ELLEN IS A 2010 CORE APPRENTICE DRAMATURG

Ellen Conn holds a BA in Theatre from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. A Core Apprentice Dramaturg for The Playwright’s Center, other dramaturgical endeavors include: KCACTF Region III Student Dramaturgy Award and Fellowship for The Secret Garden the Musical, and a Dramaturgical Fellow for the 2010 KCACTF MFA Playwrights’ workshop. Other credits include Directing Commendation from KCACTF for the new play, Box Office, A History. Primarily focusing in new works, Ellen recently moved to the Minneapolis area to pursue directing and dramaturgy. She also enjoys the outdoors, and finally being out of school! Special thanks to Anne Fletcher for her years of guidance and love.

Patricia Loughrey’s play Dear Harvey is based on over 40 interviews with people who knew or were affected by Harvey Milk. It was commissioned by Diversionary Theatre, developed at The William Inge Theatre Center for the Arts, and has had numerous readings and productions including a concert reading at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, and a performance at the California Museum celebrating the launch of California’s Harvey Milk Day. Dear Harvey will be produced at the New York Fringe Festival in August 2010, and published by Playscripts Inc, fall 2010.  Patricia Loughrey wrote the book for The Daddy Machine, based on the book by Johnny Valentine. The musical was commissioned by San Diego’s Diversionary Theatre and was featured on Rosie O’Donnell’s R Family Vacation’s cruise to the Mexican Riviera in March 2008. Her full length play: Lord Derby’s Giant Eland placed second in the Kennedy Center, ACTF Mark Twain Comedy Playwriting Awards, and was produced at San Diego State University in 2005. Her plays for young audiences include: Nicaragua USA, at the New Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, and Not Who You See, But Who I Am, with the Mark Taper Forum’s Improvisational Theatre Project. Her HIV education plays include Secrets, produced by Kaiser Permanente (winner of the Ryan White Award) and The Inner Circle, seen worldwide in over 500 productions. HUNGRY, commissioned by the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solana is currently touring in the Bay Area. Ms. Loughrey has served as playwright-in-residence at Point Loma High, and has written and performed one-woman shows in Santa Barbara and San Francisco. She coordinates the Queer Theatre – Taking Center Stage program at San Diego’s Diversionary Theatre. 

ANDREW IS A 2010 CORE APPRENTICE DRAMATURG

Andy Pierce is a fourth-year doctoral student at University of Missouri-Columbia. In 2009, his dramaturgical work on "Quindaro," a new play conceived and directed by Ricardo Khan and written by Kathleen McGhee-Anderson, won the LMDA/KCACTF Region 5 Dramaturgy Initiative. This work garnered him a fellowship with the literary office of The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. The following year, he won the Region 5 Initiative as dramaturg for "The Zoo Story" and "The American Dream." Andy returned to The O'Neill in 2010 to do archival and dramaturgical work. For the past five years, he has worked in the Marketing Department of Starlight Theatre in Kansas City.

Dean Poynor is an emerging playwright originally from the South, but now based in New York City. His plays include: BELLHAMMER, a new comic epic about Christian Professional Wrestling, the full-length drama PARADISE KEY (Arena Players Repertory Theatre in NY, Winner of the 2010 Trustus Theatre Playwrights' Festival), the Zombie-thriller Homo apocalyptus (developed in residency at The Studios of Key West, and at The Garage Theatre in San Francisco), the full-length drama, LOSING SLEEP (Winner of the 2008 Helford Prize in Drama and $10,000, and produced Off-Off Broadway at the American Theatre of Actors), and the full-length, two-person comedy, COMPANY TIME (developed under luxurious circumstances at the Players Theatre, NYC.) Dean’s screenplay Salk won the 2009 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation student screenplay award and received $25,000. He is also a two-time recipient of the Schubert Foundation Fellowship from CMU. Dean graduated from Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL, with degrees in Philosophy and Communications, and received his MFA in Dramatic Writing from Carnegie Mellon University. He is a proud member of the Playwrights Center and the Dramatists Guild of America, and a Principal Artist with The Salvage Company. For more information and news please visit http://www.deanpoynor.com

Julie Tosh is a playwright, librettist, and screenwriter who left a career as an educator and sometimes musician to pursue the rhythm of dramatic writing. A native Californian, she divided her youth between northern CA, Oregon, and Ohio and was profoundly influenced by the change of scene and similarity of it all. Her plays include Skirt, The Coyote Sun, Refuge, and numerous one-acts. She holds an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University, where she won the Mary Marlin Fisher Playwriting Award and was finalist for the Alfred C. Sloan Screenwriting Award. She was also two-time recipient of the Shubert Foundation Fellowship Award and received an ANA Alliance for Family Entertainment Scholarship which led to an internship with Paula Wagner at Chestnut Ridge Productions in Los Angeles. Other honors include KCACTF National David Mark Cohen Award (Second Place), Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellowship, KCACTF National Finalist for Ten Minute Play, and Finalist for the 2011 Trustus Playwriting Festival. She is currently a 2010-11 Core Apprentice for The Playwrights’ Center, Walter E. Dakin Playwriting Fellow for the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and semi-finalist for Lark Playwrights’ Week 2010. Her work has been produced and developed by Bricolage Theatre Company, KCACTF, Theatre Inspirato, WQED in Pittsburgh, and National Public Radio. A proud member and former Regional Rep for The Dramatists Guild, she also maintains membership with ASCAP where her recorded songs are listed under her production company Wrong Pants Publications. Her most recent musical collaboration is an opera for young audiences based on the African American experience on the last orphan trains of the 1920s.