Dramaturgy Services & Professionals

WTP maintains a diverse roster of professional dramaturgs who are available for one-on-one dramaturgy. While you do not need to be a member to engage our dramaturgical services, we do offer significantly reduced rates as a member benefit.

The New Play Dramaturg

A new play dramaturg wears many, many hats. But in the development world, a dramaturg is your ultimate sounding board, your question asker, sometimes your problem solver, other times the devil’s advocate. A dramaturg  functions as a guide to the play you most want to write, and this guidance will help you best express and communicate the story you want to tell.

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One Session Package

MEMBERS: $175
NON-MEMBERS: $250

What’s included?

• The dramaturg reads the play and provides the playwright with in-depth written and verbal commentary.
• 5 hours of time: A written breakdown of your dramaturgs feedback (minimum of two pages typed).

Three Session Package

Members: $375
Non-Members: $475

What’s included?

15 Hours of time. The dramaturg and playwright begin as they would a one session package. How the following 10 hours of time is spent – is determined by the dramaturg and playwright working together.

If you are interested in taking advantage of our Dramaturgy Services, please contact Managing Artistic Director Amber Bradshaw to arrange a partnership with a dramaturg that will suit the needs of your play: managing@workingtitleplaywrights.com.

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WTP DRAMATURGS

• Carlyn Aquiline
• Amber Bradshaw
• Celise Kalke
• Hank Kimmel
• Laura King
• Daphne Mintz
• Addae Afura Moon
• Natasha Patel
• Dr. Angela Farr Schiller
• Mia Kristin Smith
• Rebekah Suellau
• Donya Washington

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ABOUT THE DRAMATURGS

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 an Atlanta native, a proud Southern queer and a fierce believer in the power of storytelling. She is a dramaturg, director, producer and deviser with a sole focus in new works 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, Gathering Wild Dance, and the Essential Theatre. For several years, Amber has directed, dramaturged and produced play readings as a freelance artist. Of the plays developed, the majority have gone on to be awarded readings, development labs and workshop productions in Atlanta and nationally. For WTP, she directs for the Ethel Woolson Lab, the Table Series, dramaturgs member scripts and moderates regularly for WTP’s Monday Night Critique Sessions (MNCS). Amber has co-produced and written three original works (Circa 50; Learning to Fly and Identified: A Queer Variety Show!). She is a proud member of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas and the Dramatist Guild of America. Amber is honored to be able to help playwrights in the South tell their stories.

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.

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.

Natasha Patel is a writer living in her native Atlanta, Georgia. Her play Widowwood was part of Synchronicity Theater’s 2018-19 Stripped Bare Series and was a semi-finalist for the Bay Area Playwright’s Festival. Her short plays which have received production include Diaper Relay, Cater Waiters, Spin, then Drain.  Most recently, her play Borderstone  was a recipient of the Working Title Playwrights Ethel Woolson Lab and is part of Actor’s Express Threshold New Play festival. She attended the Sewanee Playwright’s Conference with Naomi Izuka and Dan O’Brien, studied fiction writing at Sackett Street Writers Workshop with Julia Fierro and Ted Thompson, and studied skectch and comedy writing at Second City in Chicago. The publication of her short story The Escaped Air was a finalist for Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers and is published by The East Bay Review. She earned her B.A. from the University of Georgia and an M.A. from Columbia University.

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. 

Donya K. Washington, BOLD Associate Producer, Alliance Theatre. During her first three seasons she was primarily responsible for the 2017-2018 Off Site Season, during which the Alliance produced its 12 show season in 12 venues around Atlanta, GA.  Currently, responsibilities include the Reiser Atlanta Artists Lab, the Spelman Leadership Fellows Program and Line Producing. Selected dramaturgy and directing credits include: An Octoroon by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Actor’s Express); Beautiful Blackbird by Ashley Bryan adapted by Theroun D’arcy Patterson (Alliance Theatre, TYA), a workshop of Eve’s Song by Patricia Ione Lloyd (The Playwrights Realm), Pearl Sings the Blues by Vivia Font (Midnight Project, OSF), OSF Presents: Fill in the Blank by Claudia Alick (OSF), God, Man and Devil by Jacob Gordin (Target Margin Theatre) Goddess Hair by Patricia Ione Lloyd (Redshirt Entertainment), Stall by brokeMC (Tiny Rhino), Pete the Girl by Charity Henson-Ballard (Rising Circle/Culture Project Women’s Center Stage), Little Louise by Patricia Ione Lloyd (Fire This Time Festival), a reading of Sound by Don Nguyen (The Civilians), Abby in the Summer by AP Andrews (Playwrights Horizons Theatre School), Brooklyn Skank by Fernanda Coppel (Subject Theatre Company), Come Back to Me by Jesse Cameron Alick and Manikato adapted by Jesse Cameron Alick (Shakespeare in Paradise, Bahamas), Jump Jim Crow by Jesse Cameron Alick music and lyrics by Justin Levine (Subjective Theater Company), Cold Keener by Zora Neale Hurston (Target Margin). Also work with 52nd Street Project, The Civilians. Dramaturgy specific – American Pop by Michael Friedman. 2008/2010 Women’s Project Lab. MFA, Directing – Brown University/Trinity Rep; BFA, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU.