THE 2018-19 EMERGING WRITERS GROUP
BRITTANY K. ALLEN is a New York-based writer and performer. Her plays include Redwood (Kilroys List 2017, Studio Retreat at The Lark, New Works Reading Series at Kansas City Repertory), More Than You Can Chew (EST/Bloodworks Reading), and Ball-Change, among others. Recent acting credits include True Right (ANTFEST at Ars Nova, New Ohio), Minor Character (Invisible Dog, New York Innovative Theatre Award for Best Ensemble), and The Place We Built (The Flea). Allen is a member of Youngblood, the Obie award-winning young playwrights collective at Ensemble Studio Theatre, and was a 2017 Van Lier Playwriting Fellow at the Lark. She has received artistic support from SPACE on Ryder Farm and the Sewanee Writers Conference. Her prose appears in Catapult, Green Mountains Review and The Tishman Review (Pushcart Prize nominee). BFA, NYU Tisch.
OSCAR A.L. CABRERA is a New York-based actor, playwright and member to INTAR Theater's Unit 52, an ensemble company for emerging and established artists. Some credits include Blur at the Kennedy Center for KCACTF, Marfa Lights by Octavio Solis (INTAR); Lilia by Monet Hurst-Mendoza (Rising Circle Rep); Patience by Mariana Coreno (LATC); Basilica by Mando Alvarado (Rattlestick); Leave Me Green by Lisi DeHaas (Kindling Theater Company); and Prospect by Octavio Solis (Boundless Theater). His plays have been workshopped with The Hudson Warehouse, Black and Latino Playwrights Festival, INTAR Theater, Rising Circle's InkTank, Creede Rep Theater, and Lonestar Theater.
DANIELLA DE JESÚS is an actor and writer and native of Bushwick, Brooklyn. Her plays include Columbus Play (The Parsnip Ship), The Thief Cometh (United SoloFestival), ASSORTED CRACKERS: A Reverse Minstrel Show, Waiting Room, and Pelo. De Jesús is a graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in Drama.
RYAN J. HADDAD is an actor, playwright, and autobiographical performer based in New York. His acclaimed solo play Hi, Are You Single? was part of Under the Radar's 2017 INCOMING! Series. He was also a member of The Public's Devised Theater Working Group. Haddad continues to tour Hi, Are You Single? and has performed original work at La MaMa E.T.C., The New Museum, and The LGBT Center of New York City. He is currently developing his play Good Time Charlie, his solo piece My Straighties, and a cabaret called Falling for Make Believe. His acting credits include The Maids and Lucy Thurber’s Orpheus in the Berkshires at Williamstown Theatre Festival, Noor and Hadi Go To Hogwarts for Theater Breaking Through Barriers, and television appearances on "Bull," "Madam Secretary," and “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.” Haddad is a 2017-18 Queer/Art Performance and Playwriting Fellow, under the mentorship of Moe Angelos.
OBEHI JANICE is an actress, writer, and comedian. Her comedic short, Black Girl Yoga, won the Reel 13/AfroPunk Film Competition. Her plays include Era Era, African Tea, Selah and FUFU & OREOS. She works on stage, screen and as a voice actress in video games, radio, and commercials. Her work is featured in American Theatre Magazine, Bustle, WBUR, DigBoston, For Harriet, and The Boston Globe. She is a Luminary Artist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the recipient of a TCG Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship. Her plays have been developed or seen at the Gardner Museum, Off the Grid Theatre Company, Bridge Repertory Theater, Company One Theatre and many others. Her latest play, Ole White Sugah Daddy, is a semifinalist for the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s 2018 National Playwrights Conference. It is currently in development at SpeakEasy Stage Company.
DIANA OH is a performer, actor, singer-songwriter, theatremaker, and artist of color. She is one of Refinery 29’s Top 14 LGBTQ Influencers, the First Queer Korean-American interviewed on Korean Broadcast Radio, a TOW Fellow with Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, a Van Lier Fellow in Acting, a Venturous Capital Grant Recipient, A Qwear Award Recipient for her activism, an Elphaba Thropp Fellow, writer of Asian People Are Not Magicians. She is the creator, songwriter, and performer of {my lingerie play}: 8 street installations that culminate into {my lingerie play}: Installation #9: THE CONCERT AND CALL TO ARMS!!!!!!!!! Past Productions include Diana Oh is GOING ROGUE, The Sister Rosettas, Asian People are Not Magicians and Other Tales, Kimchi Mamas and The Dirty Disco, my "S" word play. She's currently penning Hot Sauce Water about her father, as well as an untitled piece about her self-induced sex education.
IFE OLUJOBI is a playwright and screenwriter. Her one-act play, Only, was produced as part of NYU Drama's Inaugural PlayGround Festival of New Works in 2016. Her monologue Working Girl has been performed at the Charity Randall Theater (Pittsburgh, PA) and the Bishop Arts Theater Center (Dallas, TX) as part of The Monologue Project, a theatrical initiative aiming to increase the number of audition-length monologues available to women of the African Diaspora. Her screenplay, Sister, was selected as a finalist in the inaugural Half the World Global Literati Award Competition. Originally from a suburb of Baltimore, Ife currently lives in NYC where in addition to writing for stage and film, she writes poetry and makes a zine, Townies, that catalogues experiences of POC and Queer folks who live or have lived in pockets of suburban rural, and small-town America through writing and art. She received her BFA from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in 2016.
JOSHUA YOUNG’s playwriting work has been developed or produced at The HERE Arts Center, The Cherry Lane Theatre, Dixon Place, The Brick, The Tank, Primary Stages ESPA, New York Madness, Naked Angels, FringeNYC, Rhapsody Cycle, The Exquisite Corpse Company, MITF, and Planet Connections. His play The Execution and The Rapture was a 2017 PlayPenn semi-finalist and his play Who Mourns for Bob the Goon? was a Mabou Mines/Suite 2016 Resident Artist semi-finalist. He is a founding member of The Playwriting Collective, a playwright-driven initiative designed to support writers from lower economic backgrounds.
DAVID ZHENG is a first-generation Chinese American playwright, actor and photographer from the Bronx. He is the recipient of The Lark’s 2018 Van Lier New Voices Playwriting Fellowship, The 2017 Playwriting Observer Fellowship at Labyrinth Theater Company, and the 2017 inaugural Greenhouse Residency at SPACE on Ryder Farm. His plays include KINGSBRIDGE and Ghetto Baptism. His work has been developed at The Labyrinth Theater Company, Cherry Lane Theater Company, and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. Recent acting credit includes Exposure (Eugene O’ Neill National Playwrights Conference). He is a member of Ma-Yi Writers Lab and the Gingold Theatrical Group’s Speakers’ Corner. Zheng is also a founding member of the Middle Voice at Rattlestick.