Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition: 2004/2005

Winner: Daphne Greaves 

Day of the Kings

Daphne Greaves is a playwright living in New York City. The world premiere of her play Day of the Kings at the Alliance Theatre, and its subsequent publication by Dramatic Publishing, was an exciting high point in her career. Other plays include, The Men, Killing Time, Good Lessons from Bad Women, and Crash! She is a co-author of The Audience which was produced by Transport Group and was a nominee for a Drama Desk Award for best new musical. From staged readings to workshops and full productions she has worked with such organizations as The Public Theater, Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, The Lark, Women’s Project, StageWorks and others. Her radio drama The African Grove aired on National Public Radio. After a break from theater to write a novel and pursue a career in educational publishing she is thrilled to return to her first love of playwriting. Daphne recently completed a play lab at the Dramatic Question Theater and was selected for the 2023 Woman’s Work Short Play Lab at New Perspectives Theatre Company where her one-act play The Pledge was produced this past summer. She is currently in development on revisions of her latest full-length play The Unknown Universe. 

Andrew Barrett 

Rainy Days & Mondays

Andrew Barrett is a native New Yorker who completed his MFA at the prestigious Iowa Playwright’s Workshop at The University of Iowa. His play and/or was presented in The New Works Now Festival 2004 at The Public Theater in NYC. Previously, the play was selected as the winner of Frank Basille Emerging New Playwright Competition at The Phoenix Theater in Indianapolis, IN. Other works include Rainy Days & Mondays (finalist in the graduate playwriting competition, The Alliance Theatre, Atlanta, GA), FLESH (The Iowa New Works Festival), and a 10-minute monologue, Amanda (The Riverside Theatre, Iowa City, IA). Andrew is also a respected writer of book and lyrics for new musicals. His first was Between Time & Timbuktu based on the collected works of Kurt Vonnegut. Andrew holds a BFA in Musical Theatre from The Boston Conservatory. 

Marcus Gardley 

dance the holy ghost: a play on memory

Marcus Gardley is an acclaimed poet, playwright, and screenwriter whom The New Yorker describes as, “the heir to Garcia Lorca, Pirandello, and Tennessee Williams.” He won the 2022 WGA award for best adapted tv longform series for Maid (Netflix). In 2019, he was named the Library Laureate of San Francisco by the city’s mayor and on September 26th the city of Oakland celebrated “Marcus Gardley Day” in his honor. He is the recipient of the 2019 Doris Duke Artist Award. He is a 2019 Obie Award winner for his play The House That Will Not Stand, the 2015 Glickman Award winner, and a finalist for the 2016 and 2015 Kennedy Prize. Other plays include X or the Nation v Betty Shabazz, black odyssey (2023 Drama Desk nomination), The Gospel of Loving Kindness, Every Tongue Confess, …and Jesus moonwalks the Mississippi, and The Road Weeps, The Well Runs Dry. In TV, he has written for several series including Boots Riley’s I’M A VIRGO (Amazon), THE CHI (Showtime), FOUNDATION (Apple), NOS4A2 (AMC), TALES OF THE CITY (Netflix), and MINDHUNTER (Netflix). His Marvin Gaye biopic was just picked up by Warner Brothers with Allen Hughes attached to direct. His feature adaptation of THE COLOR PURPLE will be released in theatres on Christmas day. Gardley was born and raised in Oakland, California. He is the current co-chair of the Playwriting Program at The David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University. 

Megan Gogerty 

Love Jerry 

Megan Gogerty is a playwright, comedian, and professor based in Iowa City, Iowa. A recipient of the Cloris Leachman Award for Outstanding Artistic Achievement, her solo show Lady Macbeth and Her Pal, Megan played the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and won the Audience Pick of the Fringe at the Cincinnati Fringe Festival. Her play Bad Panda (Theatre Without Borders, Beijing; Iron Crow Theatre Co.; WordBRIDGE Boomerang Playwright honoree) is published by Original Works Publishing and was translated into Spanish for a five-month run at Del Teatro Milan in Mexico City. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution listed her solo show Hillary Clinton Got Me Pregnant in their yearly Top Ten Best Plays. Megan’s musical drama Love Jerry premiered at Actors Express in Atlanta and was produced in the New York Musical Theatre Festival where it won three Talkin’ Broadway Citations and four NYMF Excellence Awards including Excellence in Writing (Book). Her ten-minute play Rumple Schmumple (Dramatic Pub.) was a Kennedy Center/National ACTF honoree. Her short play Super Hot Raven and Raven II: The Ravening is published in the anthology The Best American Short Plays of 2015 by Applause Books. Other plays include: FEAST. (Riverside Theatre); Housebroken (Riverside Theatre, Hollins University); Save Me, Dolly Parton (Riverside Theatre, Synchronicity Theatre; named among Best Plays in Atlanta by Creative Loafing). Her musical tribute album to the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer is widely available online. Her standup comedy credits include opening for Louie Anderson, Cameron Esposito, and Rachel Bloom, and she has headlined or emceed several charity and private events in the Midwest, including serving as the keynote speaker for the Emma Goldman Clinic Choice Event, the Iowa Center for Advancement’s Victory Campaign Celebration, and events for the Iowa Women’s Foundation. Megan was a Playwrights’ Center Jerome Fellow, a WordBRIDGE alum, and she earned her MFA in Playwriting from the University of Texas at Austin. She currently teaches playwriting and standup comedy at the University of Iowa Playwrights Workshop and is a regularly returning visiting faculty for the Playwright's Lab at Hollins University. 

Mat Smart 

Hand, Foot, Arm, and Face

Mat Smart has written 25 full-length plays that have been produced around the country and currently has several television and film projects in development.  His play Kill Local premiered at the La Jolla Playhouse and was recently translated and performed in Seoul, South Korea at the Broadway Musical Center.  The Agitators, his play about the true, untold friendship between Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass, has been produced at over 20 different theatres from Maine to Seattle.   

Select plays include: The Royal Society of Antarctica (Gift Theatre, recipient of the Jeff Award for Best New Work in Chicago), Eden Prairie, 1971 (National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere, Riverside Theatre; New Jersey Rep; BETC), Samuel J. and K. (Williamstown Theatre Festival; Steppenwolf), Naperville (Slant Theatre Project, Theatre Wit), Tinker to Evers to Chance (Geva; Merrimack Rep), The 13th of Paris (City Theatre), and The Hopper Collection (Huntington; Magic).  His newest play, A Black-billed Cuckoo, a comedy about birding, was recently workshopped at the South Carolina New Play Festival and upcoming at the Playwrights’ Center. 

An avid traveler and baseball fan, Mat has been to all of the states, all of the continents, and all of the current MLB stadiums.  A native of Naperville, Illinois, he currently lives in Brooklyn.  Undergrad: University of Evansville.  MFA: UCSD.