Pictured above: ladies of the OU Playwriting MFA, from left to right: Cecilia Copeland, Dana Formby, Kara Dunn, Reina Hardy. Gentlemen of the OU Playwriting MFA, from left to right: Jason Hall, Ryan Dowler, Garret Schneider, David Robinson, Reggie Edmund, Bill Zorn.

Third-Year MFA Playwrights (2008-09):

Kara Dunn: Raised in California, Kara keeps on truckin' in pursuit of drama and education. Recently her ten-minute play, The Risqué Root, was selected for a staged reading at the 2008 Association for Theater in Higher Education conference in Denver, CO, and also received a staged reading at the 2008 Mid-America Theater Conference in Kansas City, MO. Kara’s Seven Questions had a staged reading in 2007 at River Union Stage, Frenchtown NJ. Her drama, Red Light Spectrum was selected and produced for the 2006 Playwrights In Process series held by Shenandoah International Playwrights and The Whole Art Theater in Kalamazoo, MI. Red Light Spectrum also received the 2005 Western Michigan University Research and Creative Activities Award. Her one act play, Mnemosyne was staged in the 2006 New Play Project series in the York Theatre at WMU and was a recipient of the Martin Critchell Award for Best Drama in 2005.

Reginald Edmund: Reggie Edmund is from Houston, Texas and the former Artistic Director for the Silver House Theatre, as well as the founder and producer for the Silver House Playwrights Festival, and the Houston Urban Theatre Series where he was named the recipient of Rolling-Out Magazine “Houston’s 40 under 40” community choice award for his achievement in enriching the community through the arts. This year Reggie received the Kennedy Center inaugural fellowship for 'Soul Mountain Retreat for Writers of Color'. His plays, which include Redemption Of Allah Black, Juneteenth Street, Black Theatre: Solar Eclipse, and Goldielocks And The Three Bears, have been developed at Karamu House Theatre, County Playhouse Theatre, Ensemble Theatre of Houston, the Playwright Center of Minneapolis, Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre Company and the Mid-American Theater Conference. He received his BFA in Theatre-Performance from Texas Southern University, and was hailed as the “Collective Artist” by the Houston Sun newspaper.

Dana Lynn Formby Dana Lynn Formby is a blue-collar playwright whose voice was carved by the relentless Wyoming wind -- lips tight, eyes squinted, legs crossed because god knows what could blow in. She is the 2008 recipient of The Scott McPherson Playwriting Award. Her plays include Armed with Peanut Butter which was invited to New York's American Globe Theatre as part of their short play festival, Sugar Bear, which was commissioned by the Ohio University's School of Medicine; Inherit the Whole, which was given a reading at Premiere Stages in Union New Jersey, and is scheduled for a reading in 2008 at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago; and Loaded Gavel, which was presented this past summer at the Houston Urban Reading Series. Dana's first full-length, Frequency 98.6, received a full production at the University of Wyoming in 2005 and was invited to be one of five plays performed at the regional American College Theatre Festival in 2006. Her one-act play, Monday After Work, won her a scholarship to the 2005 Playwright's Intensive at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.

G. William Zorn:  Bill is originally from Peoria, Illinois, but claims tertiary citizenship with Seattle and Chicago. He received an Associate of Arts degree in Communication from Illinois Central College and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theater from Eastern Illinois University. In 1995, he founded, and served as Artistic Director of, Chicago’s first LGBT theatre company, Theatre Q. In the summer of 2008, he served as Literary Intern for Bailiwick Repertory in Chicago, reading over four-hundred submissions. He is an alumnus of The Musical Theatre Writer’s Workshop under Director, John Sparks. His work has been produced all over the country, including plays: Sick Day and Straight Girls Are a Fag’s Best Friend at Bailiwick Repertory in Chicago, Connecting at Isis Arts Collective in San Francisco and Theatre Babylon in Seattle, and Poetry at 4th Unity Gay & Lesbian Theatre Festival in NYC. He was the bookwriter for the musical The Day Sister-Sister Found Out at Theatre Building Chicago and has written incidental music for such productions as Burn This and Sick Day. In 2007, he received a commission from the Ohio University School of Nursing to write a new play about Type-2 Diabetes. The resulting play, Lucille, is currently touring throughout communities in Appalachia. His play Six/Love was chosen to represent Region III of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. Bill is also an award-winning actor, director and vocal musician.

Second-Year MFA Playwrights (2008-09):

Ryan Dowler: Ryan was born and raised in West Texas. He was among the top six in the nation in Duet Acting at the International Thespian Conference in 2000, before attending Ole Miss on an acting scholarship. As a student in the BFA Acting program, he pursued a degree in Sociology with a specialization in Gender Studies.  After presenting a paper on corporate interests and gender at the UM Gender Conference in 2002, he left Ole Miss to write about his experiences working for one year as an employee at a McDonalds Restaurant outside Cedar Rapids, Iowa. In 2005, he completed his work in Sociology, earning a degree from the University of North Texas while making his directorial debut with David Marshall Grant’s Snakebit (“Venom Flows in Splendid Snakebit” – Dallas Morning News). Ryan then spent a year at the University of Texas, El Paso coordinating a new play series and developing West Memphis, a play that examines the role of small town religion in the high-profile prosecution of Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley Jr. for the murder of three eight-year-old boys in rural Arkansas. His short play, Mammals which deals with the issue of gender, received a reading at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and was awarded first place in the KCACTF National Ten Minute Play competition. In 2008, Mammals was produced in the United States and the U.K. while touring with the North American Playwrights Alliance. Currently, Ryan is an instructor at Ohio University, where he studies under Charles Smith and Erik Ramsey in the Professional Playwriting Program.

David Robinson's artistic sensibilities are formed in equal parts by the austerity of endless Twin Cities winters and the balmy exuberance of South Florida. A native Minnesotan, David received his BA in Literature/Theater from New College of Florida where he developed his plays Make-Up and Present (the former receiving full production). In addition to his work as a theater critic for The Bradenton Herald, David's writing has also appeared in the film journal, CineACTION.

Garret Schneider was born in a bubble in the middle of Maine, and has spent his entire life learning to thrive in it. His early stages of writing started in performance / SLAM poetry, and made the transition into plays while at Lehigh University. He graduated with a BA in Mathematics and Theatre from Lehigh University -- an artistic dichotomy, which was reflected in his first play: "Proud Beasts", centered around amphetamine-addicted mathematicians. His one-act, "Franky and Zoza", awarded him a place in the Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive, and he studied under Lee Blessing, Chay Yew, Marsha Norman, Mark Bly, Heather McDonald, Gary Garrison, Melanie Marnich, and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa. For the two years after Lehigh and before Ohio, Garret was a company member in Maine's Heartwood Regional Theater Company, and was in the New England premier of Will Eno's one-man show, "Thom Pain: Based on Nothing". Technology, those striving to be godlike, and exploring the definition of family is at the artistic heart of Garret's work.

First-Year MFA Playwrights (2008-09):

Cecilia Copeland was born in Des Moines Iowa and promptly whisked to Israel to speak her first words in Hebrew and French. She was returned home to America as a toddler landing back in her native tongue of English. Raised in the heartland, surrounded by politics, growing up as a Spanish Catholic Jewish non-princess, and a child of the 80’s she began her affair with the stage at the age four in Ballet recitals. In high school she was named an All-State winner for her role as Marianne in Arthur Miller’s Playing for Time. Her first performance in college at the University of Iowa received buzz from the local papers. (“played campily, but flawlessly…” The Daily Iowan) While at Iowa she choreographed several of her own works in the Dance Department as well as new plays in the Theatre Department including Pancho Villa by Pete Medina of the Writers Workshop. Cecilia left the University of Iowa’s Theatre and Dance programs after being invited to join the Stella Adler Acting Studio in New York. Upon completing the program at Stella Adler she worked as an actress all over NY before moving to Sydney Australia where she began to write theatre. Growing frustrated with the roles available for women to play, she created the one act play Amusement Bomber, which she revised into a screenplay for Artemis Productions with a generous grant from Metro Screen Australia. After five years of living as an expatriate she returned to America to finish her BA in Theatre with an Emphasis in Playwriting and a Minor in Dance from the University of Iowa. She has received readings in Philadelphia and Iowa for her plays Holding Forward and Raising the Stakes. Her one act, Playing was given a full production at the University of Iowa in 2007. Her piece on the life of Kaniko Fumiko is featured on the Japanarchy webpage hosted by Professor Adrienne Hurley. Her Honors Thesis One Woman was an official event for SWAN day (Support Women Artists Now) in 2008. A portion of One Woman was also read on KRUI Radio and in the University of Iowa’s Playwrights Festival in 2008. As Cecilia joins the MFA program at Ohio University she hopes to continue exploring global issues and interdisciplinary work in an effort to make American Theatre reflect its diverse heritage.

Jason Hall received his undergraduate degree in broadcast journalism, but has always been drawn to the infinite pleasures of creative and dramatic writing. Among the Oats, a cycle of six one-act plays, has received selected production at the University of Southern Maine and the Minnesota Fringe Festival. He has mentored a number of University of Pittsburgh's Red-Eye Theater Project writers and is playwright-in-residence to Marietta College's 24-hour Play Festival. He spends his summers teaching in programs for gifted and talented kids, working with the Festival of Creative Youth in Maine and more recently with Johns Hopkins' Center for Talented Youth. In 2003 he wrote and directed a feature comedy film, The Ballad of Faith Divine. Jason also maintains The Stone House, a website devoted to Golden Age British mystery writer Gladys Mitchell.

Reina Hardy is a playwright with credits in Chicago, New York, and Muncie, Indiana. Her play "Erratica" will make its professional world premiere in July 2009 with Sacramento's Capital Stage. Reina has also worked with Orlando Shakespeare, Algonquin Theatre, the Side Project, Write Act Rep, the House Theatre, and many others. Look for her poems in various magazines, look for excerpts from her plays in "Audition Arsenal," "The Ultimate Audition Book" and "Best Scenes for Two Actors," and look for her theatre reviews on the Sun Times website. Once, Reina resolved to see a show in every Chicago fringe venue during the course of a year. Her failure is chronicled at wayoffloop.blogspot.com. Reina is a 2003 graduate of Columbia University, where she won the Brick Memorial Prize for playwriting. She is also founder and artistic director of the Viola Project, Chicago's best Shakespeare performance workshop for girls.