2021-22 OHIO MFA Playwrights
Third Year Students
Klae Bainter (he/him). Klae Bainter is a Seattle based playwright & essayist who is currently in the final year of his playwrighting MFA at Ohio University. His plays use poetic language to examine the grotesque nature of people, their values, and the spaces they hold sacred. He’s 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 has had essays and poetry published with Barnhouse Journal, Piff Magazine, Signal Mountain Review, and others, with work forthcoming from Invisible City Journal. Klae received his BA (cum laude) in English Literature, with a Creative Writing focus from the University of Washington. Currently, he lives in Athens, Ohio, with an obnoxious orange cat.
Ivan Mosley (he/him). Ivan Mosley is a playwright and dramaturg from North Carolina. He graduated from Wake Forest University with a BA in Theatre. His play Evelyn & His Brothers was selected as a semifinalist for the 2018 Bay Area Playwrights Festival. He is a proud alumnus of the Kennedy Center Summer Playwrights Intensive and the Advanced Playwriting Program at the National Theatre Institute. He has developed his plays at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, the John F. Kennedy Center, Route 66 Theatre Company, Tantrum East, Greensboro Playwrights Forum, and the Ring Theatre. He has served as the dramaturg for the World Premiere of The Sting of White Roses by Angelica Cheri and the regional premieres of The Right Reverend Dupree in Exile by Jackie Alexander and Objects in the Mirror by Charles Smith. Currently, he is pursuing his Master of Fine Arts in Playwriting and his Masters in Arts Administration at Ohio University.
Second Year Students
Steven Strafford (he/his). Steven Strafford is a Brooklyn-born playwright. He is the author and performer of the award-winning Methtacular! which he has performed across the country at LORT theaters, universities, and LGBTQ spaces. Methtacular! was filmed at Steppenwolf Theatre’s 1700 Space in 2019. His play Small Jokes About Monsters recently won the 2022 Ready-to-Publish Award from SETC and will be published and licensed by StageRights. It also won the 2016 New American Voices Competition and was a semi-finalist for The O’Neill New Play Conference. It received productions in Chicago, Houston (nominated – Houston Theatre Award – Outstanding New Play) and Sioux City, Iowa. His play Greater Illinois was a finalist for the Jackie Demaline Play Award as well as a semi-finalist at The O’Neill. His short plays, Use Your Noodles and The Breakup Play have each had multiple university productions.
Eryn Elyse McVay (she/her). Second-year playwright, Eryn Elyse McVay is a Pacific Northwesterner who earned her BA in Theatre from Western Washington University where she concentrated on Playwriting and Acting, and is currently an MFA candidate in Playwriting at Ohio University. Her play “How Sweet The Sound” has been 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’s new full-length “what the Gods gave me” received a staged reading at the 27th Annual Seabury Quinn Jr. Playwright’s Festival at Ohio University in Spring 2021, and will be premiering as a full production at Ohio University in Fall 2022.
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