Playwrights and Composers Allison Gregory
Playwright – Red Riding Hood Allison’s plays have been produced nationally and internationally, and she has received commissions, grants, and development from Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Kennedy Center, South Coast Repertory, Indiana Repertory Theatre, The Playwright’s Center, Seattle Repertory Theatre, ACT Theater, and Orlando Shakespeare Festival. Her plays include Not Medea and Wild Horses, both of which received National New Play Network Rolling World Premieres. Allison was recognized recently by TYA USA as “One of the 10 Most Produced TYA Playwrights”. Her plays for families include Go Dog. Go!, adapted from the P.D. Eastman book and cowritten with Steven Dietz; Even Steven Goes to War (AATE and UPRP awards; Kennedy Center New Visions/New Voices selection); Junie B. in Jingle Bells, Batman Smells!, and Junie B. is Not A Crook (over 200 professional productions), adapted from the beloved book series by Barbara Park; and Ronia, the Robber’s Daughter, adapted from the Astrid Lindgren book. allisongregoryplays.com
Diana Grisanti
Playwright – El Guayabo/The Guava Tree (she, her, hers) Diana is a playwright, educator, and Co-Artistic Director of Theatre [502] in Louisville, Kentucky. In the Before Times, she wrote Creede Rep’s KID Show: Derring-Do. Some of her other plays include Lawbreakers! (a fast and furious history of women’s suffrage) (StageOne Family Theatre); Bowling for Beginners (Vanderbilt University); The Patron Saint of Losing Sleep (Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte); River City (National New Play Network); and The Starkweather-South High School Physics Club First Annual End-of-Year Lock-In, or Ghost Party (Cleveland Play House). Diana has been a Michener Fellow, a Kentucky Arts Council Fellow, and a Writer in Residence at Vanderbilt University. She teaches playwriting at Indiana University, Bloomington.
Ken Ludwig
Playwright – Dear Jack, Dear Louise Ken has been called America’s preeminent comic playwright. He has had six shows on Broadway, seven in London’s West End, and many of his works have become a standard part of the American repertoire. Lend Me a Tenor won two Tony Awards and was called “one of the classic comedies of the 20th century” by The Washington Post. Crazy for You was on Broadway for 5 years and won the Tony and Olivier Awards for Best Musical. He has written 28 plays and musicals, including Moon Over Buffalo (starring Carol Burnett), Twentieth Century (starring Alec Baldwin), Be My Baby (starring Hal Holbrook), Baskerville, A Fox on the Fairway, Leading Ladies, and Dear Jack, Dear Louise, which won the 2020 Charles MacArthur Award for Best New Play or Musical of the Year. He has also written stage adaptations of The Three Musketeers, The Adventures of Robin Hood and Treasure Island, which are performed throughout the world. kenludwig.com
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Emiliano Messiez
Composer and Music Director – El Guayabo/The Guava Tree Emiliano is an Argentinean pianist, music director and composer based in New York City. With a very versatile and personal sound, he is the pianist of the show Forever Tango and he directs his own orchestra Típica Messiez. He is educated in classical music, jazz, tango, rock and Latin American rhythms and has performed all around the world in different venues such as The Lincoln Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and The Houston Opera Theater in Texas, among others, where he performed with artists like Paquito de Rivera, Diego El Cigala, Concha Buika, and others. Emiliano is the composer of Bordello, a musical that has received awards from The National Alliance of Musical Theater in New York and The Broadway Bound Festival. Bordello has also been pre-selected by the Eugene O’Neill Theater Festival.
Denis O’Hare
Playwright – An Iliad Denis is the co-author, along with Lisa Peterson, of the award-winning Solo Performance Play, An Iliad (Obie, Lucille Lortel awards). Mr. O’Hare has appeared numerous times on Broadway in such pieces as Sweet Charity (Drama Desk Award), Assassins (Tony Nom.) and Take Me Out (Tony, Drama Desk awards). He has also worked extensively Off-Broadway at the New York Theatre Workshop at the New York Shakespeare Festival, and other theatres. His regional work includes Seattle Rep, Arena Stage, Goodman Theatre, and the McCarter Theatre. Denis appeared in 2 seasons of True Blood as King Russell Edgington, on the premiere season of American Horror Story, and as Judge Abernathy on The Good Wife. Film work includes Milk, Michael Clayton, A Mighty Heart, Duplicity, The Proposal, Charlie Wilson’s War, and Garden State, among others. He is currently writing a new stage piece with Ms. Peterson entitled, The Good Book for The Court Theatre in Chicago.
Lisa Petersen
Playwright – An Iliad Lisa is a theater director who wrote and adapted An Iliad with actor Denis O’Hare, for which they won 2012 Obie and Lucille Lortel Awards. Her other adaptations include The Waves, adapted from the novel by Virginia Woolf, with composer David Bucknam (Drama Desk nominations), the upcoming The Good Book with Denis O’Hare, and Insurance Men with composer Todd Almond. Her directing credits include the world premieres of Tony Kushner’s Slavs!, Donald Margulies’ Collected Stories and The Model Apartment, Naomi Wallace’ Trestle At Pope Lick Creek, Jose Rivera’s Sueno, Marlane Meyer’s The Chemistry of Change, and many others. Lisa won an Obie in 1991 for Caryl Churchill’s Light Shining in Buckinghamshire at NYTW, and Dramalogue, Drama Desk, and Calloway Award nominations for many other productions. She is a graduate of Yale College, and a member of Ensemble Studio Theater, and the executive board of SDC.
Why do some of our staff, company, and Board members list their pronouns? Though it sometimes appears obvious, we can’t always know someone’s gender just by looking at them. Listing pronouns is a way to remove the guesswork.
