2019-20 OHIO MFA Playwrights
(2020-21 bios coming as soon as we can get photos without masks!)
Third Year Students
Olivia Matthews (left, in photo, she/hers). Third-year playwright, Liv Matthews is a playwright from Central Florida. Her ten-minute play, Home Going, was produced by Playwrights’ Round Table in Orlando and is published in The Best 10 Minutes Plays of 2015 by Smith and Kraus. Her other short plays have been seen in Atlanta, Houston, Miami, and New York City. Olivia’s work often explores family dynamics, the complexities of young women and teens, and the oddities and magic of The South. This summer, she will participate in the Sesame Workshop Writers’ Room Fellowship.
Jordan Ramirez Puckett (right, in photo). Third-year playwright, Jordan Ramirez Puckett is a Chicana playwright. She participated in the 2018-2019 Playwrights Realm Scratchpad Series. Her work has also been produced and/or developed by Abingdon Theatre Company (New York, NY), Goodman Theatre (Chicago, IL), Harold Clurman Laboratory Theatre Company (New York, NY), Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, and San Diego Repertory Theatre among others. Her other plays include To Saints and Stars, Las Pajaritas, Restore, and Inevitable. She is the former Associate Artistic Director at San Francisco Playhouse. Website: www.jordanramirezpuckett.com.
Jean Egdorf (she/hers). Third-year playwright, Jean Egdorf draws her influence from home: theisolation of the mountainous, high desert of the southwest. Her full-length plays include How to Bake a Genoise Sponge without Breaking Any Eggs and The Evolution of Rattlesnakes (2020 O’Neill Semifinalist). Her short plays have been produced in Ohio and Colorado, and her dramaturgical essays have been published for the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities. Jean spent six seasons with Creede Repertory Theatre (CRT) where she co-developed the CRT Ten-Minute Play Festival and has served as a member of CRT’s Headwaters New Play Festival reading committee since 2015. Jean is a stage manager and member of Actors’ Equity Association, with a career-long focus on the development of new work and new play festivals, including with CRT, Boulder Colorado’s LOCAL Theater Company, and the musical I AM ALIVE by Emmy-Award winning composer Denise Gentilini and Singer-Songwriter Lisa Nemzo.
Second Year Students
Skye Robinson Hillis (left in photo, she/her). Second-year playwright, Skye Robinson Hillis 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, Escape Velocity, The Ordinariness of Everything Else, The Running Mate, Into Place and Selfish. Skye was recently awarded the prestigious Trisolini Fellowship which will fund her thesis year in the MFA program.
John Hendel (right, in photo, he/his). Second-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. Twitter: @hendyhendel.
First Year Students
Ivan Mosley (left, in photo, he/his). First-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.
Amanda Rockhold (centered, in photo, she/hers). First-year playwright, Amanda Rockhold is an Ohio-based writer who thrives on illustrating the world as screwball scenarios, bumbling with the flawed and wandering human spirit. She directed and produced her full-length play, Dancing in Riddles, with Marysville-based theater company, Silver Scene Players in 2018 as part of their season.
Klae Bainter (right, in photo, he/his). First-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.
