LA FPI

FPI Profiles

Meet LA FPI’s Persons of Interest – voices at the forefront of the movement, and artists working behind the scenes.

Tiffany Antone, Erica Bennett, Nancy Beverly, Debbie Bolsky, Robin Byrd, Kitty Felde, Diane Grant, Helen Hill, Jen Huszcza, Sara Israel, Cindy Marie Jenkins, Janice Kennedy, Ella Martin, Analyn Revilla, Laura Annawyn Shamas, Cynthia Wands, Jennie Webb, Laurel Moje Wetzork

(And also check out our Guest Bloggers who speak up now and then!)

This week’s blogger:

Tiffany is proud to have received her MFA in Playwriting from UCLA’s prestigious school of Theater, Film, and Television, where she also completed her BA in Theater. She also holds her A.A in acting from The American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Tiffany was a 2008 Hawthornden Fellow, which included a writing residency in Scotland, and a 2009 Sherwood Award Finalist with Center Theatre Group. Tiffany has received the Tim Robbins Award for plays of social importance, James Pendelton Foundation Prize, Hal Kanter Award in Comedy Writing, Dini Ostrov Stage Spirit Award in Playwriting, the Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme Scholarship, and the Florence Theil Herrscher Award.

Her plays have been read and/or performed in Los Angeles, New York, D.C. and Minneapolis. Her plays Twigs and Bone and Ana and the Closet were both Jerome Finalists and O’Neil semi-finalists for 2009 and 2010. Ana and the Closet was also presented at The Kennedy Center’s Page to Stage Festival in 2009. Her play In the Company of Jane Doe was a Princess Grace semi-finalist in 2006, a winner of the New Plays on Campus series with The Playwrights’ Center, and winner of the 2008 New Works for Young Women contest with the University of Tulsa. In the Company of Jane Doe premiered in January 2010 at The Powerhouse Theatre (LA Theatre Ensemble). Tiffany’s play The Good Book was a winner of the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway play festival and is available through Samuel French publishing.

Other plays include The Low Tide Gang, Ham Brown’s House (Princess Grace Semi-Finalist, 2008), Little Phoenix, Stalled, My Pet George, and From the Rubble. Screenplays include The Sisters Roberts and A Disappearing Woman (Golden Brad Finalist 2009).

Tiffany currently lives and teaches in LA and is the literary manager for The Los Angeles Theatre Ensemble. You can read more about Tiffany at www.TiffanyAntone.com or on her blog www.AwdsAndEnds.com.

Tiffany acts as LA FPI Graphics Consultant.

Persons of Interest:

Tiffany Antone

Tiffany acts as LA FPI Graphics Consultant.

Erica Bennett

It’s been written of Erica Bennett’s work that “The women in her plays don’t mince words. They fight for love, demand respect, accept no crap, and face their fears as openly as they embrace their passions. The men they encounter challenge their beliefs and assumptions provocatively.”

Bennett’s plays have been stage-read at the 2009 LA Woman’s Theatre Project New Works Festival, the 2009 2nd Annual Laguna Beach New Play Festival, the 2009 Orange County Playwrights Alliance Discovery Series at the Newport Theatre Arts Center, as well as the 2004 Cypress College New Play Festival.

The first production of her play El Primer Dia de Clases, which is about the 1947 California desegregation case Mendez et al. vs. Westminster School District of Orange County et al., is the foundation for Bennett’s 28-minute documentary film Mendez v. Westminster: Families for Equality. PBSs KOCE has a perpetual license to the film. It can currently be seen on the OC Channel, 50.2. It is also currently being featured in the Museum of Teaching and Learning’s Mendez exhibit at the Old Orange County Courthouse through June 2012.

Erica is a member of the Orange County Playwrights Alliance, the Dramatist’s Guild, and the Society of California Archivists.

Nancy Beverly

Nancy Beverly’s most recent theatrical adventure was writing and directing her one-act Chicago (a.k.a. The Happy Wanderer), which was part of “Shorts and Briefs,” a sold-out afternoon of play readings at the Stella Adler’s Gilbert Theatre in March 2010 that were all written and directed by women. The venture grew out of a discussion she, Jan O’Connor and Mary Casey had earlier in the year about the sorry state of women getting their plays produced. They decided to do something about it.

“Shorts and Briefs” was produced under the banner of The L.A. Women’s Theatre Project. Additionally, Beverly’s full-length play Handcrafted Healing was featured in L.A.W.T.P.’s dynamic weekend of play readings in October 2009 – again, all written and directed by women. Beverly developed Handcrafted Healing through Playwrights 6, a writer-run group in Los Angeles, where she was a member from 2001until 2009.

In August 2007, also in conjunction with P6, Beverly produced her drama Godislav at the Miles Memorial Playhouse in Santa Monica for a month-long run. Additionally, Godislav had the honor of being chosen in 2006 to be part of the Playwrights Showcase of the Western Region in Denver.

West Hollywood’s Celebration Theatre gave Beverly’s coming-of-age dramady A New You its world-premiere in the summer of 2001.

Prior to moving to Los Angeles, Beverly worked at Actors Theatre of Louisville as the Assistant Literary Manager. While at ATL, she had several short plays produced in ATL’s twice-yearly short play showcase. Attack of the Moral Fuzzies, one of those 10-minute comedies, was published in an ATL anthology of short works and has been performed several times a year for 25 years by theatres all around the U.S. and Canada.

Beverly has also written for the Showtime series Women, knocked out 70 articles for the how-to website ehow.com, conducted radio interviews for KPFK’s weekly show IMRU, and gotten up and done performance art under the direction of Danielle Brazell, the former Artistic Director of the performance space Highways in Santa Monica.

She’s also worked in network television as an executive producer’s assistant on and pitched stories to such hit shows as Desperate Housewives and Ghost Whisperer.

Debbie Bolsky

Debbie Bolsky is a playwright/screenwriter who has written over ten stage plays and screenplays. Her play Biking With Andrew Scott enjoyed a successful run in Los Angeles in 2008.

She is currently immersed in three projects: the romantic comedy play, Ashes to Ashes; and two screenplays, The Umpire Has No Balls, a story that delves into one of her greatest passions – baseball; and a co-writer on You People a drama currently in development.

Debbie’s experience is multi-faceted, having worked as Associate Producer on Laurel Wetzork’s independent film, Rogues, and at Columbia Pictures (Sony Picture Entertainment) in motion picture media advertising and marketing. At Columbia Pictures for over 16 years and through nine regime changes, Debbie successfully planned and implemented media strategies for over 400 films. You may read more about Debbie at www.dbolskywriter.com.

Debbie co-captains the LA FPI Agent process.

Robin Byrd

Robin Byrd is an Indiana born playwright and poet residing in Los Angeles. Growing up in Indianapolis (sometimes referred to as the northernmost southern city), attributes to the playwright’s affinity toward southern themes and language in some of her pieces.

Her plays which include Tennessee Songbird (the place where the river bends), The Book of Years, Dream Catcher, The Day of Small Things, For This Reason, In Times Like These (Is He the One?), and, Me, My Fiddle, An’ Momma have been read and produced in Los Angeles as well as read in Nebraska, Maine, and North Carolina. Robin has performed Me, My Fiddle, An’ Momma in Los Angeles; the piece was also read at the 1^st Annual SWAN Day event in Portland, Maine in March of 2008. Her plays Tennessee Songbird and Dream Catcher have won “Best Concurrent Play Lab Script at the 2008 Great Plains Theatre Conference” and been selected as a semi-finalist for the 2008 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, respectively. Her poetry has been read in venues in Los Angeles and Indiana and has been published in two International Library of Poetry books.

The playwright is a member of The Dramatists Guild of America, Inc., the Theatre Communications Group, the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights, and the American Film Institute from which she holds a certificate in screenwriting. For more information on Robin please visit her website at www.ladybyrdcreations.com.

Robin acts as LA FPI Blog Editor.

Kitty Felde

By day, she’s a public radio reporter covering Capitol Hill. But in her real life, Kitty Felde is an award-winning playwright.

Felde’s written everything from a courtroom drama about the Bosnian war (A PATCH OF EARTH, winner of the Maxim Mazumdar New Play Competition) to a one woman show about Alice Roosevelt Longworth (ALICE, winner of the Open Book/Fireside Theatre Playwriting Competition) to an adaptation of a trio of short stories by Nikolai Gogol (GOGOL PROJECT, winner of the 2009 LA Drama Critics Circle Award.)

Her one-act TOP OF THE HOUR has been chosen for the Provincetown Theater’s Fall Festival for a reading and will premiere in New York City in December.

She’s a co-founder of Theatre of Note, a Helen Hayes judge in Washington, DC, and a proud member of the Dramatists Guild, ALAP, and FPI.

Diane Grant

: Diane Grant

Diane Grant is an award winning playwright and screenwriter, whose film Too Much Oregano won the Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize.

She was a co-founder of Redlight Theatre, the first professional women’s theatre in Canada. Her plays, which have been produced and published in the US and Canada, include Nellie! How The Women Won The Vote, Sunday Dinner, Sex and Violence, The Piaggi Suite, Four Women In Search Of A Character, Rondo a la Condo, A Dog’s Life; and The Last Of The Daytons, a semi-finalist for the 2007 National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center.

Will To Win, a documentary on the Southern California Shakespeare Festival, written by Ms. Grant, and produced by filmmaker Kerry Feltham, previewed in Los Angeles and the Folger Shakespeare Library in 2007 and is recommended by the Royal Shakespeare Company of London.

Ms. Grant has performed at the Stratford Festival and the National Arts Centre of Canada. She was Literary Manager of the Los Angeles Write Act Repertory Company, a mentor for the young playwrights’ group HOLA, and a member of Los Angeles’ Wordsmiths. She’s a member of the Dramatists Guild, The Playwrights Guild of Canada, the International Center for Women Playwrights, and is Vice-Chair of the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights.

Diane acts as LA FPI Task Force Coordinator.

Helen Hill

Helen Hill is a licensed psychotherapist, and a writer about life and poetry. She works with at-risk youth, adolescents and adults on “coming out” issues. Helen is also an artist utilizing many different mediums from pencils to computer imaging. Her favorite medium, though, is the written word and her camera. Both are used to express ideas that go beyond sight and into the realm of insight.

You can see some of Helen’s artwork at http://www.new-gallery-of-art.com.

Her therapy site is found here: http://www.helen-hill.com.

Helen acts as LA FPI Communications Editor and Graphics Consultant.

Jen Huszcza

Jen Huszcza is a playwright currently based in Los Angeles.

She has a BFA in Dramatic Writing and an MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from NYU. After graduating from college, she stayed in New York and worked a variety of day jobs including video librarian and study guide writer. She eventually moved to Los Angeles for better weather and more trees.

Out in Los Angeles, three of her plays have been presented as staged readings in the Monday Night Living Room Series at the Blank Theatre in Hollywood. Also at the Blank, she was an Associate Producer on Michael John LaChiusa’s See What I Wanna See, and she was a Weekly Producer and Playwright Mentor for the Young Playwrights Festival.

She wrote and acted in Gunfighter Nation’s collectively written piece, LA History Project: Pio Pico, Sam Yorty, and the Secret Procession of Los Angeles, presented at the Lost Studio.

She is a script reader for a variety of theatre companies. She is a member of the Playwrights and Directors Lab at the Actors Studio West.

In addition to plays, she has written ad copy, film reviews, blogs, bad poetry, screenplays, a novel, and several short stories.

She has heard numerous pronunciations of her last name, but the one she prefers is Hooo-zhah.

Sara Israel

: Sara Israel

Sara’s introduction to the world of theater came when she was cast in the title role of a kindergarten play, The Magic Letter E (cap to cape, fad to fade). She has been engaged by words ever since. As a playwright, Sara’s work has been seen on both coasts (the middle of the country has alluded her, for now. . .) and has garnered her the American Theatre Co-op Playwriting Prize and a Playwrights Circle Award. She was also a Princess Grace Award semi-finalist for her play, bad Art. As a television writer, her first two produced scripts aired simultaneously — same night, same time, different channels. In addition, her television script Triumvirate was named “Best Un-produced Pilot” by Written By, the magazine of the Writers Guild of America.

Her work as a theater director has been seen at The Blank Theatre Company, Theatre of NOTE, the Dramatists Guild, the Marianne Murphy Reading Series, the Lillian Theatre, and Dartmouth College; she is also an alumnus of Directors Lab West. Her producing credits include Speech & Debate and Dickie & Babe for The Blank Theatre Company and an official entry of the 2009 Los Angeles Independent Television Festival. Sara currently serves as Literary Manager for The Blank Theatre Company. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College.

Cindy Marie Jenkins

CINDY MARIE JENKINS is a Storyteller & Consultant based in Los Angeles. Cindy is now exploring interactive street theatre to engage and activate her community. She believes in working within the extremes of social media and hand-to-hand guerrilla marketing for audience development & outreach.

PRIVATE CLIENTS include: The Help Group, Santa Monica Rep, Beans Boutique, Consultant for Eric Garcetti, President of the Los Angeles City Council, & other small businesses, nonprofits, individuals looking to make a career shift, etc.

TEACHING/COACHING: Guest Responder for Kennedy Center College Festival, Cold Reading Workshops for SAG Conservatory at AFI, Co-teacher of Connect the Arts, a Social Media & Marketing Seminar, Academy Teaching Associate and Artistic Associate for The Antaeus Company in North Hollywood; Director of Education for Enrichment Works (teaching writing & theater workshops for young people as well as Professional Development sessions for LAUSD Teachers, writing study guides according to VAPA (Visual and Performing Arts Standards); Mentor/Director for Virginia Avenue Project, Program Director & Writing/Theater Instructor for Safe Moves: DUI Prevention Theater Program and CTG‘s Speak To Me Program. RECRUITING experience upon request.

Art installations/interactions have been shown at Summer Nights on the Boulevard, The Barnsdall Gallery, The Courtyard Gallery, the Silver Lake Jubilee and the Children’s Festival of the Arts in Hollywood.

Her adaptation of VOICES FROM CHORNOBYL has been produced in different venues around Los Angeles since 2006 to build awareness and raise money for the residents and children of Chernobyl. Awareness Events at www.voicesfromchornobyl.com . Cindy regularly contributes to LA Stage Alliance, Atwater Village Now, The Inspired Classroom, Bitter Lemons & LAFPI

–

www.CindyMarieJenkins.com

Twitter.com/cindymariej

Linkedin.com/in/cindymariejenkins

Cindy Marie captains LA FPI Online Outreach.

Janice Kennedy

Janice Kennedy is a published and produced playwright whose work has been seen in London, New York, Chicago and Seattle as well as other venues. Among the recognition she has received is a nomination for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for women playwrights in the U.S. and Great Britain for her play about the Hatfield-McCoy Feud, The Last Hanging in Pike County. In 2007, Janice won the “Spirit of Moondance” award at the Moondance International Film Festival in the playwriting category for her one-woman drama about Mary Shelley, Shadows Round the Moon.

Janice is also an award-winning screenwriter. Her script for the short film, Man.Woman.Blackbird. (based on her play, The Dark), won “Best Screenplay” at the 2009 Fifteen Minutes of Fame Festival of Shorts in competition with films from around the world. Janice has also won a “Best Screenplay” award from the Dixie Film Festival for a comedy feature, Martial Artiste, co-written with Susan diRende. Janice’s television writing awards include “Best TV Pilot” from the 2009 Cinema City International Film Festival for CROSSROADS and she won the 2010 WILDsound Television and Film Writing Competition in Toronto for her HOUSE spec script, House’s Mouse.

Janice moved to Los Angeles a few years ago from Seattle, where she had co-founded the Hedgebrook Women Playwrights Festival. An active member of Women in Film, Janice is the organizational liaison for the Broad Humor Film Festival, an annual event in Venice Beach that screens comedies written and directed by women.

Janice acts as an LA FPI Special Agent.

Ella Martin

Ella Martin is a writer, director, and actor. Ella attended the University of California at Berkeley, where she was named a Regents’ and Chancellor’s Scholar and focused in acting, directing, and theatre history, earning a B.A. in Theatre and Performance Studies. She is the Founder and Artistic Director of Theatre Mab, a collective of risk-taking L.A. theatre artists conducting creative experiments & provoking audiences of all backgrounds.

She has directed for the Rubicon International Theatre Festival, Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights, Santa Monica College Opera Workshop, LA Women’s Theatre Project, Theater Charity, and Theatre Mab, and assistant directed for The Road Theatre, LA Theatre Ensemble Scriptyard, Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum Seedlings, and LA County High School for the Arts.

She has written plays that have been developed or performed at the Rubicon International Theatre Festival, the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum Seedlings, Theater Charity, and PianoFight LA.

Ella is an active member of 12on12off, a non-profit organization striving to regulate workers’ hours to create a safer, healthier working environment for professionals in the film industry.

To see some of her work as an actor, click here.

Ella acts as LA FPI Study Director.

Analyn Revilla

Analyn is a new playwright, and she is currently working on her first play, “Original Sin”. This play has been in the works for two years, though it had its first public reading in April 2010. Like “Alice” in Lewis Carroll book, she gets deeper into the rabbit hole of the story and emerges from the burrows with a wealth of subtexts about her humanity and the characters in her story. Analyn imagines a life of living fully in the theater, but for now she supports her imagined life with a career in Information Technology. She believes our humanity lives in our imagined life and contributes by actively supporting LAFPI and in writing, imagining and writing some more.

Analyn acts as LA FPI Resources Editor.

Laura Annawyn Shamas

Laura Annawyn Shamas, Ph.D., is a writer and mythologist. Her interest in gender parity in playwriting (& the arts/the world) began at an early age. Laura’s mother Annawyn suggested repeatedly that Laura (and everyone else!) should read A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN by Virginia Woolf. Finally, in 1979, Laura did so.

While a UCLA student, Laura adapted four pages of Woolf’s book into her first full-length play called THE OTHER SHAKESPEARE about Shakespeare’s “imaginary” talented sister; this play is published by Dramatic Publishing Company. More info: laurashamas.com.

Laura co-founded LA FPI, and acts as National Outreach Agent.

Cynthia Wands

I am looking to create language based plays which explore the mystic and historic elements of our consciousness.

I worked for many years as a stage actress in San Francisco, Boston and Los Angeles, and had the opportunity to work with some extraordinary theatre artists. My work included plays produced at the Magic Theatre, San Francisco Rep, Celebration Theatre, and the Berkeley Shakespeare Festival. I have also had the opportunity to read as an actor for new works for the Theatre Series on KCRW (The House In The City), and independent play readings at the Coast Playhouse (The Crimson Thread), Burbage Theatre (Pearls & Marlowe), and the Marin Playwright’s Festival (Sarah Bernhardt).

My exposure to the plays and playwrights gave me an appreciation for magical realism, and my writing explores the connection between the natural and unknown.

My theatre writing has been informed by studying with Dakota Powell at UCLA and also with Murray Mednick at the Padua Playwrights Workshop. I have also studied playwright classes with Leon Martell at UCLA, and studied with Jack Grapes in his Method Writing classes.

I have developed scripts at the Ohio State University retreat for playwrights with the ICWP (International Center fro Women’s Playwrights). The Dramatist Guild has hosted a reading of “The Lost Years” in November 2007 for Footlight Series in Los Angeles.

I am a member of The Dramatist Guild, ALAP (Alliance for Los Angeles Playwrights), LAFPI (Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative) and ICWP (International Centre for Women Playwrights). My theatre works include: Best Fest Forward, The Lost Years, Emily, and The American Woman. Screenplays include: Whitley Heights, The Wedding Ring, and The White Datura.

I am the author of two novels, Gift of Afternoon Light, and Improbable Fiction. My short stories have been published in Mo+h Magazine and Bombshelter Press.

Jennie Webb

Jennie Webb is an independent Los Angeles playwright whose plays, including Anticipating Leftovers, Yard Sale Signs, Remodeling Plans, The Complete Story of the War, Men & Boxes, Tilting, Buying a House and Unclaimed Assets, have been presented on stages and in/at/around alternative venues throughout the U.S. and internationally at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Her works have been published by Heinemann Press and International Centre for Women Playwrights, and supported by the now defunct A.S.K. Theater Projects, The Playwrights Center in Minneapolis’ PlayLabs, the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights and The Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, where she is currently playwright-in-residence and runs “Botanicum Seedlings: A Development Series for Playwrights.”

She is a proud member of The Playwrights Union and Rogue Machine Theatre; she also works as freelance arts writer. She was recently profiled on NY Theatre.com, and is the recipient of a 2010 Women in Theatre Red Carpet Award. Visit www.jenniewebbsite.com

Jennie co-founded LA FPI, and acts as Editor-at-Large.

Laurel Moje Wetzork

An award-winning writer and artist, Laurel graduated from USC’s film school. Her first theatrical play was a finalist in the N.E.T.C., her second produced for victims of domestic abuse at T.H.A.W., her third became Rogues, an independent film. Laurel wrote, edited, directed and co-produced Rogues.

After she and her husband John moved to North Carolina a few years ago, Laurel was asked to join the BOD of a theatrical group and then was asked to lead a new playwriting group where she directed over 20 short plays for their staged readings series. She also had four one-woman art shows featuring her plein air landscapes. The Wetzorks moved back to California in 2009.

Laurel is a script and play consultant, fine artist, comes from a family of paronomasiacs, and loves to cook. She’s taught film production, screenwriting, and film history at the university level. She hopes to have her latest play, Icebreaker (a screwball comedy) produced next year. www.mojewetzorkstudios.com

Laurel acts as LA FPI Onstage Editor.

jenniewebb | April 13, 2010 2:44 pm

FPI Profiles

FPI Profiles

Tiffany Antone

Persons of Interest:

Tiffany Antone

Erica Bennett

Nancy Beverly

Debbie Bolsky

Robin Byrd

Kitty Felde

Diane Grant

Helen Hill

Jen Huszcza

Sara Israel

Cindy Marie Jenkins

Janice Kennedy

Ella Martin

Analyn Revilla

Laura Annawyn Shamas

Cynthia Wands

Jennie Webb

Laurel Moje Wetzork

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