2016 Playwrights

Winter Playwright's Retreat!

In cooperation with the Human Stage and Creede Repertory Theatre, the HBMG Foundation presents the 2016 Winter Writer's Retreat in Creede, Colorado.

With five weeks of individual writers and two coops, we afforded every playwright the opportunity to have her script read by local and guest actors including Ann Pittman, Manuel Zarate*, Kate Berry*, Logan Ernstthal*, Annie Butler, Ryan Wilson, Rhonda Brown, Caitlin Wise*, and John Arp*.

D. TUCKER SMITH has authored several full-length plays including the Broadway-bound Roof of the World (2016 premier, Kansas City Repertory Theatre), Quake ‘05, which premiered in LA in the summer of 2011, Catalog, and The Lake of Ethos. Short plays: The Knockout Suit (Finalist, Samuel French Short Play Competition); Overnight Delivery and Patriot Act, (both finalists in the New York City 15-Minute Play Festival); Lady in the Movie, Rosendale Theater Festival. D. is a member of The Dramatist Guild, The Playwrights Workshop and New River Dramatists.

D. W. GREGORY is a playwright whose comedies and dramas explore political issues through a personal lens. Radium Girls is about dialpainters poisoned on the job in the 1920s, and has been produced in the United States and abroad. Other plays include The Good Daughter, October 1962, Salvation Road and Molumby's Million, which received a commissioning grant from the National New Play Network and was nominated for Philadelphia’s 2011 Barrymore Award for Outstanding New Play. A former national core member of the Playwrights Center, Gregory is a resident playwright at New Jersey Rep, and makes occasional appearances as a teaching artist.

KIRT SHINEMAN is a Phoenix-based playwright and Professor of Communication. Kirt has been a playwright at the Great Plains Theatre Conference, Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, The Hormel New Works Fest, and DC Black Theatre Conference. His topics range from the personal ( Allie Opp’s Last Fantastic Day – Emerging Artists Theater, Off-Broadway) to the political (Forbidden Glass- O’Neill semi-finalist, Chicago Pride Films & Plays). His play Germs and Viruses (NNPN finalist) premiered at Arizona State University Mainstage Theater. Kirt studied at Arizona State University (MFA- Dramatic Writing), Emerson College (MA- Communication), and Colorado State University (Rhetoric & Theater).

LIZ FISHER is an interdisciplinary theater artist working with some of Austin’s most lauded companies including Breaking String Theater, Capital T Theater, The Hidden Room, Hyde Park Theatre, Bedlam Faction, and more. She recently directed the critically acclaimed professional English premiere of Maksym Kurochkin’s Vodka, Fucking, and Television and was a visiting guest artist for Southwestern University’s Sarofim School of Fine Arts. Currently, Liz is the Program Coordinator for Shakespeare at Winedale and an MFA Directing candidate at Texas State. She is Co-Artistic Director of Whirligig Productions, where she wrote and directed the company's inaugural production, Deus Ex Machina. She is married to ROBERT MATNEY, Co-Owner and COO of Polycot Associates, a web development agency. Robert is co-founder and Technology Director of Whirligig Productions. He played Andrei in Lola Pierson and Yury Urnov's Thr3e Zisters for Salvage Vanguard Theatre, Sebastian Topflyte in Paul Menzer's Invisible, Inc., Duke Humphrey in Rose Rage for Hidden Room Theatre, and the title role in Uncle Vanya for Breaking String Theater. You can battle Robert’s voice as Doctor Psycho in the video game DC Universe Online. Robert has been a speaker or presenter at South By Southwest Interactive, Blackfriars, and Fusebox Festival.

SIOBHAN MARIELLE GILBERT is an MFA graduate in playwriting from NYU. Her work has been featured at Primary Stages, NYU, Classical Theater of Harlem, HERE Arts Center, Dixon Place, Davenport Theater, the Last Frontier Theater Conference, and Old Globe in San Diego. Her play Spotlight was a semifinalist at the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Her film, Westward Expansion, was in 2014’s NY 48 Hour Film Festival. She was a 2015 semifinalist for the Princess Grace Award. She’s the 2015 MFA fellow to Sewanee Writer’s Conference. She’ll be an artist in residence at Arts Letters & Numbers in 2016 and at Listhús in Iceland.

*Denotes member of Actor's Equity.