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Meet the Commons Producers

A few months ago we put out a call for Commons Producers to help us track the activities of the fourteen playwright residencies HowlRound is charged with documenting. The response was overwhelming, and the caliber of the applicant pool was astounding. After many a tough decision, we are proud to introduce the Commons Producer cohort. Click here for their video introductions.

ASHLAND

Headshot of Donya Washington.

Donya K. Washington God, Man and Devil (Target Margin) Goddess Hair by Patricia Ione Lloyd (Redshirt Entertainment), Stall by brokeMC (Tiny Rhino), a reading of Venus (2012 Conference of Curious People), Pete the Girl by Charity Henson-Ballard (Rising Circle/Culture Project Women’s Center Stage), Little Louise by Patricia Ione Lloyd (Fire This Time Festival), a reading of Sound by Don Nguyen (The Civilians), Abby in the Summer by AP Andrews (Playwrights Horizons Theatre School), Brooklyn Skank by Fernanda Coppel (Subject Theatre Company), Come Back to Me by Jesse Cameron Alick and Manikato adapted by Jesse Cameron Alick (Shakespeare in Paradise, Bahamas), Now the Cats with Jeweled Claws (Target Margin Theatre), Spunk (Penobscot Theatre, Bangor, ME), Jump Jim Crow by Jesse Cameron Alick music and lyrics by Justin Levine (Subjective Theater Company), Cold Keener by Zora Neale Hurston (Target Margin), 30 Patriot Actors by Erin Browne (Columbia). Work with 52nd Street Project, Playwrights Horizons Theatre School, The Civilians and Williamstown. Training: MFA, Directing—Brown University/Trinity Rep; BFA, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. Member of the 2008/2010 Women's Project Lab. Van Lier Directing Fellow 2009, Second Stage Theatre. Member 2010-2011, Civilians' R&D Group.

ATLANTA

Portrait of Anne Towns.

Anne Towns is a director and teacher in Atlanta, GA where she has worked with Aurora Theatre, Dad’s Garage, Synchronicity Performance Group, Actor’s Express, The Alliance Theatre, and many more. Anne holds a BFA in Acting and an MFA in directing from Florida State University. She is a proud associate member of the SDC.


BOSTON

Headshot of Miranda Craigwell.

Miranda Craigwell is chuffed to be an inaugural Commons Producer. Miranda is a writer for stage and screen, as well as an actress. She attended Brown University where she graduated with a B.A. in literature and cultures in English, after which she traveled to London to study Eighteenth century female letter writers and epistolary theory. While abroad, she began performing her written work in Slam poetry competitions at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Theatre Royal Stratford, and other venues before being named the Farrago Central London Slam Poet Champion in 2005. In 2007, she received a Master’s degree with Distinction from Rose Bruford College of Drama for both acting and playwriting. She was a recipient of the Huntington Theatre Playwriting Fellowship (2010-2012) and had her newest play, Shelter, read as part of the Ground Breaking reading series. She is a writer, director, and producer for the Boston-based Production Company, Beyond Measure Productions.

CHICAGO

Headshot of Rebecca Stevens.

Rebecca Stevens is a producer, director and writer. She is the Associate Producer of 500 Clown and Lucky Plush Productions. Other producing credits include: Williamstown Theater Festival, the Fresh Eyes Project at Red Tape Theatre, and The Dinner Party Project with Dog & Pony Theatre. Writing credits include In the Event of Capture (Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs), performed adaptations of Z for Zachariah, Henry IV (Northwestern University), Army Wives (Pritzker Military Library), and regular contributions to Backstage Magazine and the blog at Steppenwolf Theatre Company where she was the 2009-2010 Artistic Apprentice. Recent directing credits include the Williamstown Theatre Festival Directing Corp where she directed Amy Herzog’s Opportunity, Cephalopod (New York International Fringe Festival), Gloomy Sunday (Pavement Group Amuse Bouche), and Avifauna (Red Tape Theatre). She has worked as an assistant director at Goodman Theater, Williamstown Theatre Festival, and Kansas City Rep and an assistant dramaturg at Steppenwolf Theatre Company.

COSTA MESA

 

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Joel Veenstra is a professional stage manager, a production manager, a producer, a filmmaker, and an improviser. In 1999, he created Veenstra Enterprises as an umbrella company for his creative ventures in film, video, and theatre, based in Michigan. Between the inception of Veentra Enterprises and his relocation to Los Angeles in 2005, he facilitated over 100 film, video, and theatrical productions. Upon arriving in Los Angeles, Mr. Veenstra began working as a Story Editor at Alcon Entertainment, which produced films including My Dog Skip, Insomnia, and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, distributed through Warner Bros. Most recently he served as Production Manager for the nationally recognized Cornerstone Theater Company based in Los Angeles. Currently, when not working on independent productions, Mr. Veenstra teaches and mentors students in stage management, production, and improvisation at UC Irvine.

DALLAS

Portrait of Jeffery Bryant Moffit wearing sunglasses and smiling.

Jeffery Bryant Moffitt is a Director and Writer living and working in Dallas. He is a recent graduate of Southern Methodist University where he holds a BFA in Theater and a BA in English. Some of his recent directing projects include Wendy Macleod’s The Water Children, Katori Hall’s Hurt Village, Stephen Adly Guirgis’s The Motherf**ker With The Hat, and Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses. He is currently in the process of starting the Open House Theatre where he will serve as Co-Artistic Director. He is an advocate of new work in the theater and has worked with and studied under artists Enda Walsh, Michael Keegan Dolan, and Will Power on new plays and projects. He is a supporter of arts education and is a teaching artist for Big Thought where he has worked in and performed for numerous DISD campuses using theatre as a means to inspire and teach. He hopes that the theater can and will have a long lasting impactful existence in Dallas and is honored to be a part of the Will Power residency at Dallas Theatre Center.

KANSAS CITY

Headshot of Mackenzie Goodwin.

Mackenzie Goodwin is a Kansas City-based director, writer, actor, and theater practitioner. She spends a great deal of her time at The Living Room Theatre, an emerging not-for-profit theater in the Crossroads Arts District. As part of the The Living Room family, she has worked as a director, actor, and stage manager—all while serving as Volunteer Coordinator on its Board of Operational Directors. Mackenzie has lent her skills to various theaters and organizations, including the Kansas City Repertory Theatre (where she recently assistant directed The Living Room’s production of Carousel presented at the Kansas City Repertory Theatre), The Unicorn Theatre, The Fishtank Theatre, She & Her Productions, and Kansas City Actors Theatre. She is a founding member of Omaha-based Aetherplough, a devised-movement performance art theater with a focus on making the classics kinetic and engaging (Time-Laughs The Bacchae, Knives-Out! The Oresteia & Radiohead, Seagull Soirée). She is a content manager for the arts-advocacy organization Hello Art, where she promotes exciting art happenings and forges personal connections between artists and their patrons. Mackenzie received her education at Kansas State University and The University of Missouri, Kansas City, where she focused on Latin American theatre in Spanish. She was a fellow at the Eugene O'Neill National Critics Institute at The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., where she worked with writers such as Dan Sullivan (NY Times) and Bob Mondello (NPR). At the moment, she is collaborating with her fiance (writer/actor/musician Vi Tran) to write a new adaptation of The Wind in the Willows for the Okoboji Summer Theatre.

MINNEAPOLIS

Portrait of Hayley Finn.

Hayley Finn is a director, producer, and advocate for new work. She is the Associate Artistic Director at the Playwrights’ Center. She has directed and developed new work at Cherry Lane Theatre, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, History Theatre, Flea Theater, Gotham Stage Company, The Kitchen, New Dramatists, New Georges, The New Group, O’Neill Theater Center, Minnesota Jewish Theatre, Pangea World Theatre, Playwrights’ Horizons, Relentless Theatre, The Walker Art Center, Workhaus Collective, and the Vineyard Theatre, and has worked with several lauded playwrights including Trista Baldwin, Sheila Callaghan, Randall David Cook, Christina Ham, Mona Mansour, Greg Moss, Meg Miroshnik, Sybil Kempson, Adam Kraar, Kira Obolensky, Sarah Ruhl, Mac Wellman, Gary Winter, and Rhiana Yazzie. She directed the premiere of Why We Laugh, adapted by Kira Obolensky, an original cabaret from Terezin which was performed in Terezin and at the Nine Gates Festival in Prague, co-created Jigsaw Nation which toured the country, and wrote Hysteria: Silence in Stills, which was presented at The Culture Project. She is an alumna of the Drama League Director’s Program, recipient of the Ruth Easton Fellowship and TCG New Generations Future Leader grant. She received her BA and MA from Brown University.

NEW YORK CITY

Headshot of Doug Howe.

Doug Howe is an American theater maker who has directed over thirty productions in five countries. He graduated with honors from the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama where he directed his first original piece, The Helpless Spectator: Dance of the Seven Veils. He has trained with Peruvian master teacher Victoria Santa Cruz, Japanese actor Yoshi Oida, Bulgarian director Mladen Kiselov, SITI Company and the Moscow Art Theatre (MXAT). From 2001-2007, he was the Artistic Director of Thalatta! Theatre International, and from 2007-2013, he was the Artistic Director of The Internationalists. He also taught acting and directed productions for seven years as part of Northwestern University's NHSI "Cherub" program. In 2008, he was the recipient of a Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX) space grant. In 2009, Doug was awarded a three-year French "Competence et Talents" visa in order to create cross-cultural theatrical collaborations in Paris, and in 2011, Doug worked in Sydney as the International Liaison Officer at PlayWriting Australia. He is a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, The Fence Playwriting Network, SAG/AFTRA and Actors Equity. Along with Beatriz Cabur, Doug is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of New International Theatre Experience (NITE).

 

Headshot of Joanna Settle.

Joanna Settle is a freelance director living in Brooklyn, NY. Recent productions include Harry Clarke by David Cale at the Warhol Museum, Romeo and Juliet for Shakespeare on the Sound and The Total Bent by Stew for the Public Theater (PublicLabs). Also at the Public: Winter Miller’s In Darfur, the finale of Suzan-Lori Parks’s 365 Days/365 Plays, and Stephen Brown’s Future Me. (SPF). She directed the premiere of Heather Raffo’s Nine Parts of Desire at Manhattan Ensemble Theater and restaged the production for the Geffen Playhouse, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, MassMOCA, Seattle Repertory Theatre, and D.C.’s Arena Stage. Settle served as the Artistic Director of Chicago’s Division 13 Productions from 1998-2004 and directed and/or adapted fifteen of D13’s seventeen projects, including BLOOD LINE: The Oedipus/Antigone Story, two plays by Sophocles, Macbett by Ionesco, and several Samuel Beckett shorts including Cascando and Play. Settle served as the Artistic Director of Shakespeare on the Sound 2009-2012. She is a graduate of The Juilliard School directing program and teaches in the Brown University/Trinity Rep MFA Directing Program. Upcoming productions include Mark Wolf’s This Blessed Plot, and two new musicals from Stew and Heidi Rodewald in 2014:The Total Bent at The Public (premiere) and Family Album at Oregon Shakespeare Festival (premiere). Deeply invested in the nature of new play development and how our institutions grow, she is thrilled to be joining the team at HowlRound.

SAN FRANCISCO

Headshot of Laura Brueckner.

Laura Brueckner is Director of New Works for Crowded Fire Theater in San Francisco, where she produces the company’s annual Matchbox New Play Reading Series. She is keenly interested in process design for new play development, and has published articles examining the goals, design, and outcomes of new play festivals. She also serves as associate editor for Theatre Bay Area, the largest regional theater services and advocacy nonprofit in the U.S., where she writes on a range of topics for the organization’s magazine and website. As a freelance dramaturg, she has worked for director Dominique Serrand, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, PlayGround, Crowded Fire, Last Planet Theatre, and the National Queer Arts Festival; she has also assisted with dramaturgy at Berkeley Repertory Theatre and American Conservatory Theater and served on numerous new play festival selection committees. A Ph.D. candidate in Theater at UC San Diego, her doctoral studies focus on the power dynamics of gender, sexuality, and space in the dramaturgy of vaudeville, cabaret, circus, and other popular stage performance forms; she also continues to perform, write, and direct for the stage and devise conceptual/theatrical oddments for nontraditional venues.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Portrait of Ronee Penoi.

Ronee Penoi was most recently the National New Play Network Producer-in-Residence at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, where her focus was on presenting ensemble/devised/generative work inside new play theaters. At Woolly, she was dramaturg for the remounted production of Mike Daisey’s The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs and Basil Twist’s Arias with a Twist. She is the author of A Producing Theatre’s Guide to Presenting, a handbook of tools and resources for small-to-mid-sized theaters nationwide. Previously, she was part of the inaugural class of New Play Producing Fellows at the American Voices New Play Institute at Arena Stage, where she produced Karen Zacarias’ playwright residency as well as a national convening on devised work. Ronee was Assistant Stage Manager for Anna Deavere Smith’s national tour of Let Me Down Easy, was Directing Fellow for Arena Stage’s 08-09 season, and Artistic Fellow for The Shakespeare Theatre’s 07-08 season. Currently, Ronee is writing a musical about Carlisle Indian School (recipient of a Creative Communities Fund grant from Cultural DC’s Mead Theater Lab), and freelance producing in the Washington, D.C. area. She is a proud graduate of Princeton University.

 

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