Pictured: Dramaturg Celise Kalke and WTP member Quinn Hernandez in Celise’s Master Class on Accessing the National Marketplace. Photo credit: Danyale Taylor.
Under the exciting new leadership of Amber Bradshaw, and the visionary programming she has proposed, I can’t wait to see how WTP grows in the next five years. I’m thrilled to serve on the Advisory Board and to help this vital organization flourish”- Margaret Baldwin (Lecturer and Interim General Education Coordinator, Kennesaw State University)
Carlyn Aquiline has been dramaturg on many new works, as well as production dramaturg on contemporary and classical works, at City Theatre Company in Pittsburgh (where she was Literary Manager and Dramaturg), Syracuse Stage (where she was Artistic Associate), Goodspeed Musicals (where she was Literary and Producing Associate), Tectonic Theater Project, BAM, Mark Taper Forum, Arena Stage, La Jolla Playhouse, Kansas City Rep, Hartford Stage, Lark Play Development Center, Yale Repertory Theatre, Arden Theatre, Florida Stage, TheatreWorks (Palo Alto), American Theater Company, The Microscopic Opera Company, and Actor’s Express, among others. She’s been the recipient of a LMDA Residency Grant for her collaboration with The Microscopic Opera Company, an Alcoa Foundation Leadership Grant for Arts Managers, and an Education Foundation of America Fellowship for her work with Syracuse Stage. She was Managing Editor of the international journal THEATER for two years, teaches at Carnegie Mellon University, and is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama.
Amber Bradshaw is a dramaturg/director, producer, and playwright with a sole focus in new work and script development. In Atlanta she has worked with Actor’s Express, Synchronicity Theatre, the Alliance Theatre, the Center for Puppetry Arts, Out of Hand Theatre, Out Front Theatre, Theatre du Reve, Gathering Wild Dance, and the Essential Theatre. For several years she has directed, dramaturged and curated plays for the annual Essential Theatre Bare Essentials Reading Series. Of the plays developed, three have received professional World Premieres (Daryl Lisa Fazio’s, Split in Three at Florida Rep; Theroun D’Arcy Patterson’s, That Uganda Play; and Derek Dixon’s,When Things Are Lost). For WTP, she has directed three Ethel Woolson Labs (Medica, by Daryl Lisa Fazio; Pheromone by Rachel Graf Evans; and The Cannibals by Theroun D’Arcy Patterson). Amber has co-produced and written three original works (Circa 50; Learning to Fly and Identified: A Queer Variety Show!). She also has had plays featured in the Future is Female Festival; the Inside Voice Project; at the Center for Puppetry Arts Annual XPT Festival and Les Sages Fous Festival of New Works in Trois Riveres, Canada. In January 2018, she directed Bathesheba Doran’s The Mystery of Love and Sex for Out Front Theatre. Amber is a proud member of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas and the Dramatist Guild of America.
Celise Kalke is the new managing director for Synchronicity Theatre. Before Aug. 2018, Celise was the Director of New Projects and Artistic Programs Manager at the Alliance Theatre for 13 years. There she discovered and mentored artists new to the field of American Theatre, including Academy Award-winner Tarell Alvin McCraney and Laurents/Hatcher-winner Jiréh Breon Holder . She developed and grew the Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition and the Reiser Atlanta Artists Lab, which launched the careers of multiple emerging playwrights and theatre artists. Before moving to Atlanta Celise was the Director of the Literary Department at New York’s Public Theater. Her work began at Court Theatre in Chicago where she worked on Classic Plays with America’s most exciting directors. Celise has worked her entire career helping debut writers and giving them the skills to articulate their process and vision. She is a skilled production dramaturg and Arts Administrator.
Daphne Mintz is an Atlanta-based dramaturg, playwright, and producer dedicated to the mission of developing new works. Her dramaturgical highlights include WTPs’ The 24-Hour Plays, Ethel Woolsen Labs forRiding Bicycles in the Rain by Erin Considine and Confessions of a Hit Man by Hank Kimmel, Thus Spoke the Mockingbird by Joanie McElroy (winner of Nashville’s Women’s Project Festival), the Circle of Women’s staged reading of Wild + Free by Candi Dugas, and the Reiser Atlanta Artists Lab for Confessions of a Hit Man by Hank Kimmel. Her ongoing workshops include the Commissioned Play Development Program for the MoJo FestPlaywrights Showcase presented by the Jo Howarth Noonan Foundation (a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and celebrating women theater artists over the age of forty) and the writing-intensive Story Craft for the Stageworkshop series. As a producer of new works, her Salon Dinner Theatre has featured The Education of Benjamin First by Hank Kimmel and The Handprint by Annie Harrison Elliot. Daphne is a proud member of the Dramatist Guild of America, the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas, and Working Title Playwrights.
Addae Afura Moon is a dramatic writer for stage, screen, television and new media. He serves as Resident Playwright for The Atlanta History Center and is that organization’s Acting Director for the Museum Theatre. In 2014 he was awarded the Jon Lipsky Playwriting Award from the International Museum Theatre Alliance (IMTAL) for the immersive theater production Four Days of Fury: Atlanta 1906, about the Atlanta race riots. Since 2008, he has worked with Atlanta’s Horizon Theatre as playwriting teacher and dramaturg for the theater’s young writers program. He has served as Adjunct Professor at Clark Atlanta University, where he taught courses in the Theatre Arts Department including: Theatre Appreciation, Dramaturgy and Criticism, Acting I, Directing, Development of Drama I & II, Playwriting, Children’s Theatre and African American Theatre, as well as conducting research in African diasporic performance.
Dr. Angela Farr Schiller, PhD received her B.A. in theatre from the University of California, Santa Cruz, her Master’s Degree from the department of Social and Cultural Analysis with an emphasis in Africana Studies from New York University, and completed her Ph.D. in Theater and Performance Studies at Stanford University. Dr. Schiller works as a professor and is the resident dramaturg for Kennesaw State University’s Department of Theatre and Performance Studies. Her areas of expertise are: Critical Theory, Dramatic Literature, African American History and Performance, Performance Studies, Critical Race Studies, and Dramaturgy. As an artist, Angela works professionally as a director, and dramaturg. She has appeared onstage with the Emmy Award-winning Kaiser Permanente’s Educational Theatre Programs, the National Dance Company of Ghana, the Tony Award winning Old Globe Theatre and La Jolla Playhouse. As a dramaturg, she has worked on productions of The Color Purple, Hairspray, Evita, The Scarlet Letter, In the Blood, Peter and the Starcatcher, Heathers: The Musical, Father Comes Home From the Wars, and most recently on the Alliance Theatre’s production of Native Guard and the Actor’s Express production of An Octoroon. Ultimately, Angela’s work is about revealing the ways that performance can be utilized as a meaningful tool of social engagement and the development of compassion around what it means to be human.
MIA KRISTIN SMITH is a professional Director, Actor, Writer, Producer and Dramaturg. She holds an MFA from the New School of Drama in New York City, a BA with a concentration in media studies and playwriting, and an AA in Theater Production. Mia is a drama instructor, stage combat choreographer, and uses drama for therapy techniques. Her company, Karibu Performing Arts, has produced several plays in the city of Atlanta and its surrounding areas. She has performed on many stages in New Orleans, Los Angeles, New York and Atlanta. She directed and produced TOPDOG/UNDERDOG and BreaTHe and wrote, directed and produced KEPT. She has directed for Circle of Women, New African Grove, Rising Stage, and Out of Box Theater. Mia served as Dramaturg and Director of Uncivil Warring and Father Thyme by Rosalind Ayres-Williams for the Atlanta Black Theater Festival, and stage managed Theatre du Reve’s production of Code Noir. For Working Title Playwrights she has been dramaturg, director and/or stage manager for: That What Buried by Amina McIntyre, Medica by Daryl Lisa Fazio, Yesterday: Today by Malcolm Tariq, and Son of the Father by Ian Gibson. She is the Dramaturg for Impact Theater’s upcoming production of Re-Rooting and Amina McIntyre’s Memory Life.
Rebekah Suellau is an Atlanta-based theatre artist focusing in new play development. She has worked as a director, dramaturg, playwright, and performer on stages across Atlanta, including the Alliance, 7Stages, Georgia Ensemble, Emory University, The Weird Sisters Theatre Project, Atlanta Theatre Club, Synchronicity, Catalyst, Aurora, and Horizon. She was voted Best Local Stage Director in Creative Loafing’s Best of ATL (2017). She has served as a producer with The Weird Sisters Theatre Project, The Seedling Project, and The Araca Project (NYC), and currently works as the Associate Development Artist with Working Title Playwrights. MFA: Florida State University.