The 2024 Council Election

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 26, 2024 at 2pm EST. View our current Council.

Questions? Contact avonmacek@dramatistsguild.com

Bio

Ty Defoe (Giizhig), indigiqueer/2S+ citizen of the Oneida and Anishinaabe Nations. Playwright, writer, director, interdisciplinary artist, and Grammy Award winner. Ty aspires to an interweaving and glitterizing approach to artistic projects with joy, queering, and the environment. Ty’s global cultural arts highlights: the Millennium celebration in Cairo, Egypt; the International Music Festival in Ankara, Turkey; and the Festival of World Cultures in Dubai. Awards: Global Indigenous Heritage Festival Award, Jonathan Larson Award, First Peoples Cultural Capital Fellow, Helen Merrill Playwriting Award, Interdisciplinary Artist Sundance Fellow, Kennedy Center Next 50! Works created and authored: Trail and Tears (w/ Dawn Avery) River of Stone, Red Pine, The Way They Lived, Ajijaak on Turtle Island, Hear Me Say My Name, The Lesson (w/ Avi Amon and Nolan Doran), and Firebird Tattoo, For The People (w/ Larissa FastHorse), and a collection of TYA plays. Current release of VR and digital media projects ANAKWAD (w/ Dov Heichemer and _alpha), CIRCLE, and Strong Like Flower (w/ Katherine Freer). An artEquity facilitator, and co-founder of Indigenous Direction. Member of All My Relations Collective, GIZHIBAA GIIZHIG | Revolving Sky at Under the Radar's Incoming, The Public Theater. Publications: Casting a Movement, Pitkin Review, Thorny Locust Magazine, Howl Round, and Bloomsbury Press, The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays for the Stage. Degrees from CalArts, Goddard College, + NYU Tisch. Director: The Winer Bear (Perseverance Theatre), Midsummer Night’s Dream (Arizona Shakespeare Company). Movement Direction: Mother Road, Dir. Bill Rauch (OSF), Manahatta, Dir. Laurie Woolery (OSF + Yale Rep, The Public Theater), 1491s Between Two Knees, Dir. Eric Ting (Yale Rep, McCarter, Seattle Rep), and Choreographer for Tracy Letts’ The Minutes (Broadway). Appeared on the Netflix shows: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Spirit Rangers, and Broadway debut in Young Jean Lee’s Straight White Men, Dir. Anna Shapiro. Lives in NYC + loves the color clear. He|We, www.allmyrelations.earth, tydefoe.com

Statement

Boozhoo-Aneen, my name is Ty Defoe and I am asking for your vote to be on the Dramatists Guild Council for another term. I began on the council during COVID-19, first learning what it means to hold this position and work for you, the dramatist. I ask questions that overturn the status quo. Being an Indigenous and queer person, I find it not just a service to the field but a calling to the people. I want to actively make a change to help steward spaces for those who are just joining the Guild (and who have been historically left out of these conversations) and those who don’t know what the Guild even has to offer. Making these cultural shifts at an institution takes time and strategic effort; you need someone actively inside “the room where it happens” thinking about not only the privileged but the many.

Here is what I have done while in office as your Council member. I participated in the Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility podcast (helmed by Christine Toy Johnson) with pertinent information as it relates to seeding change for underrepresented dramatists nationwide, interacted with a plethora of students and individuals who were negotiating their contracts in the digital realm, provided pertinent insight to the pay equity survey, created intellectual Property Rights (IPR) around new contacts for writers and collaborative artists, fostered a channel for new fellows, and made myself available for anyone who needed guidance as it relates their work. Lastly, I am considering your legal rights to collaborate more cohesively as dramatists.

During my time in the Dramatists Guild, my mentor, William Yellow Robe Jr., passed away (Rest in Power, Bill), which was very significant in the Native/Indigenous community. The Dramatists Guild was able to ensure his collection of plays was taken care of and I was honored to learn the longevity and legacy of what the Dramatists Guild can do, which means your work in the future, too. I want to begin more relationship-building with the Regional Reps and create more philanthropic efforts and resources by the Dramatists Guild for the spectrum of dramatists in cities and towns. I would like your support to be considered on the Council for another term to keep this work going.

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Bio

Daniel Goldfarb is a playwright, librettist, television writer/producer, screenwriter, and educator. His most recent play, Men’s Health, was recorded for Audible Theater starring Tony Shalhoub, Santino Fontana, Laura Benanti, Diane Guerrero, and Tom Hollander, directed by Scott Ellis, and was an Audible Best of 2021. His other plays include Legacy (Williamstown Theatre Festival); Cradle and All (Manhattan Theatre Club); The Retributionists (Playwrights Horizons); Modern Orthodox (Dodger Stages); Sarah, Sarah (Manhattan Theatre Club); and Adam Baum And The Jew Movie (Blue Light). His musicals include Piece of My Heart (Signature Theatre); Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me (Broadway); Radio Girl (Goodspeed); and Party Come Here (Williamstown Theatre Festival).

Daniel is the creator of HBO Max’s Julia, starring Sarah Lancashire and David Hyde Pierce as Julia and Paul Child, as well as Bebe Neuwirth, Fran Kranz, Fiona Glascott, Brittany Bradford, Robert Joy, Isabella Rossellini, Adriane Lenox, Danny Burstein, Jefferson Mays, Rachel Bloom, and Judith Light. Daniel’s other television work includes three seasons as a writer/producer on Amazon’s Emmy-winning The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel; as well as Apple TV’s Little Voice, F/X’s Tyrant, Audience Channel’s Rogue, CBC’s Four in the Morning, and PBS’s The Electric Company. His film work includes the screenplay for the upcoming adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat for director Jon Chu and producer Scott Sanders at Amazon.

Daniel has been nominated for two Emmy Awards, three Writers Guild Awards (winning once), and a Producers Guild Award. He has also won an Oppenheimer Award for best NY debut, a Canadian Authors Association Award for best play, and was a finalist for the Dramatists Guild’s Hull Warriner Award. He is a graduate of The Juilliard School and NYU’s Department of Dramatic Writing at Tisch (BFA, MFA), where he is an Associate Arts Professor and was Area Head of Playwriting from 2013-2017. He has been a proud member of the Dramatists Guild since 1999.

Statement

Protecting the rights of writers is more important than ever as our industry goes through seismic shifts not seen in a century. Artists lead the way our society thinks, and the Guild needs to continue to lead writers with integrity and vision and pave a path forward where a broad canvas of voices can flourish. The recent WGA strike brought up existential challenges that speak to the very heart of what it is to be any kind of dramatist. The Guild does such important work, and it is a great honor to be a part of an organization whose mission is to protect a community that is integral to our society: a community of creative artists; of writers. My years on Council and on various committees have made me more committed than ever to all the incredible work the Guild does, not just for writers and composers and librettists, but for audiences and for the legacy of the form.

I started teaching in 1999, the year I made my off-Broadway debut. I am dedicated to the theatre’s future and to the notion of an expanding community of artists and thinkers. Listening to the broadening next generation of dramatists as an educator— their stories, their passions, their ideas—working with them to help access their voices—and say something new that challenges the way we see ourselves and our society—is as meaningful as anything I’ve accomplished as a dramatist. I was mentored by so many wonderful writers. And I hope to carry that tradition forward. Three of the Julia writers are playwrights who studied with me.

My four terms on council have been full and active. I continue to serve on the Finance Committee and the Education Committee. I served eight years on the Steering Committee, and ten years on the Publications Committee, including five years as its Chair. I have served on the Nominating Committee four times, and the Theatre Grant Review Committee. I also completed a three-year term representing the Guild as a Tony Award Nominator for The Broadway League. I am so proud to be part of this community. As I wrote in my statement three years ago: writers are the best. It would be a great honor to be reelected to Council to continue to serve.

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Bio

Chisa Hutchinson earned a B.A. in Dramatic Arts from Vassar College and an M.F.A. in Playwriting from NYU. She’s landed some pretty cool gigs since then, such as writing and performing with the New York NeoFuturists, being a Staff Writer for Blue Man Group, and staffing for shows on cable TV and streamers. As she tends to write plays about underrepresented folks that require a minimum of five actors, she doubts very much that you'll see any of her plays on Broadway any time soon, but encourages you to support the intrepid companies that have presented her work, which include City Parks' SummerStage, the New York NeoFuturists, Atlantic Theater Company, New Dramatists, Rattlestick Theater, Midtown Direct Rep, Writers Theatre of New Jersey, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC), the Working Theater, the Contemporary American Theater Festival, National Black Theatre, Second Stage Theater, Delaware REP, Salt Lake Acting Company, Redtwist Theatre, Forward Flux, Arch 468 (UK), Primary Stages, South Coast Rep, Keen Company, Audible, and Alley Theatre.

Presently, Chisa teaches creative writing at the University of Delaware, is impatiently waiting for the premiere of a new TV series she helped write for Starz (Three Women), and is currently developing a pan-African heist flick for 30,000 FT and SuperSpecial. Her first original feature, THE SUBJECT, an indie about a white documentarian dealing with the moral fallout from exploiting the death of a black teen, is available on various VOD platforms after a successful film festival circuit during which it won over 30 prizes. www.chisahutchinson.com

Statement

If I learned anything from the WGA strike this year (a.k.a. Hot Union Summer), it’s the importance and power of community. The Dramatists Guild may not technically be a union, but the impact this community has had on my creative life is tremendous and undeniable—from the strides I made during my DG Fellowship to the emergency grant that kept me from having to take on part-time work to pay a medical bill to the contract I requested help with literally just this past week. I’ve spent the past ten or so years trying to pay it all forward by serving on The Dramatist Committee (formerly the Publications Committee), the Nominating Committee, the Awards Committee, the Education committee, and of course, the Council. I’m seeking re-election because Council remains the brightest thread in my service tapestry, one of the best ways to both plug in to the community and to keep others plugged in. When I hear about something cool or encouraging at a Council meeting, anyone who follows me on social media hears about it, too. When I attend a play as a Tony voter, I get to bring a mentee (when my husband isn’t insisting on being my date, anyway). Also, I think that seeing my little face on their Zoom screens must remind other Council members that I exist and am ready to get behind whatever they’ve got going on because I often get messages after, asking if I can help organize a webinar series, teach a workshop, or participate on a panel at BroadwayCon. Maybe you attended one of those and saw me there. Maybe I complimented your shoes and told you about the Plays-in-Progress Program or where to find the Dramatists’ Bill of Rights. Or perhaps you read the interview piece that Sarah Rebell put together for The Dramatist about the fellowship I launched. It’s no coincidence that three of the four folks I interviewed for a roundtable in an upcoming issue of the magazine are active mentors for that very fellowship. I’m trying, y’all. I’m growing tentacles and trying to reach everywhere. I’m doing whatever I humanly can to spread the gospel and connect folks who need connection. I hope you’ll allow me to keep at it.

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Bio

Mike Lew’s plays include tiny father (Geffen, Barrington, Chautauqua, Audible); Teenage Dick (Donmar Warehouse, Public/Ma-Yi, O’Neill); Tiger Style! (Huntington, La Jolla, Alliance, O’Neill); Bike America (Ma-Yi, Alliance), and microcrisis (Ma-Yi, InterAct). He is co-book writer of Bhangra Nation (Birmingham Rep, La Jolla) alongside Rehana Lew Mirza (co-book) and Sam Willmott (music/lyrics). He has served on the Dramatists Guild Council since 2014. He is a Tony voter and the recipient of a Ma-Yi/Mellon/Howlround NPRP residency, Lark Venturous residency, La Jolla Playhouse Artist in Residence, NYFA fellowship, and the Lanford Wilson, Helen Merrill, Heideman, Kendeda, PEN, Kleban, and Weissberger awards. Education: Juilliard, Yale. Website: mikelew.com.

Statement

I would be overjoyed to serve another term on the Dramatists Guild Council. Since joining in 2014, I’ve attending nearly every Council meeting in addition to prior terms on the DEI, Awards, Membership, and Nominating Committees. I remain as passionate as ever about advocating for other writers and fostering a community that positively impacts the wider industry. As producing theatres navigate a time of immense change and upheaval, I want to be sure that the Guild is doing everything it can to uplift the needs of the writer – particularly emerging and mid-career writers. As a parent, I’m also recognizing some of the difficulties of art-life balance and more pointedly some of the industry practices that push us out of theatre, so I’m particularly invested in finding new ways to make theatre friendlier for parent-artists. I remain dedicated to the Guild’s mission while also recognizing there’s so much more we can do – and it’s my sincere hope you’ll grant me the honor of continuing in this work for another three years.

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Bio

Robert Lopez is the co-creator of the smash hit, Tony award-winning Broadway musicals Avenue Q and Book of Mormon. Along with his wife and collaborator Kristen Anderson-Lopez, he is the co-writer of Disney’s animated features Frozen (Oscar and Grammy wins) and Frozen II (Oscar and Grammy nominations), “Remember Me” from Pixar’s Coco (Oscar win), Marvel’s WandaVision (Emmy win), the Hulu original series Up Here, and Frozen on Broadway. Lopez shared two Emmy Award wins for his music for Nickelodeon’s The Wonder Pets and Emmy nominations for songs in Scrubs, the 87th Academy Awards, and The Comedians. His work has also been featured on TV shows including South Park, The Simpsons, and Phineas and Ferb. He has won Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Drama League, Lucille Lortel, Frederick Loewe, and Edward Kleban awards. Lopez is the only artist to win all four major entertainment industry awards (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Awards) twice. A graduate of Yale, Lopez now resides in Brooklyn with his family.

Statement

I first joined the Dramatists Guild in 1997, straight out of college, and was granted incredible access to information, community, and support. From the earliest stages of my career, negotiating collaborative rights on a Fringe Festival show to sitting at a Broadway bargaining table, the Guild has provided me and all its members with invaluable resources and collective power. If the last year has proved anything, it is that collective bargaining is the strongest, and at times the only defense against powerful interests that threaten our livelihoods. I hope to continue to serve as a member of the Dramatists Guild Council because I want to ensure that young writers and future generations have the benefit of the same strong institution I did.

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Bio

Roger Q. Mason (Playwright - they/them) is a writer and performer who uses the lens of history to disrupt the biases that divide rather than unite us. Their playwriting has been seen on Broadway at the Circle in the Square Reading Series; off- and off-off Broadway; and regionally. Mason's World Premiere of Lavender Men was lauded by the Los Angeles Times as "evoking the mingled visions of Suzan-Lori Parks, Jeremy O. Harris, and Michael R. Jackson." They are currently commissioned by Center Theatre Group, Lucille Lortel Theatre, Inside Out Theatre, and Philadelphia Theatre Company. Mason's playwriting has been acknowledged by the Kilroys List, the Chuck Rowland Pioneer Award, the Young-Howze Theatre Award, Theatre Mania, and Timeout.

As a filmmaker, Mason has been recognized by the British Film Institute, Lonely Wolf International Film Festival, SCAD Film Festival, AT&T Film Award, and Atlanta International Film Festival. Their films have screened in the US, UK, Poland, Brazil, and Asia.

Mason holds degrees from Princeton University, Middlebury College, and Northwestern University. They are a member of the Dramatists Guild of America and Ma-Yi’s Writing Lab, as well as an alum of Page 73’s Interstate 73 Writers Group, the Fire This Time Festival, and Primary Stages Writing Cohort. Mason has co-hosted the podcast Sister Roger’s Gayborhood and hosted This Way Out Radio's Queerly Yours: Portraits in Courage. They are a lead mentor of The Marsha P. Johnson Institute’s Starship Fellowship, the New Visions Fellowship, and the Shay Foundation Fellowship. Mason is a proud recipient of the inaugural Dramatists Guild Foundation's Catalyst Fellowship, where they will travel to the American South to employ playwriting as a tool of social justice for trans and gender-expansive folx of the global majority.

Statement

The Dramatists Guild means the world to me. In 2008, I completed undergrad and entered the American Theatre at the height of the Great Recession. There were no commissions, institutional support systems, or developmental opportunities for emerging playwrights; everybody was struggling. What a way to start a professional career!

Seeking community and professional guidance in difficult times, I began attending regional Guild meetings and later national conferences. Those convocations assured me that I was not alone in my journey: they showed me alternatives to awaiting institutional blessing for my work. I learned how entrepreneurial playwriting was; how collaborative relationships with directors, dramaturgs, actors and designers build more holistic work; and, most importantly, the duty of mentorship we owe to the next generation for the insights we've gleaned toiling in the field.

Recently, I've served on various Guild committees, including The Dramatist Committee and the Compensation Survey Committee, a landmark investigation of our working conditions and lived experiences as playwrights across career levels. Additionally, I worked as lead mentor of the New Visions Fellowship, a collaboration between the Guild and National Queer Theatre providing creative mentorship and professional development to black transgender and gender-expansive playwrights in the American Theatre.

Working on these initiatives has provided me with invaluable insights into some of the current needs and ever-present realities of our members. Trans and gender non-conforming playwrights of the global majority are not equitably developed or programmed within our institutions. And when they are, these writers struggle to generate work expansively and generatively when met by collaborators and administrations still learning language outside of binaries, not just the gender binary, but also the creative/aesthetic binary that limits the types of queer stories told, the forms they take, and the developmental practices needed to create them.

As a nation, we are in a labor revolution inspired by the gig economy which compels us to consider how to equitably and sustainably compensate independent contractors for their work. This paradigm shift has monumental implications for playwrights: it invites us to advocate for ourselves not just as copyright holders but also essential creative workers whose contributions to productions need to be acknowledged financially by our presenters and their institutions.

If accepted to Council, I'd work with my colleagues to continue making the Guild a space where writers congregate to unearth bold self-advocacy, entrepreneurial spirit, and responsibility to our community and the communities our plays inspire.

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Bio

Ife Olujobi (she/they) is a Brooklyn-based Nigerian American playwright, screenwriter, and editor from Columbia, Maryland. She is a member of the Obie-winning Youngblood at Ensemble Studio Theatre, and she was a Resident Artist at Ars Nova, a New Voices Fellow at The Lark, an alumnus of the 2018-19 Emerging Writers Group at the Public Theater and the 2020 Sundance Institute Theatre Lab, an inaugural Project Number One artist-in-residence at Soho Rep, and the recipient of a 2020 Sloan Foundation commission from Manhattan Theatre Club. Their play Jordans won a special commendation from the 2021 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and they received a 2021 Steinberg Playwright Award. She is currently a CRNY artist-in-residence at the Public Theater, where Jordans will be produced in April 2024. Their work has been seen at the Public, Bushwick Starr, HERE Arts Center, Bishop Arts Theatre Center, and more, and their plays include Smoke, MARKETPLACE, Color Girls, and others. She conceived and edited a book of interviews with theatre artists about work called No Play. She is an inaugural 2023-25 Dramatists Guild Catalyst fellow. They are the managing editor of The Supplements book series at Soho Rep, curates film screenings with the collective New Cinema Club, and was an assistant editor at the Criterion Collection. They received their BFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2016.

Statement

I’ll be honest: I’m new to all of this. It’s only been in the last year that I learned that the Dramatists Guild had a Council and committees. So when I was invited to run for a seat, I was really unsure if it was the right decision. That’s mostly because all of the advocacy work I’ve done around playwright compensation has been outside of the Guild or any official framework. It’s taken the form of cold-emailing theatre literary departments asking about payment rates, having tense phone calls with general managers in the middle of development processes demanding more money, engaging in months-long negotiations with theatres over writers group terms, inviting fellow playwrights to participate in informal payment surveys via Google Doc and Instagram stories, compiling a book of interviews where playwrights and other theatre artists can talk candidly about how much money they make and how it affects their quality of life, and organizing a panel called “Playwrights Unite!: Rewriting our Labor Story” in November 2023 at the Public Theater—the same theatre where I will have my off-Broadway debut in April 2024, the same theatre where I successfully advocated for a raise in playwright production fees for the first time in twelve years. All of this is to say that I’m used to being on the outside, being scrappy, and using traditional grassroots organizing tactics to foster solidarity among my fellow playwright-workers to improve our conditions. I hope to be able to bring some of those tactics and that spirit to my tenure serving on the Dramatists Guild Council where, through passion and creativity and alongside fellow passionate councilmembers, I would work to make a difference in the financial futures and overall well-being of all playwrights, but especially those just starting out, those from traditionally marginalized backgrounds, and those who don’t even know what the Dramatists Guild is or how it can help them. In addition to compensation, my goal is connection—to connect the Guild to writers it hasn’t yet reached yet, and to connect it to other unions and labor groups for artists and freelance workers so that we can link our stories and struggles to larger tides of American labor progress. I believe in the Guild, I believe in solidarity, I believe that now is the time for radical acts, and I believe that together we can organize to get what we deserve.

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Bio

Robert Schenkkan Pulitzer Prize, Tony, and WGA Award winner, three-time Emmy nominee. Author of eighteen plays including: All the Way, The Great Society, The Kentucky Cycle, and Building the Wall. Robert is a New Dramatists alumnus, a member of the National Theatre Conference, a board member of The Lillys, and president of the Board of The Orchard Project. He is currently working with John Doyle on a new musical, The Twelve, and a new play, ReCON$ruxion for Alabama Shakespeare Festival’s New Southern Canon.

Statement

As we gradually move into a post-Covid phase (are we?) I am constantly reminded that not only is all Politics local, but so is all Art, and I have a renewed appreciation for the diverse theatre artists and groups across the country, and the critical importance of the Dramatists Guild as a National organization in service of all these Playwrights. In addition to the Council, I also serve on the Finance Committee and a board member on the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund. On the former, we worked to not just stabilize our financial situation during these challenging times but to improve it. On the latter, we continuously strive to beat back the increasing calls for censorship, and to defend Playwrights and their rights. My EDI focus remains a constant. The program I helped create at the National Theatre Conference – The Women’s Playwright Initiative – has now supported hundreds of productions by American women writers. And I sit on the board of The Lillys, the pre-eminent National Advocacy group for Women Playwrights. Among our other ongoing projects are The Lorraine Hansberry Initiative, and of course, The Count, the groundbreaking analysis of Gender and Racial Bias in American Theatre. This year, we are so very proud to announce that in this NYC season we actually achieved parity! I am also an active supporter of the new DG Copyright Management Program, and have donated my Tony Award-winning play, All The Way, so that its earnings may support the Guild in perpetuity. Finally, I have served for five plus years as President of The Orchard Project, the premier “incubator” for new work in Theatre, and now also in Film and Television. It has been my honor to work on your behalf at the Guild and I hope you will allow me to continue doing so.

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Bio

Rona Siddiqui is a Grammy-nominated composer/lyricist based in NYC. She is a recipient of the Jonathan Larson Grant and Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award and was named one of Broadway Women's Fund's Women to Watch. Her show Salaam Medina: Tales of a Halfghan, an autobiographical comedy about growing up bi-ethnic in America, has had a concert at 54 Below and development at Playwrights Horizons (dir. by Raja Feather Kelly). Other musicals include One Good Day, Hip Hop Cinderella, and The Tin. She is the recipient of the ASCAP Harold Adamson Lyric Award, the ASCAP Foundation Mary Rodgers/Lorenz Hart Award, and ASCAP Foundation/Max Dreyfus Scholarship. Commissions: A More Perfect Union (Arena Stage), Kirdle & Miffins: Curiosity Saved the Cats (Keen Teens), Untitled Play (Noor Theatre Company). Residencies: Musical Theatre Factory's Makers Residency, Ars Nova's Vision Residency. Music Direction: A Strange Loop - Broadway (Obie Winner and Grammy nominee), Bella: An American Tall Tale – off-Broadway, Who's Your Baghdaddy, or How I Started the Iraq War – off-Broadway. Orchestration: Monsoon Wedding, An Untitled New Play by Justin Timberlake, numerous albums - Broadway Records, Broadway Backwards. Faculty member: BerkleeNYC, New York University.

Statement

I have spent the last three years as a Council member delving into the advocacy work of the Guild and working on new ways to serve theatre writers. One way I have accomplished this is by helping create the Compensation Survey sent out to our membership. The information we receive from this survey will reveal how writers are compensated for their work across the country and across demographics. This will allow us to determine where the industry standard lies and advocate for ourselves from a place of empowerment. Additionally, I continue to use my position to advocate for women, people of color, LGBTQ+, disabled, and other marginalized groups, ensuring they have opportunities to share their stories and create new work. I participated in the Dramatists Guild panel 'Spotlight on Women and Nonbinary Writers' at BroadwayCon, where I pushed to normalize diverse creative spaces. I know firsthand that having varying perspectives in the room deepens art. I also serve as a mentor to the Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellows, where I pass along my experiences and help guide the next generation of writers, arming them with practical knowledge. I am proud of the Guild's work to support film/TV writers throughout the strike, as well as to call out institutions censoring theatrical works across the country. Now, more than ever, we must stand together to protect and value artistic expression. If elected, I will remain on the frontline of these issues and work to secure spaces for our expression, an endeavor vital to the health of our field. Thank you for your consideration.

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Bio

Georgia Stitt is an award-winning composer, lyricist, music producer, pianist, and activist. Her original musicals include Snow Child (commissioned by and premiered at DC’s Arena Stage, directed by Molly Smith), Big Red Sun (11th Hour Theatre in Philadelphia, NAMT 2010), and a children’s musical, Samantha Spade, Ace Detective (TADA Youth Theater), which won “Outstanding New Musical” from the National Youth Theatre in 2014 and is licensed by Concord Theatricals. Other shows include The Danger Year (The Table Co/Lab in Dallas), The Big Boom (with Hunter Foster), The Water (winner of the 2008 ANMT Search for New Voices in American Musical Theater), and Mosaic (commissioned for Inner Voices, starring Heidi Blickenstaff). Georgia has released four albums of her music: A Quiet Revolution (2020), My Lifelong Love (2014), This Ordinary Thursday (2007), and Alphabet City Cycle (featuring Tony-nominated actress Kate Baldwin, 2009). She is currently at work on a new album of theatrical art songs and an oratorio called The Circling Universe. Her choral piece with hope and virtue (using text from President Obama's 2009 inauguration speech) was featured on NPR, and both her orchestral piece, Waiting for Wings, co-written with husband Jason Robert Brown, and her piece for solo clarinet, Fanfare for the Ups and Downs, were commissioned and premiered by the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra. Georgia served for several years as the composer-in-residence at Pasadena Presbyterian Church, and she has written many pieces for choir, including A Better Resurrection, De Profundis, and The Promise of Light, which has often been performed by the LA Master Chorale.

Georgia is the Founder and President of Maestra Music, an organization that provides support, visibility, and community for women and nonbinary theatre musicians, and through that work she has won an Obie Award and a Lilly Award and has been featured in Forbes, Billboard, Playbill, Opera News, and the New York Times. In collaboration with Lin-Manuel Miranda, she and her team at Maestra created the RISE Theatre Directory which seeks to build a more equitable and inclusive theater industry by centralizing DEIA tools and resources. Georgia is in leadership at the Dramatists Guild, The Recording Academy’s Songwriters & Composers Wing, and MUSE (Musicians United for Social Equity). She currently teaches Musical Theatre Writing at Princeton University and has previously taught at Pace University and USC. Georgia lives in New York with her husband and their two wonderful daughters, both of whom are extremely musical. www.georgiastitt.com

Statement

I joined the DG in the mid-90s when I was a student at NYU’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program, and I’ve been honored to participate on Council for three years. I would love to continue to be in service to this vital organization that has meant so much to me for my whole career. Marsha Norman and Craig Carnelia roped me into DG leadership because I sent a passionate and desperate email in 2009 to several prominent writers and publishers complaining about how sheet music was being traded on the internet for free. The conversations led to the formation of the DG’s Copyright Advocacy Committee, which I chaired for several years. We tackled issues on small levels (like the “sit-in” where we had writers send individual emails to internet freebie-seekers saying, “hey, please don’t steal my work”) and large levels (like traveling to DC to speak to Congress about how songwriters make money). Marsha Norman also invited me to get involved in the Lillys where I served on the Board for many years; my primary responsibility there was co-producing with Amanda Green the annual Lillys Cabaret which celebrated women composers and lyricists. It was through these projects that I started to think about bigger ways that women musical theatre writers were underserved, and in 2016 I built a very basic online database intended to make visible women songwriters and theatre musicians. That impulse led to the formation of Maestra Music, which incorporated as a nonprofit in 2019 and now has over 2,200 women and nonbinary people in its Directory. Maestra also this year create RISE Theatre, a program that centralizes DEIA tools and resources to unite the theatrical workforce, amplifying especially folks from underrepresented backgrounds.

Because I’ve wanted to focus my advocacy on issues that relate to musicians, I now co-chair the Music Committee with Adam Gwon and I’m on the Leadership Council for the Songwriters & Composers Wing at The Recording Academy. People are having the same conversations at so many organizations, and I spend a lot of time linking folks to each other and shining spotlights on existing work that could encourage partnerships. I care about intellectual property, gender and racial equity, mentorship, and community, and I reflect that in both my writing and my volunteering. I would be honored to keep serving the DG in collaboration with my favorite people in the world: writers and musicians.

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Bio

Jeanine Tesori is a composer of musical theatre, opera, and film. Her musicals include Kimberly Akimbo; Soft Power; Fun Home; Shrek The Musical; Caroline, or Change; Thoroughly Modern Millie; and Violet. She is a two-time recipient of the Tony Award for Best Score and a two-time Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Her operas include A Blizzard on Marblehead Neck; The Lion, The Unicorn and Me; and Blue, which received the MCANA Award for Best New Opera. For her opera Grounded, she became one of the first two women to be commissioned by The Metropolitan Opera. Tesori served as Supervising Vocal Producer on Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story. She is the Founding Artistic Director of New York City Center’s Encores! Off-Center series and a lecturer in music at Yale University.

Statement

Though I have been away from serving on the council for some years now, my commitment to this collective of artists has never been clearer, or stronger. Because I work across many genres in theatre, opera, and film, I have gained valuable perspective and appreciation of our core values. And what happens when they are threatened or ignored. Though we are not formally defined as a union, I have seen no greater unity than in the gatherings and mentoring sessions associated with the Guild. The future of our organization depends on recognizing the achievements of our founders, our elders, and fostering those same lessons in emerging artists. I would be proud and honored to return.

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Bio

Bess Wohl's plays include Grand Horizons (Tony Nominations for Best Play & Best Featured Actress, Outer Critics Circle Honor, Drama League Award nom); Camp Siegfried (Evening Standard Award nom), Make Believe (NYTimes Critic Pick, Best of 2019, Outer Critics Circle Honor); Continuity; Small Mouth Sounds (John Gassner Outer Critics Circle Award, top ten lists in the New York Times, the New York Post, the Guardian); American Hero; Barcelona; Touched; In; Cats Talk Back; and the musical Pretty Filthy with composer/lyricist Michael Friedman and The Civilians (Lucille Lortel and Drama Desk nominations for Outstanding Musical).

Her plays have been produced or developed at theaters including Second Stage, Roundabout Theatre Company, Manhattan Theatre Club, Ars Nova, The Williamstown Theatre Festival, Goodman Theatre, The Geffen Playhouse, People’s Light and Theatre Company, The Contemporary American Theater Festival, Vineyard Arts Project, The Pittsburgh Public Theater, Northlight Theatre, Ojai Playwrights Conference, the Cape Cod Theatre Project, and PlayPenn. Awards and honors include the Sam Norkin special Drama Desk Award for “establishing herself as an important voice in New York theater,” multiple Outer Critics Circle honors, the Georgia Engell Comedy Playwriting Award from the Dramatists Guild, the Athena Award for her screenplay VIRGINIA, MacDowell Fellowships, and inclusion on Hollywood’s Black List of Best Screenplays.

Wohl is an associate artist with The Civilians, an alumna of Ars Nova’s Play Group, and the recipient of new play commissions from Manhattan Theatre Club, Lincoln Center, and Williamstown Theatre Festival.

She also works in film and TV. Her feature film debut, BABY RUBY, starring Noémie Merlant and Kit Harington, premiered at the 2022 Toronto Film Festival and was released by Magnolia Pictures. She also wrote for the Apple TV+ series Extrapolations created by Scott Z. Burns and has developed projects for HBO, Amazon, and many others.

In her previous life as an actress, she appeared onstage in New York and regionally, and in numerous films and TV shows where she has given birth, solved crimes, committed crimes, been wrongly accused, and come back from the dead. She is a graduate of Harvard and the Yale School of Drama.

Statement

As a playwright, I understand intimately that ours can be a lonely calling. We often work in solitude and even when we're in a rehearsal process, we're usually the only one "of us" in the room. Our community can feel fragmented and frayed, especially in this post-pandemic landscape as we rebuild from trauma, pain, illness, and isolation even as new challenges continue to emerge. I believe it is essential that we work to create and nourish a strong network of support, to hold each other in solidarity, and lift each other up with care and courage. It is for this reason that I am honored to be nominated to serve as a member of the Council.

Community has always been essential to me. I have been a proud member of many community-based residency programs and have also been part of a playwright's group for fifteen years where we have seen each other through the highs and lows of this career. I can honestly say without my fellow playwrights, I don't know if I could have hung in there. As a parent-artist, I am particularly committed to finding ways to make theatremaking accessible to parents and people with families, from childcare stipends for working parents to ending the bias against artist-parents. I am also passionate about gender and racial equity and rooting out the many kinds of bias (anti-fat bias, ageism, ableism, to name a few) that unfortunately still infect our industry. I believe that it is within our power to create and foster working conditions that really do work for everyone and will do everything in my power to continue to advocate for that reality. Only in doing so will our art form achieve its full and rich potential: a multiplicity of voices, a diversity of stories, ideas and points of view.

I began with the idea that playwriting can be lonely-- but the truth is, it doesn't have to be. The Dramatists Guild provides a vital way for playwrights to both support one another now and secure equitable opportunities for the next generation of playwrights. I sincerely hope to be part of continuing this hard yet joyful work and am grateful to you for considering me.

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From the Archives: Music & Lyrics

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