Company of Angels ~ Where Angelenos See Themselves

Company of Angels Playwrights Group Convened in the summer of 2007, the Company of Angels Playwrights Group is comprised of a select group of diverse, award-winning writers who have been produced across the country, from the West Coast to the East Coast, not to mention international locations such as London, the Edinburgh Festival, and Singapore. The purpose of the group is to generate original plays for the company, in both long and short formats. Recently, the playwrights came together in early 2008 to create L.A. Views, an evening of eight 10-minute plays about Los Angeles. This critically acclaimed show was sold out every night of its run, signaling a very successful premiere for the Playwrights’ Group. The group meets twice a month to work on new works with actors in the company. Contact Henry Ong or Gabriel Gomez for more information. Playwright Members * - CoA Company members
	DONALD JOLLY Donald Jolly hails from the District of Columbia. He first gained recognition for his writing as a teenager when his short play JUST … was selected as a winner of the EmPowerPlay Festival at Young Playwrights’ Theater, and received a reading at D.C.’s Theater J. In college, he was awarded the Ruth & Loring Dodd Drama Prize for the best play by an undergraduate for his full-length play, I MIGHT HAVE BEEN QUEEN. Through his writing he employs imaginative uses of language to investigate urban identities and explore the intersections/interactions between race, class, gender, and sexual orientation through historical and contemporary lenses. His work has been workshopped/read/presented at Horizon Theatre Company (Atlanta), CalArts, Celebration Theatre (LA), University of Southern California School of Theatre, and Company of Angels. During the 2008-2009 season, Donald participated in Center Theatre Group’s Writers’ Workshop, where he workshopped his play, HER HIGHNESS, PHILOMENA PHILLIPS, BLUESWOMAN EXTRAORDINAIRE! Donald’s historical drama, BONDED, will receive its World Premiere in 2010. He is member of The Dramatists Guild of America, Inc., a graduate of Dartmouth College, and holds an M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing from the USC School of Theatre.
	* GABRIEL GOMEZ Gabriel Rivas Gomez received his MFA in Dramatic Writing from USC in 2007. Since then he has been teaching English composition at local community colleges and writing for the stage as well as the screen. He is excited to have his first play, CHASING MONSTERS, featured as part of the 2010 season for Company of Angels. His play, CIRCUS UGLY, was showcased in 2007 as part of USC's "Under Construction" series, and in 2006 as part of Cypress College's "New Play Festival." Gabe has been a member of C.O.A. for the last eight months and is excited for the future both of the company and its many talented artists.
	* HENRY ONG Henry Ong is the author of Madame Mao’s Memories, a play based on the life of Chairman Mao’s widow. Madame Mao's Memories has been produced internationally (England, Singapore and Canada) and nationally, including a production at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, California. Sweet Karma, a play based on the life of Haing S. Ngor, the Cambodian Oscar-winning actor of The Killing Fields, is scheduled for production in the fall of 2009 by the Obie-award winning Immigrant Theatre Project, New York. Pacific Resident Theatre in Los Angeles, is planning a workshop production of Rachel Ray, Ong’s stage adaptation of Anthony Trollope’s 19th century English classic, next year Other credits include: People Like Me,; Fabric; The Legend of the White Snake; Dream of the Red Chamber, an adaptation of the famous 17th century Chinese classic novel; and The Silworm Scientist. People Like Me which he also directed at Playwrights’ Arena won a Drama-Logue award for writing and has been published by Big Dogs Publication. Ong is an eleven-time recipient of the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department grants. The latest is a 2008-09 Artist-in-residence grant collect the oral histories of Korean Americans. He completed two similar projects involving Filipino Americans and Chinese Americans. He has also a number of children’s Asian folktales: The Wedding of Bolak Sonday (Filipino), Lady White Snake (Chinese), Golden Flower Princess (Thai), and The Fire Boy (Japanese). Marlton School has staged all of the Asian folktales, Ong is an active member of the Dramatist Guild; a member of the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights and Playwrights Ink; and a board of director of Mezclao. He is an Artistic Associate of Playwrights’ Arena.
	* JAMISON NEWLANDER Best known for his portrayal of Alan Frog of the infamous Frog Brothers, in the 1987 vampire classic, Lost Boys. Jamison wrote, co-directed and played the lead in the short film Rooster (official selection, Hamptons International Film Festival 2003). Jamison has been acting professionally on stage since he was 14 years old, in theaters across the country, including New York, New Jersey, Kentucky, Vermont and California. He has a B.F.A. in theater from New York University and was a member of the Actors Theatre of Louisville (ATL) apprentice acting company 1994-95. As a playwright, Jamison has written One Soldier, Trapped, Kelly Girl, Last Christmas, Remember This – for which he won 3rd Place in the ATL short play competition, 1994. Jamison has written two plays that have been produced at Company of Angeles, Twenty Seven, which has just completed production as a film and The Virtual Adventures of Riff-Cat Polito, “Recommended” by the LA Weekly.
	* JOHN DUBIEL An east coast transplant, John has attended The Philadelphia College of Art and The California Institute of the Arts. He has worked extensively as an animation artist/illustrator and writer on a variety of projects. Aside from writing and directing, John is a long time member of the Company of Angels and has served as one of it's board members. Theater Productions include: "Hello Hello", "Angels Unwrapped" (2003 BackstageWest Critic's List, playwriting, direction, and production), "Table Dance", "Youthspeak", "Costumes" and "Changing Leaves" Readings have included: "Wind Chimes" (Full Length Drama) "Peaches and Daddy" (Full Length Musical Comedy) "Hartford Zoo" (Proposed Animated Series) John has written for Steven Spielberg and Warner Bros.' "Animaniacs" and has worked as a story artist for Warner Bros., Universal Studios, Film Roman, Hyperion Studio and Mike Young Productions. He has done illustration work for the Walt Disney Studios.
	JULIE TAIWO ONI The daughter of a Nigerian father and German-American mother, Julie Taiwo Oni is also an identical twin. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Creative Writing from Pepperdine University in 2006 with an emphasis in sociology and a Spanish minor, and her MFA in Dramatic Writing from USC’s School of Theatre in 2009, where she studied with Velina Hasu Houston, Oliver Mayer, and Luis Alfaro. Her play Tether received a reading as part of Inkwell Theatre’s Inkubator Festival in October 2009. She currently teaches ESL in Pasadena.
	KATHERINE MURPHY Katherine Murphy divides her time between writing, directing, and improv. Her play Greater America, produced in collaboration with Bare Bones Theatre Company and First Seen, premiered in San Francisco in 2002 and was named “Critics Choice” on SFGate.com. A workshop of her twisted Greek myth To Hades and Back (Again) was co-produced by HYPERLINK "http://www.cafearts.com/" \o "blocked::http://www.cafearts.com/" \t "_blank" Off-Market Theater and First Seen in 2004. Other full-length scripts include Drug of Choice, Word of the Day, and Sonny and Mac. Her short plays have been produced by San Francisco’s Monday Night Playground and Bare Bones Theatre. As co-artistic director of First Seen, a producing playwright collective, she produced several readings, workshops, and full productions in San Francisco. As a Guest Artist at Mills College, Katherine directed Hedda Gabler and The Vagina Monologues. Other directorial works include Harold Pinter's Betrayal and a series of his sketches entitled “Pint-Sized Pinter,” Toni Press-Coffman's Trucker Rhapsody, Kerry Reid's Unhampered by Sanity, Stuart Duckworth's Joy Solution, Lewis John Carlino's The Exercise, Christopher Durang's ‘dentity Crisis as well as several collaborative performance art pieces. At the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, she wrote audition monologues and worked as an assistant director. She performed with the San Francisco improv troupes Too Many Larrys and The Escape Artists at The Punchline, Spanganga, The Field, Sweetie's, The Marsh's Mock Café and on Liberation Radio.
	KYLE T. WILSON Kyle T. Wilson’s play, Customary Monsters, was a semi-finalist for the 2007 Princess Grace Fellowship and the 2008 O’Neill Playwrights Conference. It was also selected as finalist for Playwrights’ Week 2007 at The Lark Play Development Center and received a Roundtable Reading at The Lark in May 2008. Wilson’s 1-minute play about Arkansas, Taking the Bait, was featured in Clubbed Thumb’s A Pageant of the 50 States (and more) at The Ohio Theatre in New York in 2007. His 10-minute play, The Pissin’ Posse, was a finalist for The 2007 Heideman Award at Actors Theatre Louisville. Other plays include The Whores of West Hollywood, Smoke Gets In Your Ears, and The Day Clinton Fessed Up. Wilson received an MFA in Dramatic Writing from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where he taught playwriting to undergrads; he also taught as part of Pittsburgh Public Theater's summer program for teens. He has studied with such dramatists as Sherry Kramer, Milan Stitt, Bill C. Davis, and Edward Albee.
	LEON MARTELL Completing an MFA from the University of Iowa, he co-founded the "Duck's Breath Mystery Theater" which has performed on stage across the country, in three series for National Public Radio, two specials for PBS, and a children's series for FOX Television. As a member of the writing workshop lead by Sam Shepard he wrote the award winning one act Hoss Drawin. From there he was invited to the Padua Hills Festival in Los Angeles, where he participated as a writer, actor and director for thirteen years. His Padua plays include the award winning Kindling and 1961 El Dorado co-written with wife Elizabeth Ruscio. His plays Mooncalf, Feed Them Dogs, and Hard Hat Area received Dramalogue and L.A. Weekly Awards. His play with music, STEEL - John Henry and the Shaker, written with composer Penka Kouneva, received seven Ovation Award® nominations, including "Best New Musical" and "Best Musical - Small Venue." His play Bea[u]tiful in the Extreme, was a finalist for the national L. Arnold Weissberger Award for Playwriting and The Pen West Playwriting Award. After . After a very successful run at the Colony Theater it receiving four Robey™ nominations, was sighted as one of the outstanding plays of 2002 in Backstage West. He wrote The History of Fairfax Avenue – According to a Sandwich for the Greenway Court Theater. And his ten-minute plays have been produced with the DogEar Playwrights Collective at The 24th Street Theater, The Met Theater, The Road Theater, and Company of Angeles. He has taught playwriting since 1982 (Notably at UCLA Extension, The American Academy of Dramatic Art, and WORDSPACE). He is currently director of performing arts at New Heights Preparatory School and the summer youth program at Idyllwild Arts. He is very pleased that his students continue to be produced and win awards nationally.
	MAYANK KESHAVIAH Mayank Keshaviah is a playwright, screenwriter, and educator. Before moving to Los Angeles in 2005, he served on the board of South Asian Theatre Arts Guild Experiment (STAGE) in Washington, DC. As part of STAGE, he directed REARRANGED MARRIAGE and PSYCHO for the annual South Asian Literary and Theatre Arts Festival (SALTAF). He also assistant directed LENNY & LOU, which opened Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company’s 25th Anniversary season. Since his arrival on the left coast, Mayank has worked on the world premiere of LEWIS AND CLARK REACH THE EUPHRATES at the Mark Taper Forum and in the Literary Department of Center Theatre Group. In 2007, his play THOSE WHO CAN'T received a workshop production as part of the USC School of Theatre’s Blueprints festival, and in 2008, his play RANGOON was given a staged reading in the Under Construction festival of graduate playwrights. RANGOON also received a staged reading at New York's Pan Asian Repertory Theatre in December 2009. When he's not working on his own scripts, Mayank writes theatre reviews for the LA Weekly. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Dartmouth College, an M.A. in Teaching ESOL from American University, and an M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing from the University of Southern California.
	* MICHAEL PATRICK SPILLERS Michael Patrick Spillers was born in the Ozarks, and moved to Los Angeles in 1989 to study dramatic writing at the University of Southern California. His first full-length play, “WHISKEY RAINBOWS”, was developed and produced as part of USC’s 1992 Experimental Theatre season, for which he won the Jack Nicholson Award for playwriting. The autobiographical comedy “WHITE BOY” premiered at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica in 1995 and has enjoyed several revivals throughout Southern California, including the Celebration Theatre in Los Angeles, Sixth at Penn Theatre in San Diego, and the Top Hat Playhouse in Palm Springs. “WHITE BOY” premiered off-Broadway in 2002, at Wings Theatre in New York City. “ALWAYS & FOREVER” has received staged readings and full productions by Watts Village Theater Company (2007) and Casa 0101 Theatre in Boyle Heights (2009), and excerpts from Michael’s current Prop 8 project were recently selected for inclusion in Casa’s “Ride to the East Side” celebration of the L.A. Metro Goldline expansion. Michael is also a proud member of the Unusual Suspects Theatre Company, a non-profit organization that teaches theatre arts to youth from the foster care and juvenile justice systems.
	MICHAEL VUKADINOVICH Michael Vukadinovich is a writer, director and founding member of Red Tie Productions, which has produced work in New York and Edinburgh. He is the recipient of the Reverie Productions Next Generation Playwriting Competition, the Tim Robbins Playwriting Award for Plays of Social Significance, the Gloria Peter Playwright Competition for Historical Plays, and the Samuel Goldwyn Screenwriting Award. His work has been produced or developed with Reverie Productions (NY), Overlap Productions (NY), LA Theatre Ensemble (LA), Playwright’s Arena (LA), The Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum (LA), the Ensemble Studio Theatre (LA), Fusion Theatre Company (Albuquerque), the Orlando Shakespeare Theater and internationally at The Serbian National Theatre and Edinburgh Fringe Festival, among others. Plays include Billboard; Gilbert, or Death by Obituary; Trog and Clay, an imagined History of the Electric Chair; The Magician and the Memory; and A Giant Arc in the Skyspace of Directions, or The Story of Miracles. His works is available from Samuel French and Smith & Krauss. He is currently writing a play based off a photograph taken of his great great grandfather in Montenegro which will be produced by Plus Teatar in Novi Sad, Serbia.
	T. TARA TURK t.tara turk attended Eugene Lang College and Sarah Lawrence College where she received the Lipkin Playwrighting Award. She was also a Van Lier Fellow at New York Theatre Workshop, creating the play “Indigos”. She’s written two novels: "Things Fall Together," (available 2009 at www.ttaraturk.com) about a missing hip hop mogul. and “Boys, Girls, Headwraps and Haikus” about the 1990s NYC poetry scene. Her fiction has appeared in African Voices, www.exittheapple.com and the international anthology X24. Her plays have appeared at New Federal Theater, Ensemble Studio Theater as well as the Actor’s Studio. She’s the author of several feature and short screenplays (“Love Aquarium,” Dear Me,” “Woodshed Rhythms” and “Smoke and Mirrors”) featured in such festivals as Reel Sisters, BHERC and on BETJ. She was in the Guy Hanks/Marvin Miller Screenwriting program as well as the Diversity Workshop at the Producer’s Guild. Her play “Indigos” was recently read at The Kennedy Center through Bowie State Univeristy. She is a regular blogger at www.ttaraturk.com. She is currently working a thriller for the screen.
	* TIRA PALMQUIST TIRA PALMQUIST is a writer, director and teacher. Her full-length scripts include COYOTE RISING, LOST NATION, AGE OF BEES and FREQUENCY OF STARS AND OTHER MATTER, all of which have either received readings or workshop productions in 2009. COYOTE RISING was produced as part of Coyote REP's 2007 Sound Plays (which is available as a podcast at www.coyoterep.org) and, then, most recently was featured in the Gallimaufry New Works festival and UCI’s World Premiere Weekend. LOST NATION was recently included in the 11th Interactivity Festival in April 2009, and has been recognized as a finalist in both the 2007 John Gassner New Play Festival and the 2007 Coe College Playwriting Festival. Other LOST NATION readings include the Theatricum Botanicum’s Seedlings series in June 2007, Interact Theatre Company's Reading Series in May 2008 and in City Attic Theatre’s CAT Tales festival in June 2008. AGE OF BEES (having had readings at both Theatricum Botanicum in August 2008 and Company of Angels in December 2008) received a workshop production with Company of Angels in the June 2009, directed by Tina Sanchez. Her newest play, FREQUENCY OF STARS AND MATTER, received its first public reading with Theatre of NOTE NOTEWorthy reading series in May, 2009. Her short plays have recently been produced at the DeLand Theatre Festival (Jan. 2007), Hunger Artists' Dead Letter Office II in (Nov. 2007), Company of Angel's L.A. Views (April 2008) and Chicago’s n.u.f.a.n. ensemble (2008 and 2009). Finally, Tira teaches writing at the University of California, Irvine and at the Orange County High School of the Arts. She is member of Company of Angels and the Dramatists Guild.
	* VASANTI SAXENA Vasanti Saxena is a playwright whose work has been produced or developed in New York (The Ensemble Studio Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop), Chicago (Silk Road Theatre Project, Chicago Dramatists), and Los Angeles (Company of Angels). Her play Sun Sisters won the 2008 East West Players Pacific Century Playwriting Competition. Other plays include Gloria in Translation, Even the Stone, Baby Blue, and Shift. Vasanti has received an EST/Sloan commission, has been a Van Lier Fellow at New York Theatre Workshop, and was a finalist for the Clubbed Thumb Biennial Commission. She received her MFA from Columbia University.