As a Member of the Dramatists Guild, you have the privilege of casting a ballot in the annual Dramatists Guild Council Election. You can help to elect the Council Members who will make decisions about how your Guild operates.
Only those at the Member level, including Lifetime, Student, and Estate Members, can participate in this election. Associates are not eligible to vote without upgrading their membership.
Once you click the voting link (below), there will be instructions on how to cast your ballot for the Council Election. To ensure security, you will be required to enter your member number. You are only allowed to vote once in the General Election, and once more in your Regional Election. If you voted by using a paper ballot, you are not eligible to vote online.
Voting Closes on Monday, February 28, 2022 at 2pm EST. View our current Council.
Also on the ballot:
At the council meeting held on December 20, 2021, a motion was made, seconded, and passed unanimously to revise Article IX/ Section 5(d) the Guild’s bylaws. That section deals with the disciplining of members accused of harassment and other discriminatory or dangerous behavior. The proposed revisions provide both a complainant and an accused member with a greater degree of safety and privacy for resolving such claims, and in a more expeditious manner, while protecting the rights of accused members to a fair process.
Pursuant to the bylaws, the proposed revisions require the consent of a majority of the members who cast a vote on this resolution.
Questions? Contact avonmacek@dramatistsguild.com
Christine Toy Johnson (Incumbent) is an award-winning writer, actor, director, and advocate for inclusion. Her plays include The New Deal (Roundabout Theatre Company’s “Different Voices”, Ensemble Studio Theatre’s “Going to the River Playwriting Un... Read More
Lisa Kron (Incumbent) is a playwright and performer. She wrote the book and lyrics for the musical Fun Home, which won five Tony Awards including Best Book, Score, and Musical, and which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Other plays include Well, 2.5 Minute Ride... Read More
Deborah Zoe Laufer (Incumbent)'s plays have been produced at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Cleveland Playhouse, Geva, The Humana Festival, Everyman, Primary Stages, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and hundreds of o... Read More
Alan Menken (Incumbent)'s music and lyrics have become an integral part of the fabric of our lives since his first works were produced nearly 40 years ago. His stage musicals include God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, Atina: Evil Queen of the Galaxy, Real Life Funnies, Little S ... Read More
Lin-Manuel Miranda (Incumbent) is a Pulitzer Prize, Grammy, Emmy, and Tony award-winning songwriter, actor, and director. He is the creator and original star of Broadway’s Tony-winning Hamilton and In the Heights. His additional Broadway credits include Fr... Read More
Lloyd Suh (Incumbent) is the author of The Chinese Lady, Charles Francis Chan Jr, American Hwangap, The Wong Kids in the Secret of the Space Chupacabra Go!, Jesus in India, and others, produced with Ma-Yi, EST, NAATCO, Magic Theatre, Children's Th... Read More
Bio
Originally from the rural Northeast, and now a resident of NYC for for half his life, Mushuq Mustaq Deen (Nominee) is an award-winning playwright, lyricist, and essayist, and is best known for his play, Draw The Circle, winner of the Lambda Literary Award. He is a resident playwright at New Dramatists and a CORE writer at the Playwrights Center. His plays also include The Shaking Earth, The Betterment Society, Flood, and The Empty Place. His awards and grants include the Lambda Literary Award for Drama, second place for both India’s Sulthan Padamsee Playwriting Prize and the Woodward International Playwriting Prize, the James Baldwin Award, a New York Foundation for the Arts grant, a TCG Global Travel research grant, Chesley/Bumbalo Foundation grant, Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation grant, and a Bronx Council for the Arts Concept grant. His work has been produced by InterAct, PlayMakers Rep, Mosaic, and Rattlestick, and has been developed by The Public Theater, NYTW, Kansas City Rep, Keen Co, Dixon Place, Ma-Yi, Target Margin, La Jolla Playhouse, New Harmony, Page73, Passage Theatre, and Queens Theatre in the Park, among others. His plays and narrative essays have been published by Dramatists Play Service, Methuen Books (UK), Table Work Press, Journal of Asian American Studies, Asian American Writers Workshop, MacDowell, and more. He has been commissioned by NYU, Keen Company, and Noor Theatre. He received his MFA from the Actors Studio Drama School/New School for Drama. He is the one of the founding members of the Public Theater’s Alumni Writers Group, and is a playwright board member on the New Dramatists Board of Directors. He is also a spouse of 22 years, an avid cook, and a student of the guitar.
Statement
I have not yet had the honor of serving on the Dramatists Guild Council, but I currently sit on both New Dramatists’ Writers Executive Committee and on the Board of Directors (my second three-year term). Within these contexts, I have raised difficult questions about racial and gender equity, and about playwright equity, and have sometimes paid a stiff price for it. But I believe that one “leads” not by instituting their own ideas, but by making sure that all voices are represented and are given space and time; that difficult conversations about organizational growth remain nuanced and thoughtful, retain the texture of both honesty and kindness, while still being rigorous, that we challenge ourselves constantly.
Leadership, to me, means service to those around me.
I come from a background in community organizing where I held leadership positions in the Asian American LGBTQ community. Though it seems like a lifetime ago now, those early days of advocacy taught me a lot. As a transgender South Asian man, I am acutely aware of the limitations of binary thinking, and I try my best to bring a complicated awareness to the issues at hand. Empathy, compassion, and nuance are my core values, and I do my best to live them in my work, in how I make my work, and in how I serve the field of the arts that makes our work possible. I am honored to be nominated to run for the Dramatists Guild Council. I have long benefited from the Guild’s legal advice, resources, and from the Guild’s protection of my artistic integrity. I have participated in The Dramatists Guild Presents: TALKBACK conversations with Christine Toy Johnson. Something I love about the Guild is that it is playwrights and lyricists advocating for each other. For a moment, we collectively reject the Myth of Scarcity that tells us we should be in competition with each other, and instead we hold each other up.
What we do is incredibly hard — to create something out of nothing, to weave thin air into a story, into a movement, into something, as Tennessee Williams said, that will bring people home — we bring people home. The Guild is one of our homes, and I would be honored to bring my experience to bear in protecting and advocating for our community.
Bio
Morgan Gould (Nominee) is a New York based playwright whose play Nicole Clark is Having a Baby was set to premiere as part of the 44th Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville. The production was cancelled due to COVID-19 after only five performances. Her other plays include I Wanna Fucking Tear You Apart (World Premiere at Studio Theatre in Washington, DC, Helen Hayes Award Nomination for Outstanding New Play), Jennifer Who Is Leaving, All the Stupid Bitches, and Three Fat Sisters. Her school adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time has had over 200 productions around the globe since its publication in 2018. Morgan is a Resident Playwright at New Dramatists, a Member Artist at Ensemble Studio Theatre, a Yaddo Colony Fellow, and a MacDowell Colony Fellow. She is a proud alumnus of the Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellows Program, and has previously held staff positions at Playscripts, Inc., Lark Play Development Center, Cape Cod Theatre Project, and was the Associate Artistic Director of Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company. She is also the Artistic Director of Morgan Gould & Friends – her theater company with 9 actors, 3 designers, and a filmmaker. MG&F’s work has been featured in and at the New Ohio/ Ice Factory Festival, Dixon Place, The Brooklyn Lyceum, HERE Arts Center, Ars Nova, CAP21, BAX, New Georges, and The Culture Project. As a director, Morgan has directed world premieres and contemporary works by herself and other playwrights at Studio Theatre in DC, The Humana Festival, Marin Theatre Company, Primary Stages, WP Theater (Women’s Project), Hangar Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Page 73, and many more. Morgan is a graduate of the Brooklyn College M.F.A. Program and the Lila Acheson Wallace Playwrights Program at Juilliard.
Statement
Aside from being a playwright, I’ve worn a lot of hats (does anyone still wear a hat?) that intersect with my writing life and career that I would bring with me to my service on the Council. It is from each one of those angles that I deeply, truly appreciate how fundamental it is to a healthy industry that we protect writers from the exploitation of our contractual rights. I run an all-digital play publishing company with fellow playwright Jason Pizzarello called Stage Partners, which specializes in plays for schools and community theaters. I’m a seasoned theatrical development professional who has written grants for over a dozen arts organizations. I’m a stage director and television writer (and proud member of both the SDC and WGAE). I am a former downtown theater weirdo who tortured myself below 14th street for about a decade self-producing my work with my tiny theater company. I was a New York City teaching artist who schlepped from borough to borough every morning for years. I am also a playwright whose work has been produced exclusively outside of New York City, with my most cherished theatrical homes in Chicago, Louisville, Nashville, DC, and San Francisco. All that is to say, I know intimately that we are diverse group. Our needs are as varied and specific as our plays and musicals themselves. As a new candidate, I’d be really excited to work with my fellow Council Members on the Publishing Committee to find ways to protect our work while ALSO making it more easily licensable and digitally available. It is totally possible! I’d also love to work with the Education Committee on cultivating the next generation of our collaborators at an even earlier juncture, helping them to understand what the Dramatists Guild is, and how our work informs best practices for the whole community. I also look forward to engaging deeply with the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access Committee and the Political Engagement Committee. I believe that everything we do as artists and writers is a political act. How we tell stories and how we build ourselves as a workforce of storytellers is an intimate reflection of our values. I’m proud to even be considered to be on the Council that helps preserve our rights as workers, a duty that grows more and more pressing each day.
Bio
Adam Gwon (Nominee) is a composer and lyricist whose musicals have been produced on six continents, in more than half-a-dozen languages. Off-Broadway: Scotland, PA (Roundabout Theatre - Drama Desk nomination, NYT Critic’s Pick), Ordinary Days (Roundabout Theatre, Keen Company revival - Drama League Award nomination), Old Jews Telling Jokes (Westside Theatre, NYT Critic’s Pick); Regional: String (Village Theatre), Cake Off (Signature Theatre - Helen Hayes Award nomination, Bucks County Playhouse), Cloudlands (South Coast Rep), The Boy Detective Fails (Signature Theatre), Bernice Bobs Her Hair (Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma); West End: Ordinary Days (Trafalgar Studios). Pandemic-era projects include Pittsburgh Playhouse’s film/theater hybrid Ordinary Days with Emmy-winning production designer Jason Ardizzone-West, The Waves in Quarantine with Lisa Peterson and Raúl Esparza for Berkeley Rep, and “I Am Here,” a music video saluting Asian Americans on Broadway, featured on CBS, PBS, and Playbill.com. Adam’s songs have been heard at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and more, performed by such luminaries as Audra McDonald, Kelli O’Hara, and Brian d’Arcy James. His honors include the Kleban, Ebb, Loewe, and Richard Rodgers Awards, Second Stage Theatre's Donna Perret Rosen Award, Weston Playhouse New Musical Award, ASCAP Harold Adamson Award, and MAC John Wallowitch Award, and commissions from Roundabout Theatre Company, Playwrights Horizons, Signature Theatre, South Coast Repertory, Keen Company, the Kimmel Center, and Broadway Across America. Recordings include: Ordinary Days (Ghostlight Records), Audra McDonald's Go Back Home (Nonesuch), The Essential Liz Callaway (Working Girl Records), Artists in Residence (Broadway Records), and Over the Moon: The Broadway Lullaby Album (Entertainment One). Adam has been a fellow at MacDowell, Hermitage Artist Retreat, the O’Neill Music Theater Conference, and the Dramatists Guild. He is a Lecturer in the theater program at Princeton University and sits on the Boards of Roundabout Theatre Company and Primary Stages.
Committees
The Dramatist, Music
Statement
This is an especially exciting and important time for the work of the Guild, and it’s an honor to be nominated to serve. On the Council, I want to advocate for new pathways for writers to find audiences and income for their work, and make sure the Guild is vigilant not only in protecting those writers’ interests, but embracing opportunity for more writers to have their work seen and produced. My career was launched by innovations in the way new writers got produced, and the Guild protected me every step of the way. As institutional theaters built stages to present new work, I saw in real-time as the Guild worked to eliminate the 40% cut of authors’ royalties the theaters were taking, so that new writers and small shows like mine had a shot at earning a living. The Guild helped combat digital piracy when we self-published our sheet music online, allowing us to be paid fairly for our work. Simply put, the Guild’s efforts made it possible to build a career. We’re in a similar transformational moment in our industry, and I want to ensure that writers now have the same opportunity, and more. In addition to fair contracts and best practices, we should fight for increased accessibility to career growth for all writers. For instance, casting off the assumption that “emerging” writer opportunities be limited by age or geography, and providing clear-eyed guidance on the rehearsal and production process to set writers up for success. For many years, I’ve served on Guild committees to foster these conversations. On the Music Committee, we’ve worked to provide detailed information for composers navigating the collaborative process in today’s world and the roles and responsibilities of their music team. I hope this kind of guidance will extend to the increasingly democratized world of album recording and distribution as well. As part of the Dramatist Committee, I’ve written articles to highlight the work of regional theaters who are innovating the production and development process, inspiring new avenues for getting writers’ work to the stage. With these innovations must come the essential protections of the Guild. Serving on the Council would be an opportunity to continue this work and ensure that the theater continues to innovate itself as an accessible and viable career path for more and more writers.
Bio
David Henry Hwang (Nominee)'s stage works included the plays M. Butterfly, Yellow Face, Chinglish, Golden Child, The Dance and the Railroad, and FOB, as well as Broadway musicals Aida (co-author), Flower Drum Song (2002 revival) and Disney's Tarzan. Hwang is a Tony Award winner (M. Butterfly) and three-time nominee, a three-time OBIE Award winner (FOB, Golden Child, and Yellow Face), a Grammy Award winner (Ainadamar) who has been twice nominated, and a three-time Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama (M. Butterfly, Yellow Face, and Soft Power).
Called America’s most-produced living opera librettist by Opera News, he has written twelve operas to date, including five works with composer Philip Glass; their most recent collaboration, Circus Days and Nights, premiered at Sweden’s Malmö Opera in 2021. Hwang has also worked with composers Bright Sheng, Unsuk Chin, and Howard Shore, among others and is a 2006 Grammy Award winner for Ainadamar with music by Osvaldo Golijov. He co- wrote the Gold Record “Solo” with the late pop icon Prince and was a Writer/Consulting Producer for the Golden Globe-winning television series The Affair from 2015-2019. Hwang is currently creating a TV series for Netflix and penning the live-action musical feature film The Hunchback of Notre Dame for Disney Studios as well as a screenplay for Working Title Pictures to star actress Gemma Chan.
Hwang’s most recent musical Soft Power, written with composer Jeanine Tesori, opened in 2018 at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles. It transferred in 2019 to the Public Theatre, where it received four 2020 Outer Critics Honors, a 2020 Grammy nomination for Best Musical Theatre Album, and was a Finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Hwang and Tesori are currently working on a post-2020 version for an upcoming commercial production.
Statement
Thank you for considering me to re-join the DG Council. I first joined Council in 1989 and served for almost twenty years. I gained Emeritus status, which at that point in our history meant I could vote without standing for re-election. This felt undemocratic to me so I voluntarily stepped down. Though I have continued to be a proud member of the Guild, I’ve also tried to remain useful to my fellow writers and the theatre community through other means. In June 2021, I completed an extended, five-year term as Chair of the American Theatre Wing, helping to lead that organization through the very difficult choices of the pandemic, as well as the important opportunities made possible by our field’s most recent awakening to racial injustice.
Looking to my next chapter of service, I would be honored to rejoin my core community of writers by returning to Council. I’m impressed by the progress the Guild has made in many areas, including increasing diversity on Council and expanding the Committee structure, thus fostering a real working board. Furthermore, I will be stepping down this spring as Head of the MFA Playwriting Program at Columbia University School of the Arts, and feel I can help develop the Guild’s educational pipeline for young and upcoming dramatists.
I hope my record of commitment to EDIA speaks for itself, from taking a stand against the yellow face casting of Jonathan Pryce during the original Broadway production of Miss Saigon to increasing BIPOC representation on the Tony Nominating Committee by 300% as well as funding the AAPAC Visibility Report as Chair of the Wing. I will continue to advocate for the intersectional necessity of bringing diverse stories and bodies to our stages, across the spectrum of race, identities, communities, and genders. In a nation where POC will constitute the majority in two decades, this transformation is imperative for true artistic excellence and economic survival. Thanks again for your kind attention; if elected, I will work hard to serve you.
Bio
Michael R. Jackson (Incumbent)'s 2020 Pulitzer Prize and New York Drama Critics Circle winning A Strange Loop (which had its 2019 world premiere at Playwrights Horizons in association with Page 73 Productions) was called "a full-on laparoscopy of the heart, soul, and loins" and a "gutsy, jubilantly anguished musical with infectious melodies" by Ben Brantley for The New York Times. In The New Yorker, Vinson Cunningham wrote, "To watch this show is to enter, by some urgent, bawdy magic, an ecstatic and infinitely more colorful version of the famous surreal lithograph by M. C. Escher: the hand that lifts from the page, becoming almost real, then draws another hand, which returns the favor." In addition to A Strange Loop, he also wrote book, music and lyrics for White Girl in Danger. Awards and associations include: a New Professional Theatre Festival Award, a Jonathan Larson Grant, a Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award, an ASCAP Foundation Harold Adamson Award, a Whiting Award, the Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting, an Outer Critics Circle Award, a Drama Desk Award, an Obie Award, an Antonyo Award, a Fred Ebb Award, a Windham-Campbell Prize, a Dramatists Guild Fellowship and he is an alum of Page 73’s Interstate 73 Writers Group.
Committees
Best Practices, Steering
Statement
The three years I’ve served as a Guild council member have been deeply humbling and deeply educational. Meeting by meeting and conversation by conversation I have been learning exactly how the theater business works and what is at stake for theater writers at any given moment. During my term, I’ve been on a number of subcommittees—the Publishing Committee, the Political Engagement Committee, and the College Cancellation Working Group. While I’ve been thrilled to contribute to the incredible work each of these groups does, the pandemic has forced me to take stock of what I am most passionate about as an advocate for theater writers—their artistic freedom and economic wellbeing. For that reason, I’ve limited my subcommittee work to the Finance Committee and the Contracts Committee. My goal is to learn more of the nuts and bolts of the industry from a financial and contractual point of view so that I can be more of a resource to writers navigating the tricky commercial and non-profit theatrical landscape and beyond. As someone who has had some success as a writer right at the beginning of his career but also started from a place of near ignorance about how things work, I am deeply dedicated to helping other writers succeed and come to a place of enlightenment about their business interests. I am dedicated to demystifying the business of being a theater writer so that writers can make their work with theaters and producers from a place of integrity and forthrightness.
Bio
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Incumbent) is a Washington, D.C. native and Brooklyn-based playwright, whose works for the theatre include Everybody, Gloria, An Octoroon, and Appropriate. A Residency Five playwright at Signature Theatre and two-time Pulitzer finalist, his other honors include a MacArthur fellowship, the Windham-Campbell Prize for Drama, and the Tennessee Williams Award. He holds an MA in Performance Studies from NYU and is a graduate of the Lila Acheson Wallace Playwrights Program at the Juilliard School. He has taught playwriting at NYU, Juilliard, Princeton, Hunter College, Baruch College, University of Texas-Austin, and, in 2023, he will join the faculty of Yale University. He also serves as a director on the boards of Soho Rep, the Park Avenue Armory, and the Dramatists Guild Foundation.
Committees
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access, Publishing, Steering
Statement
Serving on the Dramatists Guild Council has been a highlight of my professional life and it’s been an even greater honor to serve this past year as Vice President of the Guild alongside my fellow officers Amanda Green, Kristoffer Diaz, and Christine Toy Johnson. When I was elected to council six years ago, it was my mission to uproot all forms of a playwright’s exploitation in (and beyond) the field, to advocate for the fullest education possible of dramatists at any levels - especially in regard to their contractual rights and freedoms - and to foster conversation between generations and across regions of dramatists, creating a professional climate of knowledge-sharing and mentorship. And, though progress has been made on some fronts, that mission still holds.
In service of these ends, I have served on the Contracts Committee and the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access Committee, paying particular attention to the ways in which the broader field must change in accordance to the transformation of the American theatre itself. I also served as Chair of the Awards Committee for three years, during which time I sought to provide informational resources and counseling for all artists about the financial realities of prize economies and, importantly, to bringing overdue attention and recognition to colleagues working tireless outside of the New York City area. Most recently, I have established a Publishing Committee which seeks to get ahead of current trends in the consideration and valuation of dramatists as published authors and literary artists.
In my current role as Vice President, I have trained my focus this past year on a top to bottom internal assessment of the Guild itself, partaking in extended “listening tours” alongside my fellow officers and lobbying for a refreshment and re-engagement with the Guild’s core values across the wide membership. I believe there a new world and industry poised to greet us at the end of this pandemic and I want to make sure that this organization is ready and capable of serving its membership and the field at large with clarity, confidence, unity, and effectiveness. If re-elected, it would be my greatest hope to complete this work. Thank you for your consideration.
Bio
Christine Toy Johnson (Incumbent) is an award-winning writer, actor, director, and advocate for inclusion. Her plays include The New Deal (Roundabout Theatre Company’s “Different Voices,” Ensemble Studio Theatre’s “Going to the River Playwriting Unit”), Broken Ground (book & lyrics with composer/lyricist Jason Ma, commissioned by Village Theatre), Empress Mei Li Lotus Blossom (Abingdon Theatre Festival winner, Greater Boston Stage Company, National Women’s Theatre Festival), Truth Against the World: The Life and Loves of Frank Lloyd Wright (O’Neill residency, Kennedy/McIlwee Studio Theatre), Till Soon Anne (book and lyrics with composer Bobby Cronin, O’Neill residencies), The Secret Wisdom of Trees (featured in Applause Books’ Later Chapters Anthology), Barcelona (book & lyrics with composer/lyricist Jason Ma, residencies at Weston Playhouse & Cap21, Village Theatre’s Festival of New Musicals), Guilty Until Proven Innocent (featured in Applause Books’ She Persisted: 100 Monologues By Women Over 40), Diary of a Domestic Goddess (with Kevin Duda), Peace Plaza (featured in Applause Books' She Persisted: 10-minute Plays By Women Over 40), Paper Son (Diverse City Theatre Company, Queens Theatre in the Park), Internal Bleeding (Atlanta Black Theatre Festival, Crossroads Theatre Company Genesis Festival), Expression of Regret (Towne Street Theatre, Putnam Valley Theatre Alliance), and Adventures of a Faux Designer Handbag (National Women’s Theatre Festival).
Screenplays include No Wave (with Charles Randolph-Wright), Jumping the Third Rail (winner, 2016 Writers Lab Fellowship), Winning New York, and Food Like Love (screenplay & lyrics for both with composer Bobby Cronin, produced by New York Film Academy). An anthology of her work was inducted into the Library of Congress Asian Pacific American Performing Arts Collection in 2010. She is an alumna of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop and the founder of The Asian American Composers and Lyricists Project.
Christine has been honored by the JACL (the nation’s largest and oldest Asian American civil rights organization), the Asian American Arts Alliance, Actors’ Equity’s Rosetta LeNoire Award and is a founding member of the Obie-Award winning AAPAC (Asian American Performers Action Coalition). Graduate, Sarah Lawrence College & Certificate of Screenwriting Program at NYU. She serves as Treasurer of the Dramatists Guild, chair of the Guild’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access Committee, and host of "The Dramatists Guild Presents: TALKBACK" on the Broadway Podcast Network.
Committees
Archive, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access, The Dramatist, Steering
Statement
It’s hard to express what serving the Guild has meant to me, and as the years have gone by, deepening my commitment as I’ve taken on more responsibilities. From joining my first committee (The Dramatist), to writing many pieces for The Dramatist magazine (beginning with “What Turns You On, Theatrically Speaking”), to being elected to the Council, to initiating and chairing the Guild’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access committee, to initiating and hosting (now three seasons of) the Guild’s podcast “TALKBACK" on the Broadway Podcast Network, to hosting numerous DEIA related town halls across the country and virtually, to being elected as the first Asian American officer in 2021 and helping shepherd the Guild’s first Inclusion Rider, I am continuously moved by and proud of the many ways our collective work has impact. The Guild exists to uplift and protect the rights of our essential theatrical community of generative storytellers, and it is part of my life’s mission to keep working towards full inclusion in the theatre, as one of the elements of this work. As I keep saying, history is remembered by the stories that we tell, and if ours are missing, so are we. I will never give up fighting for our stories. I will never give up trying to foster a deeper understanding in this industry of who we are and what we can do, that we are all enriched by the widest world view imaginable, one that includes every single one of us. I hope that you will give me the privilege of continuing to do so in this official capacity. Thank you, as always, for your support.
Bio
Lisa Kron (Incumbent) is a playwright and performer. She wrote the book and lyrics for the musical Fun Home, which won five Tony Awards including Best Book, Score, and Musical, and which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Other plays include Well, 2.5 Minute Ride (Obie, L.A. Drama-Logue and GLAAD Media Awards), The Ver**zon Play, In the Wake (Lilly Award, Lortel nomination). Acting: Good Person of Szechuan (Lortel Award: Best Supporting Actress), Well (Tony nomination: Best Actress). Honors include: Guggenheim, Sundance, and MacDowell fellowships; Doris Duke, CalArts/Alpert, and Helen Merrill Awards; grants from Creative Capital and NYFA; and an AVNPI residency at Arena Stage. Founding member of the OBIE- and Bessie-Award-winning collaborative theater company The Five Lesbian Brothers, whose plays include Brave Smiles, The Secretaries, and Oedipus at Palm Springs. Lisa is also a member of AEA, SAG, and the WGA, and serves on the boards of MacDowell and the Sundance Institute.
Committees
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access, Steering
Statement
This is an unprecedented time of flux and uncertainty in our field. The structures and institutions that comprise the American theater landscape are being rocked to their foundations by forces including a global pandemic and long-overdue racial justice reckoning. Our field is being fundamentally changed by these events. New imperatives and priorities are emerging. This is a difficult time, but also a time of possibility. I believe it’s critically important that DG have a voice in articulating what matters to us as artists, to our audiences, and to have a hand in shaping how our field is rebuilt.
I bring nearly four decades of experience to my work on Council. I have worked across the entire spectrum of American theater as a playwright, teacher, collaborative devisor, lyricist/book-writer, and solo performer, from tiny downtown performance spaces, to Broadway, to for- and not-for-profit Off-Broadway, to educational theater, to dance-performance venues, to stock and amateur, to the regionals, to international touring, to the classroom. Over my three terms on Council, this range of experience has allowed me to bring first-hand knowledge of many different types of situations faced by DG members to my advocacy for my fellow writers and our place in our field. In my first term, I co-founded the DG/AEA Subcommittee, which explored ways to create more flexibility in Off-Off-Broadway development structures. In my second and third terms, I was DG’s Vice-President. I served on the DEI subcommittee, and I co-founded the Political Engagement Initiative and served as its first chair. I joined the Steering Committee in my second term. That service continues under the dynamic leadership of our current officers.
All of my DG service has been animated by my abiding interest in our relationship as playwrights to our field as a whole, and the relationship of the theater we create, and our lives as theater-makers, to the larger world. If elected to a fourth term, that’s the lens of consideration I will continue bringing to DG’s work in this unprecedented time of change in our field, our country, and the world.
Bio
Deborah Zoe Laufer (Incumbent)'s plays have been produced at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Cleveland Playhouse, Geva, The Humana Festival, Everyman, Primary Stages, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and hundreds of other theaters around the world. Plays include Be Here Now, End Days, Rooted, Informed Consent (NYTimes critic’s pick), Leveling Up, Out of Sterno, The Last Schwartz, Sirens, Meta, The Three Sisters of Weehawken, Fortune, dozens of short plays, and the musicals, Window Treatment and By Any Other Name, written with composer, Daniel Green.
Deb is a recipient of the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award, the Lilly Award, The ATCA Steinberg citation, and grants and commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, The Edgerton Foundation, The National New Play Network, and the Lincoln Center Foundation. Her work has been developed by The Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference, Theatre Lab, PlayPenn, The Cherry Lane Alternative, The Missoula Colony, LOCAL Theatre, Asolo Rep, The Baltic Playwrights Conference, and more. Her plays are published or recorded by Concord/Samuel French, Smith and Kraus, Playscripts, LA Theatreworks, and Premieres. She is a graduate of Juilliard, an alumna of the BMI Lehman Engel Advanced Musical Theatre Workshop, a member of Honor Roll, and a Dramatists Guild Council member.
Committees
Best Practices, The Dramatist, Member Recruitment
Statement
I’ve been a member of The Dramatists Guild for over twenty years, served on The Council for three. I’ve been on The Dramatist Committee for the past eight years, and written and led panels for the magazine. I’ve been on the Nominating Committee, the New Media Committee, taught at the Dramatists Guild Institute, and been a visiting artist with the Dramatists Guild Foundation Traveling Masters program. I was in the first group of Dramatists Guild Fellows, have helped lead subsequent meetings, and hosted a final presentation. I love The Guild. And yet, I’m still continually learning more about the rights it protects and the initiatives it supports. I’m frustrated when I encounter playwrights who tell me they’ve been banned from rehearsals, signed contracts that don’t protect them, or who have given up their subsidiary rights. It frustrates me when playwrights don’t realize that they own their work. I feel an urgency to encourage colleagues who aren’t members to join The Guild and be part of this remarkable community. To that end, along with David Auburn, I’ve recently become a co-chair of the Membership Recruitment Committee. We’ve begun brainstorming outreach and community-building activities.
The past few years as I’ve begun directing my work, I’ve become aware of the many aspects of production playwrights excluded from – parts of the creative process where their voices would be invaluable. I’ve recently joined the Best Practices Committee, where I’ll work toward giving writers a more significant role and voice in production.
And I still write plays!
It's truly been one of the joys of my life, writing, being in the community of playwrights, and advocating for their rights.
Bio
Alan Menken (Incumbent)'s music and lyrics have become an integral part of the fabric of our lives since his first works were produced nearly 40 years ago. His stage musicals include God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, Atina: Evil Queen of the Galaxy, Real Life Funnies, Little Shop of Horrors, Kicks, The Dream on Royal Street, Beauty and The Beast, A Christmas Carol, Weird Romance, King David, The Little Mermaid, Sister Act, Leap of Faith, Newsies, Aladdin, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. Song and score credits for film musicals include The Little Mermaid, Beauty and The Beast, Newsies, Aladdin, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, The Shaggy Dog, Home on the Range, Enchanted, Tangled and Mirror Mirror. Individual songs for film include Rocky V - “The Measure of a Man,” Home Alone 2: Lost in New York – “My Christmas Tree,” Life With Mikey – “Cold Enough to Snow,” Noel – “Winter Light,” and Captain America: First Avenger – “Star Spangled Man.” Television credits include writing songs for Sesame Street, the ABC mini-series Lincoln, a musical episode of The Neighbors and the ABC series Galavant. His chart topping songs have included “Beauty and the Beast,” “A Whole New World,” “Colors of the Wind,” and “Go the Distance.” Winner of the 2012 Tony and Drama Desk awards for his score for Newsies, he has won more Academy Awards than any other living individual, including four Oscars® for Best Score and four for Best Song; eleven Grammy® Awards (including Song of the Year for “A Whole New World”); seven Golden Globes; London’s Evening Standard Award; the Olivier Award; the Outer Critics Circle Award and the Drama Desk Award. Other notable achievements include induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, Billboard’s number one single (“A Whole New World”) and number one album (Pocahontas). In 2001, he received the distinction of being named a Disney Legend. Awarded two doctorates in Fine Arts from New York University and the North Carolina School of the Arts, in 2010 he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Statement
I have been a strong supporter of The Dramatists Guild for the entirety of my career; going back over 35 years. And, if re-elected to the Dramatists Guild council, I will continue to use my voice and my influence even more actively in that capacity. We, as writers and lyricists and composers, create structures that allow the work of other artists to flourish. Actors, musicians, directors, producers, and designers inhabit and interpret our plays and musicals and songs, something that constantly brings new life and meaning to our work. The balance between protecting our words and our music and collaborating freely and creatively with others is made possible by the work of the Dramatists Guild. In a constantly evolving world, and an ever fragile industry, the support of this guild is a blessing we can never take for granted.
Bio
Lin-Manuel Miranda (Incumbent) is a Pulitzer Prize, Grammy, Emmy, and Tony award-winning songwriter, actor, and director. He is the creator and original star of Broadway’s Tony-winning Hamilton and In the Heights. His additional Broadway credits include Freestyle Love Supreme (Co-Founder, Guest Star, Special Tony Award Recipient), Bring It On: The Musical (co-composer/co-lyricist, Tony nomination for Best Musical), and West Side Story (2009 revival, Spanish translations). Miranda is the recipient of the 2015 MacArthur Foundation Award, the 2018 Kennedy Center Honors and the 2019 Portrait of a Nation Prize. He received an Emmy Award with Tom Kitt for their song “Bigger” from the 67th Annual Tony Awards. Mr. Miranda, and The Miranda Family, are active supporters of initiatives that increase people of color’s representation throughout the arts and government, ensure access to women’s reproductive health, and promote resilience in Puerto Rico. TV/Film credits include: tick, tick … Boom!, Encanto, Vivo, In the Heights, Hamilton, His Dark Materials, Fosse/Verdon, We The People, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Curb Your Enthusiasm (2018 Emmy Nomination, Guest Actor), Saturday Night Live (2017 Emmy Nomination, Guest Actor), Sesame Street, The Electric Company, House, DuckTales, 200 Cartas, The Odd Life of Timothy Green, Moana (2017 Oscar nomination, Grammy Award for Best Original Song), and Mary Poppins Returns. Miranda received his B.A. from Wesleyan University in 2002. He lives with his family in New York.
Statement
Being an ambassador for the work of The Dramatists Guild as a council member, and in the world, is one of the great joys of my life, from talking to young playwrights about the various ways the Guild protects their work and their livelihood to being a loud voice on social media on behalf of the Guild, particularly on issues of new musical theatre work, online piracy, and the ways in which playwrights continue to benefit from the Guild's work on their behalf. Being a writer is hard, lonely work, but it's easier when the Guild has your back, and I look forward to having the backs of the next generation, while learning from my incredible fellow playwrights on this council. With our world shut down in fits and starts, our work protecting writers is more important than ever.
Bio
Lloyd Suh (Incumbent) is the author of The Chinese Lady, Charles Francis Chan Jr, American Hwangap, The Wong Kids in the Secret of the Space Chupacabra Go!, Jesus in India, and others, produced with Ma-Yi, EST, NAATCO, Magic Theatre, Children's Theatre Co, Milwaukee Rep, Denver Center, and more, including internationally at the Cultural Center of the Philippines and with PCPA in Seoul, Korea. He is a recipient of a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship, the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, and the Horton Foote Prize. He has received support from residencies including NYS&F and Ojai, and his plays have been published by DPS, Sam French, Playscripts, Smith & Kraus, Duke University Press, and American Theatre magazine. He is an alum of Youngblood and the Soho Rep Writer Director Lab, and from 2005-2010, he served as Artistic Director of Second Generation and Co-Director of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab. He was a Founding Member of the Consortium of Asian American Theatres & Artists, serving on the Executive Steering Committee that created the National Asian American Theatre Conference and Festival. He served from 2011-2020 as the Director of Artistic Programs at The Lark, where he supported the work of several hundred playwrights at various career stages, through a wide range of programs including the Venturous Playwright Fellowship, Van Lier New Voices Fellowship, The Apothetae and Lark Initiative, and Global Exchange programs that have connected writers from Mexico, China, Taiwan, Syria, Palestine, Russia, Romania, and more with US-based playwrights. He has served on the Dramatists Guild Council since 2016.
Committees
Awards, Best Practices, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access
Statement
I am eager to continue serving on Council, and contributing to the Guild's essential work in the field. As both a writer and an arts administrator, I have worked in support of hundreds of writers from across the country and around the world, representing a wide diversity of geographies, cultural and social identities, aesthetics, practices, and career levels. I know there's a big difference between the needs of established writers and the early-career or pre-professional, and that it’s the Guild's job to advocate for all of the above, within an equitable framework. I have direct personal experience with a wide range of developmental festivals and conferences, in production off and off-off Broadway, with both mainstream and culturally-specific grassroots theatres, regional theatres, and amateur companies; as a self-producer; as both a teacher and a student; as a translator, and as a writer being translated. I am familiar with the opportunities and challenges that work in each of these contexts provides. As an administrator and advocate, I have overseen programs and projects expressly devoted to the empowerment and sustainability of individual playwrights' voices, and these are the values I carry into Council. I take seriously the Guild's unique position as a force of communal solidarity for playwrights. I believe the Council has an enormous responsibility to promote equity within the Guild's membership, and to advocate for greater equity for all playwrights within the entire field of the American theatre.
Resolution to Revise Article IX
At the council meeting held on December 20, 2021, a motion was made, seconded, and passed unanimously to revise Article IX/ Section 5(d) the Guild’s bylaws. That section deals with the disciplining of members accused of harassment and other discriminatory or dangerous behavior. The proposed revisions provide both a complainant and an accused member with a greater degree of safety and privacy for resolving such claims, and in a more expeditious manner, while protecting the rights of accused members to a fair process.
Pursuant to the bylaws, the proposed revisions require the consent of a majority of the members who cast a vote on this resolution.
RESOLVED, to revise Article IX, Section 5(d) of the bylaws of the Dramatists Guild of America, as proposed by the Guild Council.
YES___ NO___ ABSTAIN___
The proposed revisions (in red) are as follows:
Article IX, Section 5:
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If an allegation is made to the Guild that a member has created an unsafe or hostile work environment (either for the Guild Council or staff, or for other Guild members, or for anyone involved in a current or planned presentation or publication of a specific work authored by the accused member), whether such conditions are caused by the member’s sexual harassment, physical assault, verbal abuse, or any other form of threatening, discriminatory, or dangerous behavior, as such behavior is defined by the Guild’s Code of Conduct and bylaws, or any applicable state or federal laws, the complainant will be given the opportunity to present a written statement detailing the allegations to the Membership Committee (or to the Committee’s designee). If the complainant requests that the Guild take disciplinary action against the accused member, the accused member will then be afforded the opportunity to respond to the allegation. If the Committee (or its designee) determines that the complainant’s allegation falls within the criteria of this Section 5(d), and the claim has been substantiated to its satisfaction, it may recommend to
Councilthe Guild Officers that the member be disciplined, subject to the rights of the accused member under this Article IX as modified hereunder.Council mayHowever, the Officers and/or the Steering Committee may choose to make additional inquiries into the allegations before disciplining an accused member.-
If a legal or administrative action results in a finally adjudicated determination by a neutral third party that a member has engaged in such prohibited behavior, Council may elect to impose discipline on the member of its own volition and with no obligation to consider subsequent reinstatement under Section 7.
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To help ensure the safety of The Guild Council (including its Membership Committee, Steering Committee, and staff), and to protect the privacy of all the parties in light of the personal nature of the issues in dispute, any rights of appearance, appeal, or request for reinstatement that is otherwise available to a member accused under this Section 5(d) may be exercised only
in writing by the member, or in writing or in person by the member’s agent, attorney, or a member in good standing representing the accused memberpursuant to the modified procedures outlined below. Furthermore, any uninvited appearance by an expelled or lapsed member at The Guild’s offices, or at any Guild function, event, or meeting, will constitute an illegal trespass and will subject them to possible arrest and potential liability in an action for damages and/or equitable relief.-
Section 5(d)(i) hereby modifies Sections 1 thru 4 above as follows:
SECTION 1. If any member
violates anyis accused of violating provision 5(d) of this Constitution,or does not comply with an applicable First Class Production Contract, the Councilthe Officers may, initstheir sole discretion, recommend that the Steering Committee censure them, suspend them from the privileges of membership, place them in bad standing, or expel them; provided, however, thatsuch action may only be taken by vote of two-thirds of the voting members of the Councila motion by the Officers for expulsion must be unanimous. A motion for disciplining a member hereunder may only be passed by a vote of two-thirds of the Steering Committee present and voting at a meeting called pursuant to the provisions of Section 2, as modified hereunder.SECTION 2. The
CouncilSteering Committee shall inform the offending member by written notice, which shall be served by registered or certified mail, directed to the member’s address as it shall appear on the books or records of the corporation or to such address as shall have been designated by the member, of the nature of the violation or noncompliance charged and of the time appointed for a special meeting of theCouncilSteering Committee,when the member may be heard in his their own defense before the Councilwhich time may not be less thantenseven days after the mailing of such notice.SECTION 3. At such hearing before the
CouncilSteering Committee, theoffendingaccused member shall be given an opportunity to be heard in their own defense,in person or by their representativeeither in a virtual appearance, or by written statement, or by a member in good standing representing the accused member (either virtually or in person), as the accused member may choose. In case suchoffendingaccused member (or their representative) shall not appear at the time fixed for the hearing, or if the member fails to submit a written statement by such time, judgment may be passed by default. The parameters of the hearing (including its location, date, time, and duration) shall be determined by the Steering Committee, with due consideration of the accused member’s reasonable availability.SECTION 4.
From any disciplinary action inflicted in this Article, theA member disciplined under these conditions may appeal Steering’s judgment to themembershipCouncil of The Guild, which shall determine the appeal by a two-thirds majority vote of those present in person at a Council meeting duly called for such purpose. Unless the time therefore be extended by order of the Council, the member must file said appeal withinfifteenten days after notice of the disciplinary action taken shall have been mailed to the member by registered or certified mail. Such appeal, in order to be effective, must be filed with the Executive Director of The Guild within the time limit above provided and must be in writing, signed by the accused member. The accused member shall have at leasttwentyten days’ notice sent by registered or certified mail of the time and place of the meeting at such meeting and shall have the privilege ofappearingat such meeting in person, but not by counsel. The member may, if he so elects, be represented by a Member in good standing, instead of in personsubmitting a written statement in their own defense. The Council in its discretion may require the member appealing, as a condition thereof, to deposit the estimated cost of the appeal, including the cost of the meeting, such sum to be returned if the appeal is successfulPending an appeal, the accused member shall have none of the privileges of membership of which they may have been deprived.
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