musicals (Abbey Victoria, Pollyanna, ‘Round Duffy Square, and Illusion), and his one-acts have been presented in over 100 play festivals around the country. Donald’s play “Joey” is the last of our 2024 Missing Home series.

JB Alexander is a playwright, an actor, and sometimes he directs. This month we present his exceptional play “Melting the Ice,” a face-off between an ICE officer and a lawyer who won’t take no for an answer. This is the third in our 2024 ”Missing Home” series.

Danny’s on the run and hiding out from a guy who should never have been crossed. Good thing he’s got his best friend Charlie with him. Featuring Sean Kimber as Danny and George Sapio as Charlie. Plus, we have a very down-to-Earth talk with the playwright, Raymond Alvin. Come join us!

Mark is well known throughout the theatre world, having had over 2100 productions of his short plays everywhere from Bangalore to Bucharest and from Seoul to Sao Paulo. His plays have won over 45 awards, been produced in more than ten languages and have been published in over two dozen anthologies. His comedy “Shakespeare Lives!” is one of our two selections for our scary-themed October slots.

Gregg T. Daniel is an actor, director, and educator who is currently midway through the mammoth journey of directing all of August Wilson’s American Century Cycle, ten plays that reflect the African-American experience in the United States. This October he’ll present Wilson’s Pulitzer prize winning “The Piano Lesson.” We also chat about his extensive 30+ year career on stage, television, movies, and teaching at USC.

#180! ”Silver Linings” is the next play in our 2024 ”Missing Home” series. Alicia Ana Hernandez-Roulet is the playwright and we have a marvelous conversation with her about the play, her work, the importance of family, and (of course) chicharrones!

Chloe Riederich is a playwright, director, and theatre practitioner, whose play ”Decisions, Decisions,” a sensitive, humorous comedy, is the first of our 2024 ”Missing Home” plays. Catch our production and a way-fun interview with Chloe themselves!

Isaiah St. Cyr, Enoch Chapman, and Montana Miller are three of the members of the Native American theatre company Natives of the Apocalypse. In the summer of 2023, this Santa Fe troupe produced an indigenized version of Lyle Kessler’s ”Orphans.” Being one of the very few Native American theatre groups in the U.S., NOTA now embarks on a five-year plan to not only bring theatre to native Americans but enable more indigenous folks to embrace theatre as a way of preserving their heritages through storytelling.

Lily is a theatre critic for the San Francisco Chronicle. I came across an article she wrote back in October of 2023 entitled “What responsibility do critics bear when a theater company closes?” I was so struck that anyone, let alone a theatre critic, would voice that out loud. But it’s a legitimate question, especially after Covid-19 has ravaged the theatre scene worldwide.

Florida-based playwrights/actors/producers of the challenging hit play, ”Dissonance,” which begs the question, ”Can a Black woman and a White woman--who have been friends for 20 years--have an honest, open conversation about race?” #theatre,#race,#friendship,#privilege,#dissonance, #equality, #blacklivesmatter, #racism, #whitefragility, #thisisamerica, #systemicracism, #blm, #america, #socialjustice