2020-21 OHIO MFA Playwrights
Third Year Students
Skye Robinson Hillis (she/her/hers). (she/her) is a playwright, director, and dramaturg based in Chicago. Skye is a two time semi-finalist for the Princess Grace Award, and her work has been seen at the Kennedy Center’s ACTF, Creede Repertory, The Route 66 Theatre Company, Chicago Dramatists, A Red Orchid Theatre, Piven Theatre Workshop, Artistic Home, Prologue Theatre Company, Polarity Ensemble Theatre, Ohio University, Columbia College, and the City of Chicago’s In the Works Play Lab at the Pritzker Pavillion in Millenium Park. Her play And Vaster was awarded a residency at the New Works Lab at Stratford in 2015, winner of the 2015 Ashland New Plays Festival, and winner of the Holland New Voices Award at the Great Plains Theatre Conference in 2017. As a director and dramaturg, she has worked for Hartford Stage, Goodman Theatre, Court Theatre, A Red Orchid, Remy Bumppo, Stage Left, and more. Her other plays include Bury the Rest, Go Like Saints, Escape Velocity, The Ordinariness of Everything Else, The Running Mate, Into Place, and Selfish.
John Hendel (he/his). Third-year playwright, John Hendel is a playwright most recently from Los Angeles. His plays include Pulling Off Procreation (Or Is It Wrong to Keep Fucking if the Baby Starts Crying?) (2013 Cincinnati Fringe Festival, winner: Founders’ Pick of the Fringe), Wearhorse (2014 Hollywood Fringe Festival), Fame Confusions and The Greatest Play Ever (If You Don’t Think So, You’re a Basket of Farts) (NY Artists Unlimited International Cringe Fest, 2009 and 2010, respectively). He has twice been a PlayLab writer at the Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Valdez, AK. His work online includes his 64 Plays in 64 Days project, as well as writing about movies and television. He received his Playwriting BFA from Ohio University. Twitter: @hendyhendel.
Second Year Students
Ivan Mosley (he/his). Second-year playwright, Ivan Mosley is a graduate of Wake Forest University and the former Literary Manager at the North Carolina Black Repertory Company. He is also a proud alumnus of the Kennedy Center Summer Playwrights Intensive and the Advanced Playwriting Program at the National Theatre Institute. His plays have been developed at the Greensboro Playwrights Forum, the John F. Kennedy Center, the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, the Ring Theatre and Route 66 Theatre Company.
Klae Bainter (he/his). Second-year playwright, Klae Bainter is a playwright and essayist. His work uses poetic language to examine the grotesque nature of people, their values, and the spaces they hold sacred. His essays have been published in Signal Mountain Review, Sprindrift Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Pif Magazine. He wrote the short film “Senior Showcase” which premiered at the Best of Shorts– Seattle International Film Festival (Lindy + Kris Boustedt). He developed work with Cleveland Drafts Literary Festival (2018), and even did a little performing with Manhattan Project (Cleveland, Ohio). His play Bullshit was part of the 2019 NEOMFA Playwrights Festival at Convergence Continuum (Cleveland, Ohio). He received his BA (cum laude) in English Literature, with a Creative Writing focus from the University of Washington in 2015. He lives with an obnoxious orange cat.
First Year Students
Wendy-Marie Martin (she/her/hers) is a playwright and scholar currently pursuing both an MFA in Playwriting and a PhD in Interdisciplinary Arts/Theater and Playwriting at Ohio University. Her areas of research include intersectional feminist theatre and 20th/21st century American playwrights who identify as women. Before coming to Ohio University, Wendy-Marie taught theater history at the Pacific Conservatory Theater, where she also directed for their educational outreach program. While living in Germany, she taught at the Constantin Schule Bochum and directed/devised women solo artists in Aber Morgen at the Console Theatre in Essen, Ich hab’s Sat zu Ihnen zu Kommen…at Die Simplon in Bochum and Nimmersatte Liebe at the Kunstmuseum Bochum. Her short plays have been produced in Germany, The Netherlands, Australia, Japan, Ireland, and the U.S and published by Polychoron Press, and Smith & Krauss, Theatrefolk, and YouthPLAYS. WendyMarie is creator and Executive Producer of The Red Eye 10s International Play Festival, creator/coordinator of the Performance Corner for Ohio University’s International Women’s Art Exhibit and co-Producer of the Trans [Plays] of Remembrance Festival at Ohio University. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild and a 2020-21 Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Barbara E. Allushuski Graduate Fellow.
Eryn Elyse McVay (she/her/hers) is a Pacific Northwest playwright who earned her BA in Theatre from Western Washington University where she concentrated on Playwriting and Acting. For her work How Sweet The Sound Eryn has been honored to be a semi-finalist for the Eugene O’Neill 2019 New Playwrights Conference, the 2019 National Partners of American Theatre Region 7 Selection for the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, a semi-finalist for the International Wolfe Prize from UNC’s PlayMakers Repertory Theater, and received recognition in Distinguished Achievement from KCACTF for their National Undergraduate Playwriting Award in both 2018 and 2019. Eryn developed her short piece Jeremiah’s Creeping Arm at the inaugural Strait Plays Professional Retreat in August 2019, and her new work Neat. recently premiered as a virtual reading with Not So Staged Readings.
Steven Strafford (he/his) is an actor and playwright originally from Brooklyn, NY. As an adult, he has called Chicago and NYC home. He is the author and performer of the critically acclaimed, award-winning Methtacular! which he has performed across the country at LORT theaters, universities and LGBTQ spaces. Recently, the show was filmed at Steppenwolf Theatre’s 1700 Space. He is also the author of Small Jokes About Monsters which received productions in Houston (nominated for Houston Theatre Award for Outstanding New Play) Sioux City, and in Chicago at 16th Street Theater. It also had workshops at Portland Stage Company and at Route 66 Theater Company. His play Mona Q: Age 38 received workshops with Route 66 Theatre Company and 16th Street Theater. His short plays, Use Your Noodles and The Breakup Play have been produced a few times each. As an actor he has appeared on stage, in movies, on TV, and in national commercials. Methtacular! was included in an anthology of solo plays from Opus Books. His essay, “College Dreams” was published in the book, The Anatomy of Silence.
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