R&D Groups

César Alvarez is a composer, lyricist, performer and writer. His Civil War sci-fi musical Futurity premiered at American Repertory Theater in 2012 and was a co-commission of Walker Art Center. César's band, The Lisps, has released 4 albums and played hundreds of shows around the country since 2005. César is co-founder and resident composer of LA-based dance theater company Contra-Tiempo. He has presented work at Lincoln Center, The Stone, Roulette, Dixon Place, The Tank, JoeÂ’s Pub, HERE, The Zipper Factory, Dance New Amsterdam, Ars Nova, Walker Art Center, ASU Gammage, UCLA Royce Hall, Ford Amphitheater, RedCat, and CounterPulse, among others. Recent composition credits: 3 2's; or AFAR by Mac Wellman (Dixon Place), Full Still Hungry for Contra-Tiempo (Ford Amphitheater); Damned Beautiful for Helix Dance (Edinburgh Fringe). César was a Meet The Composer/Van Lier Fellow in 2004. He received a Bachelor of Music from Oberlin Conservatory and Master of Fine Arts from Bard College. He teaches record production, songwriting, and world music at Bloomfield College, and is a visiting artist in the Sarah Lawrence College Theater Program. César writes about music and theater at WWW.MUSICISFREENOW.ORG.

Composer

Mia Rovegno’s plays have been developed through the P73 Yale Summer Residency, Pataphysics retreat, The Civilians R&D Group, New Georges, Culture Project, Perishable Theater, and foolsFURY. A co-founder of Street Level TV (nationally syndicated on Dish Network/Free Speech TV), she has edited and produced documentary work with Democracy Now!, The Working Group, and Solday Productions. She has directed new work for Soho Rep, NYTW, The O’Neill, Ars Nova, Clubbed Thumb, NYS&F/Powerhouse, The Lark, Atlantic Theater Company, New Dramatists, EST, Partial Comfort, A.R.T., Harvard Playwrights Festival, Hangar Theatre, Summer Playwrights Rep and others. Recipient of SDC Observership and MTC’s Jonathan Alper Fellowship; Nominee for Ockrent Directing Fellowship; Alum of The Drama League, Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, Women’s Project and Lincoln Center Directors Labs; New Georges Affiliated Artist and Partial Comfort company member. Former teaching fellow and guest lecturer at Brown and adjunct faculty at New College of California, she is currently an Assistant Professor at Hunter College. BS: Northwestern; MFA: Brown University. Recent directing: Ten Shades of Blue by Laura Marks (Partial Comfort), We Play for the Gods (Women’s Project), Good Goods by Christina Anderson (O’Neill), Edie and Alexander by Megan Mostyn-Brown (Rising Phoenix), The Tenant (Associate Director, Woodshed), The Civilians’ Let Me Ascertain You: Occupy #S17, OWS Cabaret, and Porn Part II (Joe’s Pub), The Divorce Tales: Live—A Conversation with The Civilians (Greene Space). Upcoming: Burnt Umber by Erik Ehn (LaMaMa).

Writer

Emily Ackerman is a playwright and actress based in NYC. Her first play, ReEntry (co-authored with KJ Sanchez), is based on interviews with members of the Marine Corps and is published by Playscripts. ReEntry has received critical acclaim at Two River Theater Company, Urban Stages, Baltimore Center Stage, Roundhouse Theatre, ActorÂ’s Theatre of Louisville, the Segerstrom Center, and at numerous military bases around the US and Europe (tour produced through a Department of Defense contract with American Records). Ms. Ackerman has been a member of The Civilians since 2006. With The Civilians: This Beautiful City (Original Collaborator/Performer; Colorado Springs, ATL/Humana Festival 2008, Studio Theatre, Center Theater Group, Vineyard Theatre), Gone Missing (Barrow Street Theatre, Off-Broadway Cast Album, ActorÂ’s Theatre of Louisville), developmental workshops of The Great Immensity and Shadow of Himself, multiple cabarets at JoeÂ’s Pub, and at the 2012 TED Conference in Long Beach, CA. Additional performance credits include: Arena Stage, American Conservatory Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theater, California Shakespeare Theater, Seattle Repertory Theater, and ActorÂ’s Theatre of Louisville. Ms. Ackerman also volunteers with the WriterÂ’s Guild Foundation and Wounded Warriors, teaching writing workshops to veterans, their families, and caregivers. She has also taught workshops in writing and acting at Emerson, Colorado College, Connecticut College, and for international artists through The Kennedy Center.

Writer

Madeleine George's plays include The Zero Hour, Precious Little, and Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England. Her work has been produced and developed by 13P, Clubbed Thumb, Soho Rep, Playwrights Horizons, New York Theatre Workshop, City Theatre in Pittsburgh, About Face Theatre in Chicago, The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, Two River Theater Company in New Jersey, Shotgun Players and Berkeley Rep in Berkeley, and the O'Neill Playwrights Conference, among other places. She has received a MacDowell Fellowship, the Princess Grace Playwriting Award, and the Jane Chambers Award, as well as commissions from Manhattan Theatre Club and Playwrights Horizons. Seven Homeless Mammoths... was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award; The Zero Hour was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Madeleine is a resident playwright at New Dramatists, an alum of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab and the Lark Playwrights' Workshop, and a founding member of the Obie-Award-winning playwrights collective 13P (Thirteen Playwrights, Inc.: WWW.13P.ORG).

Writer

Carly Mensch first met The Civilians as an over-eager undergrad research assistant at Dartmouth College. Since then she has written the plays Oblivion (SteppenwolfÂ’s First Look Festival, Westport Playhouse), Now Circa Then (Ars Nova, TheatreWorks), All Hail Hurricane Gordo (Humana Festival, Cleveland Play House) and Len, Asleep in Vinyl (2nd Stage/Uptown Series). Her work has been read/workshopped at Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan Theatre Club, Center Theatre Group, The Kennedy Center, Marin Theatre Company, New York Stage & Film and Ars Nova, where she was the 2008 Playwright-in-Residence and a founding member of Play Group. She volunteers with the 52nd Street Project, an organization that creates theater with inner city kids, and wrote for three seasons on the Showtime original series, Weeds. MFA-ish: Juilliard.

Writer

A. Zell Williams was born and raised in California's San Joaquin Valley and started his career as an actor in the San Francisco Bay Area. His work as a writer explores themes of race, religion, class, and violence in contemporary America. Zell was the recipient of the David Calicchio/Marin Theatre Company Emerging American Playwright Prize (Mill Valley, CA), the National New Play Network's Smith Prize for Best Political Play, the Rita & Burton Goldberg Award (New York University,) and Reverie Productions' Next Generation Playwright's Award (New York City.) He was a finalist for the Yale Drama Series for Emerging Playwrights (Yale University,) the Kennedy Center's Lorraine Hansberry Award, Aurora Theatre's Global Age Project Award (Berkeley, CA,) Kitchen Dog Theatre's New Works Festival (Dallas, TX,) and the Van Lier Fellowship at the Lark Play Development Center, as well as a semifinalist for the Princess Grace Award, the Ashland New Play Festival (Ashland, OR,) Centre Stage Theatre's New Works Festival, (Greensville, SC,) and Victory Gardens Theatre's Ignition Festival (Chicago, IL.) He was one of two inaugural African American Fellows with Steppenwolf Theatre Company. His plays include BLOOD/MONEY, In A Daughter's Eyes, A Motherless Child, The Pledge Drive, and The Urban Retreat. Zell holds a BA in Theatre Arts from Santa Clara University, is an MFA candidate in Dramatic Writing at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, and is a member of Ars NovaÂ’s Play Group.

Writer

Matt Dellapina: As an actor, Off-Broadway credits include Outside People (Vineyard Theatre, Naked Angels); The Dream Of The Burning Boy (Roundabout), In The Footprint (Irondale Center), underneathmybed (Rattlestick), Telephone (Cherry Lane Theatre, Foundry), Tender (Public Theater, SPF), #9 (59E59, Waterwell), Gone Missing (Barrow Street Theatre), (I Am) Nobody’s Lunch (59E59), The Parrot (Flea Theater), The Angel Project (Lincoln Center Festival). Regional: New York Stage & Film, Humana Festival, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Cleveland Playhouse, City Theatre, Studio Theatre (Helen Hayes Award nom.), Sundance Institute, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Coconut Grove Playhouse, Chautauqua Theater Company, London’s Soho Theatre. Associate Artist of The Civilians. Member of The People’s Improv Theater and Packawallop’s The Pack. Film/TV: Safe (dir. by Boaz Yakin), Proud Iza, Casual Encounters, “CSI:NY” (CBS), “Onion SportsDome” (Comedy Central), “Law & Order” (NBC). As a writer, his work includes No No No Yes, which premiered at Ars Nova’s ANT Fest this fall, followed by a month-long run at The PIT. In addition, he’s written the play The Great Pretenders, the screenplay Sunday Morning and the television pilot "My New Old Roommate."

Writer & Actor

Jess Chayes is a Brooklyn-based director and co-artistic director of The Assembly. Recent directing includes: Seized Up (Studio Tisch), Salamander Leviathan (Ars Nova, JoeÂ’s Pub), HOME/SICK (The Assembly, NY Times and Backstage CriticÂ’s Pick), The Sister (The Brick Theater), and #serials@theflea. She has developed work with The Culture Project, Mixed Phoenix, Extant Arts, The Shelby Company, P73, The Public Theater, The Working Theater, Old Vic/New Voices and Woodshed Collective. Jess is a member of the New Georges Kitchen Cabinet and a founding member of the Jam artists lab. She is currently the AD on Peter and the Starcatcher.

Director

Snehal Desai is a NYC based freelance director. He has worked at theaters across the country including: the Old Globe, the Public, Ars Nova, the Lark, DadÂ’s Garage, the Alliance, Theatre Rhinoceros, and the Old Vic in London. Snehal is a member of the Lincoln Center DirectorÂ’s Lab and was a literary fellow with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He has also been a resident director at the Ensemble Studio Theatre and Theater Emory and was the inaugural recipient of the Drama LeagueÂ’s Classical Directing Fellowship. A playwright as well as a director, Snehal is the author of Finding Ways to Prove YouÂ’re NOT an Al-Qaeda Terrorist When YouÂ’re Brown and the Sita/Sati trilogy. Snehal has a MFA in Directing from Yale University.

Director

David Mendizábal (Director) is one of the Producing Artistic Leaders of The Movement Theatre Company [TMTC], based in Harlem, NY. At TMTC he directed the North-American premiere of Bintou by Koffi Kwahulé, translated by Chantal Bilodeau, which was nominated for three AUDELCO Awards. He is currently developing a new play entitled look upon our lowliness, a spoken word elegy for a chorus of male voices by Harrison David Rivers. Other directing credits include: The Reel Ari Gold Written and Performed by Sir Ari Gold, ¡Matador! by Luis Vega, Naomi IizukaÂ’s Polaroid Stories, Migdalia CruzÂ’s Fur, and Regina TaylorÂ’s Inside the Belly of the Beast. He was a 2011 Directing Intern at Williamstown where he directed And She Would Stand Like This by Harrison David Rivers, The Power of Hypnotism by A. Chekhov/I. Schleglov, and Two Hundred Feet and Counting by Marco Ramirez. Assistant directing credits: Wild With Happy (Public), Wild Animals You Should Know (MCC), Touch(ed) (Williamstown), and By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (Second Stage). B.F.A. New York University/Tisch School of the Arts. 2012 Fall Drama League Directing Fellow.

Director

Gina Rattan Resident Director: Billy Elliot (Broadway). Associate Director: Cinderella (Broadway, Winter 2013) As Director: The Tin (Sam French Off-Off Broadway Play Fest 2012), SWEET TOOTH (FringeNYC + NYC workshop.), How Deep is the Ocean? (NYMF 2012), Twelfth Night (Old Globe, San Diego Intensive), Virtually Me! (tour Spring 2012), The Burning House (NY Workshop). As assoc/asst: Rated PÂ…for Parenthood (Off-Broadway), Little House on the Prairie (Guthrie & First NatÂ’l Tour); Lorca in a Green Dress (Apostrof Fest., Prague); Show Boat (Royal Albert Hall, London); First WivesÂ’ Club, King Lear, The Madness of George the Third, How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Old Globe). Gina has directed several readings and workshops in New York, most notably several of NYUÂ’s Graduate Musical Theater Writing Thesis Projects. Graduate of the University of Michigan.

Director

Mei Ann Teo is a Singaporean theatre/film maker based in New York and creates work by investigating lived reality to promote consciousness and social justice. As Resident Artist at Pacific Union College for seven years, she founded a drama program that developed original work through collage and documentary theatre techniques, and continues this work in Singapore and China. She has worked with The Public Theater, Berkeley Rep, Urban Stages, Theatre of Yugen, Crowded Fire, Cutting Ball, and the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Her work has been seen throughout the U.S. and at international festivals, including Belgium's Festival de Liege, Edinburgh International Fringe, INFANT Experimental Theatre Festival in Novi Sad, Serbia, Edmonton Fringe Festival, and the Montreal World Film Festival. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Theatre Directing at Columbia University.

Director