Who We Are
Who We Are
Producing Directors
Tom Burmester
Founding Director GFTF2019
+ GFTF Producer + Ensemble Training, Physical Theatre + Director: Burst + Director: Sustain Me GFTF2018
+ GFTF Producer + Ensemble Training, Physical Theatre + Director: Summertime GFTF2017
+ GFTF Producer + Actor Training, Physical Theatre |
Mindy Cooper
Founding Director gftf2019
+ GFTF Producer + Director: Ranked gftf2018
+ GFTF Producer + Director: Devised Works + Director: A Punchline GFTF2017
+ Director:
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gftf2019
+ GFTF Producer + Director: Shining gftf2018
+ GFTF Producer + Director: Daisy Violet the Bitch Beast King + Vocal Training gftf2017
+ Director:
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gftf2019
+ GFTF Producer + Director: Burst + Director: Sustain Me + Ensemble Training: physical and vocal gftf2018
+ GFTF Producer + Director: Ghost in the Outrage Machine gftf2017
+ Director:
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Guest Artists 2019
GFTF2019 Playwrights
Jessica AndrewarthaLight Delay
About Jessica
Jessica Andrewartha is a Seattle based writer of more than 6 full length plays. Most recently, her full length play Choices People Make was read at Akropolis Performance Lab and won the Neukom Institute inaugural Literary Arts Award for Playwriting. Other full length plays include Enter Starlighter and W.H.I.P., which have both received staged readings at Theatre Battery, Where Do We Start?, which was read at Seattle Playwrights Circle, and Ready to Start, which was read at Southern Methodist University. Her short plays have been produced in Seattle, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and London. Jessica is an Associate Playwright at Parley Productions and an alumnus of SMU. Andrew NichollsParity
About Andrew
Andrew Nicholls began writing comedy with Darrell Vickers in Junior High. After high school in Canada the team wrote for radio, TV and stage, and for comedians and cartoonists. In 1983 they moved to Los Angeles, where they wrote for George Carlin, Mickey Rooney, and for NBC’s Tonight Show from 1986-92, as Johnny Carson’s head writers. They’ve since created twenty TV series and written over 400 episodes of children’s TV. They have a new animated show in development at Nickelodeon. Since 2013, Andrew has sold short stories to literary magazines. PARITY is his first play in 35 years. |
Ian AugustBrisé
About Ian
Ian August is a NJ based playwright and lyricist, whose works have been performed across the U.S., as well as in Canada, Australia, the UK, South Korea and Bermuda. His full-length plays include: The Goldilocks Zone, (Passage Theatre Company), Donna Orbits the Moon (NJ Repertory Company, Utah Contemporary Theatre; Barbour Memorial Playwright Award, 2010), Missing Celia Rose (NYC Summer Play Festival; Orlando Shakespeare Theater’s “Playfest 2009″; Bermuda Musical and Dramatic Society), Submitted by C. Randall McCloskey (2011 NY Intl. Fringe Festival), Natural History (2009 NY Intl. Fringe Festival),The Aisling (2009 Heiress Productions New Play Series Award), The Moor’s Son, Interviewese, Brisé, The Excavation of Mary Anning, Displaced, and Cobbler. Mr. August’s works have been published by Sam French Inc., The Pitkin Review, Smith and Kraus Publishing and the One-Act Play Depot. Mr. August is a founding member of the Princeton-based Witherspoon Circle and is a graduated member of the Philadelphia playwriting workshop, The Foundry. Mark RigneySummertime
About Mark
Mark Rigney’s stage plays have been produced or developed in twenty-two U.S. states, plus Australia, Canada, and Nepal. Venues include 59e59 (NYC), the Utah Shakespearean Festival’s Plays in Progress Series (Cedar City, UT), the Alleyway Theatre (Buffalo, NY), the Cell Theatre (Albuquerque, NM), the Ark Theatre (Los Angeles, CA), the Forest Roberts Theatre (Marquette, MI), the Indy Fringe Festival (Indianapolis, IN), and others. National playwriting contests won include the John Gassner Playwriting Competition (2017), the Maxim Mazumdar New Play Prize, the Jury Prize for “The Seven,” and the Panowski Playwriting Award (twice). Multiple titles are published by Playscripts, Inc., including The Shout, Ten Red Kings, and Acts of God, the latter produced over fifty-five times around the U.S. His ten-minute plays are available from ArtAge, the One Act Play Depot, and in multiple editions of the Smith & Kraus series, The Best Ten-Minute Plays (2012, 2013, 2014, and 2018), plus 25 10-Minute Plays for Teens (Applause). In other work, his short fiction appears in Witness, Ascent, Unlikely Story, and The Best of the Bellevue Literary Review, among over fifty other venues. A new story is slated for the next issue of Cemetery Dance, one of a growing line of “Renner & Quist” adventures, with other titles in the series (two novels and two novellas) formerly available from now-defunct Samhain Publishing. In non-fiction, Deaf Side Story: Deaf Sharks, Hearing Jets and a Classic American Musical (Gallaudet) remains happily in print. When not writing, he has worked as a zookeeper, a sound recordist, a tech director, and as a retail trainer at Borders Books & Music. His website is www.markrigney.net. |
Tom BurmesterGhost in the Outrage Machine
About Tom
Formerly the Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Theatre Ensemble, Tom Burmester pursues his PhD in Performance at UC Davis where he also serves as a Producing Director of GFTF. See bio here. Lavinia Roberts[un] Earthed
About Lavinia
Lavinia Roberts is a published and award-winning playwright and teacher. She has over 50 plays for young people published with Applause Books, Big Dog Plays, Brooklyn Publishers, Heuer Publishing, Plays; The Drama Magazine for Young People, Pioneer Drama, Smith and Kraus, and Standard Publishing. Her book, A Little Drama; Playful Activities for Young Children is published with Redleaf Press. Her play Counting Skunks won the Mario Fratti-Fred Newman Political Playwriting Award at the Castillo Theatre in New York City. Her play Eaten Voices won $5000 and best production at the Thespis Theatre Festival in New York City. Eaten Voices went on to productions with The New Alchemists in Seattle, the Bread and Roses Theatre in London, and with Gadfly Productions in Minneapolis. She was a member of the Women’s Writers Lab at the New Perspective Theatre. Her work has been featured in New York City at The Center at West Park, HERE Arts Center, Galapagos Art Space, The Metropolitan Playhouse, and other spaces. She has directed her work in New York City at The Secret Theatre, Dixon Place, The Brick, The Bushwick Starr, the Sheen Center, and The Tank. She is currently a writer-in-residence at the Midwest Dramatist Center and at The Charlotte Street Foundation, in Kansas City, KS. |
Sam CollierDaisy Violet the Bitch Beast King
About Sam
Sam Collier is from Washington, D.C. and currently divides her time between Chicago and northern Michigan. She is a 2017-18 member of the Goodman Theatre Playwrights Unit. Her work has also been developed by the Chicago Theatre Marathon, Theater Nyx, PTP/NYC, Horse & Cart, and New Ground Theatre. Her poems have appeared in Iron Horse Literary Review, Sixfold, Mortar Magazine, The Puritan, Prompt Press, Guernica, and elsewhere. As the 2017-19 Writer-in-Residence with the National Writers Series, she teaches in a writing program at a Career-Tech Center in Traverse City. She has also taught writing with Cornell College, Young Playwrights' Theater, the University of Iowa, and Indiana Repertory Theatre. Sam holds an MFA in playwriting from the Iowa Playwrights Workshop. Michael SchwartzA Punchline
About Michael
Michael Schwartz is an associate professor in the theater and dance department of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches theater history, playwriting, and improvisation. His adaptation of Horatio Alger’s Shifting for Himself was a part of the Metropolitan Playhouse’s Literature Alive Festival in NYC, and his short and full-length work has received productions and readings in New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Newark. Michael has published two books of theater history at Palgrave Macmillan: Broadway and Corporate Capitalism: The Rise of the Professional-Managerial Class 1900-1920; and Class Divisions on the Broadway Stage: The Staging and Taming of the I.W.W. |
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