Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition: 2023/2024
Winner: a.k. payne
Furlough's Paradise
a.k. payne (she/they) is a playwright, artist-theorist, and theatremaker with roots in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her plays love on and engage Black lives and languages beyond the confines of linear time to find/remember stories that might create conditions for our collective liberation(s). They hold a B.A. in English and African-American Studies from Yale College and a MFA in Playwriting from the Yale School of Drama, under Tarell Alvin McCraney. Their work has been the finalist for the L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, winner of the David Mark Cohen National Playwriting Award, and 3x semi-finalist for the O’Neill National Playwriting Conference. She is a current recipient of the Kemp Powers Commission Fund for Black Playwrights and Atlantic Theatre Company’s Judith Champion Launch Commission. Her work has been developed with the New Harmony Project, Great Plains theatre Conference, and Manhattan Theatre Club’s “Groundworks Lab.” They are a graduate of Pittsburgh Public Schools; grandchild of the Great Migration; descendant of a music teacher and a carpenter, who both march every year with their unions in Pittsburgh’s Labor Day parade; a queer & non-binary abolitionist affected in community by the “New Jim Crow;” and of a great lineage of Black women storytellers and living-room archivists; all of which deeply informs, uplifts, and amplifies their work as a playwright, community organizer, and spacemaker.
Jake Brasch
The Reservoir
Jake Brasch (he/they) is a queer, sober, Jewish Coloradan clown and a graduating playwriting fellow at The Juilliard School. Their work has been produced or developed by the Denver Center Theatre Company, The Ensemble Studio Theatre, New York Stage and Film, LAByrinth Theatre Company, The Farm Theater, ARThouse, Curious Theatre Company, The Recovery Project at Florida Studio Theatre, and others. He’s a proud graduate of EST/Youngblood and is under commission from the EST/Sloan Project and The Farm Theater. Jake moonlights as a pianist and composer for theatre and film. They also perform as a birthday party clown throughout the Greater New York Area. BFA: NYU Tisch (The New Studio on Broadway/Experimental Theatre Wing). www.jakebrasch.com
Rudi Goblen
littleboy/littleman
Rudi is a playwright, poet, and performer who creates solo theater and devised theater works. As an acclaimed dancer, he has toured nationally, and internationally, competing, adjudicating, and teaching with his award-winning group Flipside Kings. Rudi is a three-time recipient of playwriting awards from the Kennedy Center, the Distinguished Achievement for the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award, and an O'Neill Finalist; as well as the Future Aesthetics Artist Re-grant, two Miami-Dade County Choreographer Awards, a FEAST Award for his book of poetry A Bag of Halos and Horns, and a Theater Masters' TAKE TEN Playwright. He is a founding member of Teo Castellanos/D-Projects and Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre. And he has trained and worked with Cirque De Soleil, and DV8 Physical Theater. Publications include Theater Magazine, Imagined Theatres: Writing for a Theoretical Stage, and Samuel French/Concord Theatricals. Rudi holds an MFA in playwriting from the Yale School of Drama where he was mentored by Tarell Alvin McCraney and Sarah Ruhl.
Lia Romeo
The Agency
Lia Romeo is a recent graduate of the Juilliard playwriting program. Her plays have been developed at the O’Neill, La Jolla Playhouse, the Lark, and elsewhere, and have been produced off-Broadway at 59E59 and ART/NY as well as regionally at venues such as Dorset Theatre Festival, Laguna Playhouse, Unicorn Theatre, New Jersey Repertory Theatre, and others. Four of her plays have been recognized by the Kilroys List. Her plays are published by TRW, Broadway Licensing, and Broadway Play Publishing. She is the associate artistic director with Project Y Theatre Company and the co-founder of the Parent-Caregiver Playwrights Group, and she teaches playwriting at Primary Stages/ESPA and in the M.A. program in creative writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University.
David L. Caruso
SÄVË THË WHÄLËS, etc.
David L. Caruso (he/they) is a playwright and translator from Minneapolis. His plays include Sävë thë Whälës, etc. (Finalist, National Playwrights Conference, Terrence McNally New Play Incubator, Keneda/Alliance National Graduate Playwriting Competition, and Playwrights Realm Fellowship), Through Hike (Finalist, Int'l Thomas Wolfe Playwriting Competition, Semi-Finalist, National Playwrights Conference), Forest Knowledge (Company One, Acts of Joy Series), and Bill & Stephanie (High Honors, Wesleyan University). David has developed work with Playdate Theatre, Company One, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, and the Boston University School of Theatre. David has taught Intro to Creative Writing at Boston University, and has been a Writing Fellow at Lighthouse Works (Fishers Island, NY). David graduated from Wesleyan University with High Honors, and from Boston University with an MFA in Playwriting.
