Claudia Acosta is a New York based actor, director, producer, and teaching artist. As an actor, she has most recently appeared in Boundless Theater Company’s How to Melt ICE. Other credits include: Page 73’s (Man Cave), Rattlestick Playwright’s Theater (Seven Spots on the Sun), WP Theater (Architecture of Becoming), HERE (Don Cristobal Billy Club Man), Platforma Internațională de Teatru București in Romania (Two Arms and a Noise). She has worked with INTAR, Teatro IATI, Chatauqua Theater Company and many others. Originally from Texas, she has also been in many productions at Hip Pocket Theater, Cara Mia, Artes De la Rosa, and Teatro Dallas. Claudia has been a featured narrator for Performing Arts Fort Worth and Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra in their annual bilingual Children’s Educational Programs at Bass Performance Hall for fifteen years. Claudia has directed for Lehman College, SUNY New Paltz, and Teatro Dallas’s Grave is Given Supper in association with New Ohio’s Ice Factory Festival. She is a founding collective member and producer of readings and workshops for the Obie Grant-winner The Sol Project. For the last two years, Claudia co-produced and facilitated Echoes Writing Group with Primary Stages, uplifting emerging women, trans, and non-binary playwrights. Claudia has been a teaching artist for over fifteen years serving many organizations including MTC, Arts Connection, New York Theater Workshop, and Lincoln Center Education.

Raquel is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and advocate holding an MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University. Her eclectic career spans original multi-media solo performances, playwriting, devising, dramaturgy, and filmmaking.

For their original work, they are the recipient of the Map Fund, Doris Duke Grant, NYFA NYC Women’s Fund, NYSCA Grant and National Association of Latino Arts and Culture Grant, Kennedy Center’s Latinidad Award, Chelsea Factory residency, Kate Neal Kinley Playwriting Fellowship, and the LGBTQIA Arch and Bruce Brown Playwriting Prize.

As an educator and consultant, she co-created, taught, and engaged creators in a wide variety of both community and university settings, founding short- and long-term programs for intergenerational participants. Lecturer and Guest Lecturer credits include: Augsburg University through The Playwrights Center, UC Berkeley, Harvard University, New York University, and The New School.

She is Artistic Director of La Lucha Arts, an organization dedicated to producing works in collaboration with social movements. Almazan is the Co-President of the Board of Directors of Indie Space.

Chris Ceraso is an actor, dramatist, and teacher.  As an actor, he has premiered work by such writers as John Guare, David Mamet, Joyce Carol Oates, Lanford Wilson, Romulus Linney, Mac Wellman, Arthur Giron, and Christopher Durang, among many others. He has also appeared on TV (frequent appearances on the various “Law and Order” shows; “Deadline,” “City Kids”), and in independent films.  Regional work has included classic plays by Shakespeare, Molière, and Tennessee Williams. He is a long-time member of New York’s Ensemble Studio Theater, and of the Resonance Ensemble, where he played Caesar in Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra and Solness in Ibsen’s The Master Builder, among other classic roles.  Chris has had plays produced and commissioned at E.S.T., New York Theater Workshop, The Chester Theatre, Capitol Rep, and Lincoln Center Institute.  His work has been published by Samuel French, Bloomsbury, Plays for Living, and others.  He was also a staff writer for NBC’s “Another World.”

Dominic Colón is a writer, actor, and teaching artist from the Bronx, New York. For over 20 years Dominic taught acting and playwriting at various NYC high schools, hospitals, juvenile detention facilities, and Rikers Island.

As an actor, Dominic has appeared in over 60 TV shows and movies. His play, The War I Know has been workshopped at The Atlantic Theater Company and has been developed by The Sol Project and The Latinx Playwrights Circle.  His play Prospect Avenue or The Miseducation of Juni Rodriguez was performed at the 38th Annual Marathon of One-Act plays at E.S.T.

Most recently Dominic wrote the episode “Our Lady of the Six Train” for the new queer Latinx scripted podcast anthology, “Love in Gravity.”  His television pilot “Papi,” made The Black List’s inaugural Latinx TV List, a curated list of the ten most promising pilots created by Latinx Writers. As one of the top three finalists Dominic received a blind pilot deal at Hulu.

Dominic is a writer on the upcoming Netflix series, “Pink Marine,” produced by television icon Norman Lear.

Daniela Gonzalez y Perez (they/she) is a queer Puerto Rican playwright, actor, and teaching artist from Brooklyn. Their writing explores the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and religion through fantasy, magical realism, sci-fi, and that “Brooklyn shit” to confront/reject societal norms, barriers, and the displacement of peoples. They’re currently in Clubbed Thumb’s Early-Career Writer’s Group being mentored by David Henry Hwang and recently in The Latinx Playwrights Circle’s Intensive Mentorship Program, mentored by Migdalia Cruz. Writing credits include The 24 hour Plays, Ya Tu Sabes Monologue Slam by Nosotros & NBC, and Fortway Media. Acting credits include Rattlestick Theater, INTAR Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and The Tank. They hold a BFA in Acting from Brooklyn College, are a member of INTAR’s Unit 52 and The Latinx Playwrights Circle, a teaching artist for Manhattan Theatre Club, and a facilitator of writing workshops with an emphasis on personal and community-based exploration and healing.

Devin E. Haqq is an Emmy-nominated producer, a member of the Roundabout Directors Group Cohort 4, a member of the Fiasco Theatre Acting Company, an IFP alumnus, and a Finalist for the 2020 HBOAccess Directing Fellowship. He has appeared Off-Broadway at the Barrow Group, Epic Theatre Ensemble, HERE Arts Center, BRIC Arts Media, and in the New York premiere of David Harrower’s Knives in Hens at 59E59 Theaters (NYT Critic’s Pick). He’s appeared in numerous regional theatre productions including Fiasco Theatre’s Measure for Measure (Actor’s Theatre of Louisville) and As You Like It (The Arden Theatre). Devin has narrated documentaries for Lion TV, Disney Studios, and the PBS series NOVA. And during the playoffs, he lends his voice to the NFL and the NBA.

Kate has been happily serving as a teaching artist with MTC for over twenty years.  She’s a produced and published playwright and long-time member of the Ensemble Studio Theatre where she first found employment as Literary Manager and where much of her work has been staged.  These plays include: Unseen Friends, Two Part Harmony, Ariel Bright, and Casting Cordelia.  Ariel Bright can be found in Ramon Delgado’s collection of Best One-Act Plays.

Guiding and inspiring playwrights has remained Kate’s passion.  Additional teaching credits include: Young Playwrights Inc., Gotham Writers Workshop, The Ensemble Studio Theatre Institute, Playwrights Horizons, Marymount Manhattan College, and the 52nd Street Project.   Kate holds a B.A. in Drama from Kenyon College.

Taryn Matusik is an Arts and Justice Educator originally from Upstate New York. As an inquiry-based theater teaching artist for MTC, she draws from her experience as an actor and writer to explore elements of theatrical form through themes of personal interest to the learner. In addition to her work as a theater teaching artist with multiple organizations, she is also a museum educator and a school staff developer around topics of SEL, restorative practice, and racial equity. Taryn is also a devoted backyard farmer growing food for her family and community.

David McElwee is an actor and writer based in Brooklyn.  His onstage credits include Our Town, Luna Gale, and Macbeth at Actors Theater of Louisville all directed by Les Waters; being a part of the Drama Desk Award-winning cast of Wayside Motor Inn at the Signature Theatre, directed by Lila Neugebauer; the world premiere of How to Transcend a Happy Marriage by Sarah Ruhl at Lincoln Center Theater; and All My Sons at Guild Hall starring Alec Baldwin and Laurie Metcalf.  His writing has been featured on the hit podcast “Full Body Chills,” and his first play, Rory and the Devil, was produced in Los Angeles in 2019.

Elia has an MFA from The David Geffen School of Drama (Yale), an MS in Childhood Education from Pace University, and a BA in Cultural Anthropology and Peace and Conflict Studies from University of Southern California.

As an actor she has worked at New York Theatre Workshop, Theatre for a New Audience, The Guthrie, Shakespeare Theatre of DC, The Huntington, ACT, The Williamstown Theatre Festival, and The Humana Festival among others. Film and TV credits include “FBI,” “New Amsterdam,” “Search Party,” “The Deuce,” “The Following,” “Prodigal Son,” “The Resident,” “Shades of Blue,” “The Affair,”, “Fort Tilden,” “Person of Interest,” “Madam Secretary,” “Elementary,” “Law and Order: SVU,” and “Law and Order: Criminal Intent.”

Elia is a New York State certified teacher with over 15 years of teaching experience. She currently teaches theatre through a social justice lens at Lincoln Center Theater, BAM, and Manhattan Theatre Club. She is also on faculty at NYU Tisch where she teaches Chekhov, Advanced Scene Study, and proudly helped devise and direct the 2021 Spring Show.

Andres Munar is an actor, director, and teacher born in Bogota, Colombia, and raised in Miami, Florida. As a performer, he has been seen in Miss Julie, Asian Equities by Leegrid Stevens at Loading Dock Theater, and The Box by Marcus Gardley at The Foundry. Also in NY: The Lark, Lincoln Center Theater, Working Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, Cherry Lane Theatre, Rattlestick Theater, Clubbed Thumb. He has a long-standing relationship with INTAR, where he helped develop and starred in customs, written and directed by Michael John Garces, Kissing Fidel by Eduardo Machado, and Tight Embrace by Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas.  Regional credits: At the Old Globe, in Kristoffer Dias’ Welcome to Arroyos, and heading the Helen Hayes-nominated ensemble of Luis Alfaro’s Oedipus el Rey at Woolly Mammoth. Understudy: Lincoln Center Theater’s production of Golden Boy on Broadway. TCG/Fox Foundation Fellow-in-residence at Cornerstone Theater Company from 2008-2010 and a Bowden Award recipient from New Dramatists. Film: Entre Nos at Tribeca Film Festival and Che at Cannes Film Festival. On TV: “Law and Order,” “Law and Order: Criminal Intent,” “Queens Supreme,” “Blue Bloods,” “The Blacklist,” “11/22/63,” “Queen of the South,” “Fear the Walking Dead,” “New Amsterdam,” among others. Directing credits include Leegrid Steven’s play Leda’s Swan at Columbia University, The Dudleys! at Swing Space, and Heart of Shrapnel at Elon University. Andres is a teaching artist through Manhattan Theatre Club’s TheatreLink program, and has been a teaching artist with the Write on the Edge and Lights Up! programs. He has taught acting as an adjunct at Fordham University, and as a Guest Teacher for INTAR Theatre’s Unit 52. Andres has an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College, and a BFA in Theater from Southern Methodist University.

Omar Perez is an actor, director, and educator. Stage credits include Randy’s Dandy Coaster Castle, Torched, DC7 The Roberto Clemente Story (Off Broadway), The Wizard of Oz, and Man of La Mancha. Recent T.V. credits include Younger (TVland), FBI: Most Wanted (CBS) Power, Ray Donovan (Starz network) Russian Dolls (Netflix) and Search Party (TBS). He is an ACE award nominee for his work as Sancho Panza in Miguel Will. His one-man show Rhapsodia, has been presented at several NYC festivals.

Omar’s focus as a director is in the development of collaborative and conceptual new works. Recent directing projects include  Bomba and the Coqui (Piper Theatre) Embracing Bethlehem/ Abrazos a Belén (Touchstone Theatre’s Festival Unbound), In 5 Beats; a collaboration between LaMama and Pregones Theatre that showcased beatboxers and actors lead by Omar and renown Beatrhymer Kid Lucky.

As an educator, Omar has worked with ArtsConnection, Lincoln Center Education, People’s Theatre Project, Creative Arts Team, The Center for Arts Education, and Pregones Theatre. Populations taught include grades 2-12, College and University workshops, Incarcerated youth at Rikers Island, residents in domestic shelters and Lifelong learners. He has also served as a joker in Forum theatre, based on Theatre of the Oppressed work of Augusto Boal. He is a former Arthur Miller Foundation Mentor for first and second year NYCDOE theatre teachers and Shubert Foundation adjudicator for their Annual High School festival. He is the recipient of the 2021 Linda Janklow Teaching Artist award.

Carmen Rivera is a playwright and educator.  Her play, La Gringa, part of the OBIE Award Winning Series “New Voices,” opened in 1996 at Repertorio Español.  Currently, it is the second-longest running Off-Broadway play after The Fantasticks.  Both English and Spanish versions are available at Concord Theatricals.

Off-Broadway productions include:  La Caída De Rafael Trujillo (The Downfall Of Rafael Trujillo) (ATI Award for Best Production); Celia: The Life and Music of Celia Cruz (Co-Written with Cándido Tirado, HOLA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Playwriting); La Lupe: My Life, My Destiny (ACE Award for Best Production); Julia de Burgos: Child of Water; To Catch The Lightning (Nomination ACE Award – Best Production.)  Carmen was the subject of a doctoral dissertation, Latinidad: The Theatre of Carmen Rivera,  written by theatre scholar Dr. Jason Ramirez.  She is a mentor playwright for the Latinx Playwrights Circle.  For more information on Carmen, check out www.carmenrivera-writer.com.

Johnny Rivera is a Puerto Rican born actor from Ponce, Puerto Rico, and was raised in Bushwick, Brooklyn.  It was at his high school drama class that he first came across “Mambo Mouth” by John Leguizamo, which. along with his participation there in Manhattan Theatre Club’s Write on the Edge program, sparked his interest in acting.

After getting the actors/writers bug, he attended SUNY Purchase and got his first acting opportunity with an Off-Broadway educational theatre company in Brooklyn.

Since then, Johnny has worked on television shows: “Law & Order,” “POWER,” “The White House Plumbers,” “Chicago Fire,” “FBI,” and “Blue Bloods.” Johnny credits his high school experience as a catalyst to his acting career. Because of this, he continues to collaborate with Manhattan Theatre Club offering workshops to schools in NYC.

Stephen has a well-rounded background in the entertainment industry, having worked as a director, producer, and actor. Stephen began his career as an actor in numerous Broadway productions including Les Miserables, Gypsy, Oklahoma, and more. He went on to study filmmaking at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where his work garnered him recognition as the school’s sole nominee for the Princess Grace Award. His feature films have screened in major festivals around the world, including Sundance, Berlinale, and others. Most recently, his work was selected by the State Department to represent the United States as part of the American Film Showcase in an effort to promote international diplomacy through the arts. He is earning a master’s degree in Education, and is passionate about bringing quality arts education to students across New York City and beyond.

Nilaja Sun, most known for her award-winning solo piece No Child…, has garnered over 25 awards including: an Obie, a Lucille Lortel Award, two Outer Critics Circle Awards including the John Gassner Playwriting Award for Outstanding New American Play, a Theatre World Award, the Helen Hayes Award, two NAACP Theatre Awards, and an Edinburgh Award.

Her latest solo piece, Pike St., had its world premiere at the Abrons Arts Center followed by an international tour at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Pillsbury House, Detroit Public Theatre, and Berkeley Repertory Theatre, as well as in Scotland, Ireland and Australia.

Film and television: “Madam Secretary,” “The Good Wife,” “BrainDead,” “30 Rock,” “Law & Order: SVU,” “Unforgettable,” “Louie,” “The International,” “Youth in Oregon,” and “Rubicon.”

A native of the Lower East Side, she is a Princess Grace Award recipient and has worked proudly as a teaching artist in New York City for over 20 years.

Judy is a dramatist who has won four Emmys and a Writers’ Guild award for her work in television. She is a playwright and the producing artistic director of the ASP Arts Collective, which contextualizes enslavement and its aftermath within the framework of colonialism through drama and visual arts.  Her plays, Fast Blood, Slashes of Light, Sex in the Kitchen, Mistaken for Genius, In the Parlour, and others have all been produced and presented in theatres around the country and at the National Theatre in London. Theatre awards include: Manhattan Theatre Club’s playwriting fellowship; the New Professional Theatre Playwriting Award; and WAMCO collaboration award finalist.  She’s a 30-year member of Ensemble Studio Theatre, Founding Artistic Director of the Manhattan Theatre Club’s Stargate Theatre, a project that pays justice-involved young people to create and perform original work for the stage. She has written about Stargate Theatre in Routledge’s “Applied Theatre with Youth” edited by Lisa S. Brenner, Chris Ceraso, and Evelyn Diaz Cruz. Judy has taught students around the world in schools, jails, South African Townships, and from American Indigenous communities.  She has both a BFA and a Masters in Arts+Politics from in NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She also teaches playwriting at NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development and Theatre Arts at Drew University.

Ashley M. Thomas, she/her(s)/herself, is a writer and dramaturg born and raised in Harlem, New York. Previously, Ashley has worked as an arts administrator for organizations such as Classical Theatre of Harlem, Bret Adams Ltd., Roundabout Theatre Company, and Manhattan Theatre Club. She has dramaturged classical works, plays in development, and solo shows. She has been published in Theater magazine, Jabberwock Review, and 3Views Theater. Ashley has also been a teaching artist for elementary and high school-aged students, and a teaching fellow for college-aged students. She is a proud alumna of the First Wave Urban Arts Scholarship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she graduated with her Bachelor of Social Work. She has her MFA in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism from Yale School of Drama.

Camille Simone Thomas is a Jamaican-American teaching artist, playwright, screenwriter and actor from Detroit, Michigan. She has worked with Broadway Advocacy Coalition as their Artivism Fellow and her work has been workshopped with Playwrights Horizons, Sanguine Theatre Company, Dixon Place, 48 Hours in Detroit, and The National Women’s theatre festival among others. She currently teaches with Manhattan Theatre Club, Dreamyard, Partnership with Children, and The Apollo Theatre.

Cándido Tirado has had over 50 productions of his plays. Among his Off-Broadway productions include Celia: The Life and Music of Celia Cruz, which he co-wrote with Carmen Rivera and enjoyed a successful nine-month run at New World Stages before touring to various locations including Miami, Chicago, Tenerife, and Puerto Rico; other works include King Without a Castle (Sundance workshop), Checking Out, First Class, The Barber Shop, Momma’s Boyz, La Cancíon, and Fish…Men, which was produced at INTAR and by the Goodman Theatre in collaboration with Teatro Vista in Chicago. The Resurrection of Ashes received a workshop at Oregon Shakespeare Festival. His latest publication, The Chess Plays: Fish…Men and King Without A Castle was published by NoPassport Press in 2023. He has been awarded the New York Foundation for the Arts Playwriting Fellowship four times and has directed more than 20 plays.

Marilyn Torres hails from Harlem, New York. She’s graced the stage in plays such as My Broken Language at Signature Theater, There’s Always the Hudson at Woolly Mammoth, Water by The Spoonful at The Old Globe, Breath Boom at Yale Rep, Agony of the Agony at The Vineyard, and Bike America at The Alliance Theater and Ma-Yi Theater. Ms. Torres was also part of The Tribeca Theater Festival in Late Night, Early Morning, produced by Robert De Niro. It went on to be produced at The HBO Comedy Festival where it won a Jury Award for Best Theater Piece. Film credits include “Maid in Manhattan,” “Lady in the Water,” “Bella, Bernard & Doris,” “The Arrangement,” “Musical Chairs,” “Home,” and “The Big Sick.” She’s had principal roles on “Law & Order,” “Law & Order, SVU,” “For Life,” “Flight of the Conchords,” “Third Watch” and “The Chris Rock Show.” Her most recent role was on Marvel’s “Dare Devil,” “High Maintenance” and “The King of Staten Island” with Pete Davidson.

Joe has performed Off-Broadway at Soho Rep, The Public Theater, West Side Arts Theatre and Ensemble Studio Theatre, to name a few. He has acted at the Edinburgh Festival, toured India and acted in regional theatre. TV and film acting credits include “Goodfellas” directed by Martin Scorsese and many episodes of “Law and Order” and “Blue Bloods.” He has directed at the Ensemble Studio Theatre, Lincoln Center Institute, The Image Theatre, and Williamstown Theatre Festival. Joe teaches playwriting for The Working Theater to New York City union members, and is an Acting Coach at Fordham Law School. He is a long time teaching artist for Manhattan Theatre Club and TDF. Joe also volunteers for The 52^nd Street Project. He is a member of Actors & Writers, a theatre company in the Catskill Mountains of New York, where he also maintains a home.

Amy is an actor, writer, and educator living in New York.  She received her bachelor’s degree from Ithaca College and an MFA from Hunter College. Her plays have been developed at Atlantic Theater, Lark Play Development Center, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Pipeline PlayLAB, Tofte Lake Center, Roundabout Theatre, National New Play Network, Abingdon Theatre, NewYorkRep, and The Kennedy Center. She won the inaugural Shakespeare’s New Contemporaries prize for her play Anne Page Hates Fun that premiered at the ASC in 2019.  Other plays include Make All Girls In Charge (NewYorkRep Commission), Archipelago (PlayPenn, Haas Fellowship), and The Midnight Ride of Sean & Lucy (Roundabout Underground, semi-finalist O’Neill Playwrights Conference). She currently has multiple TV/film projects on the horizon as well as a poetry book. When she is not writing she is busy learning from her many students, curating original student work, and drinking many cups of tea.