Meet The Authors

Prospect Theater Company commissioned 15 theatrical writers to create "choose your own adventure" tales. Read author bios below, or click on their name to go to their story.

Rebecca Aparicio is an NYC-based director, writer, and theatre maker. As a writer, her award-winning musical Pedro Pan was developed by New York Musical Festival, Musical Theatre Factory, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, FringeNYC, and was originally commissioned by the Truf Theatre. Additional writing includes: Hindsight 2020 (Live & In Color, commission), Legacy (Prospect Theater Musical Theatre Lab), The Garcia Sisters (Red Mountain Theatre, commission), and Nora Saves The World (Barn Arts). As a director, recent projects include: Jack and The Beanstalk (The American Repertory Theatre), Days of Re-Creation (Philadelphia Theatre Company), In The Heights (Live Arts). She’s also developed new work with American Repertory Theatre, McCarter Theatre, Musical Theatre Factory, Classical Theatre of Harlem, Ars Nova, The Tank, and more. Past Fellowships: Roundabout Theatre’s Inaugural Directing Group, MTC Jonathan Alper Directing Fellow, The COOP’s Clusterf**k Writing Cohort, and a two-time SDCF Observership Award recipient. Rebecca is currently adjunct faculty at Pace University, member of the Latinx Theatre Commons, Latinx Playwrights Circle, and a founding member of Magic Forest Theatre, dedicated to creating new musicals for young audiences. www.RebeccaAparicio.com

Jenny Lyn Bader is thrilled to be making her Prospect Theater debut in Riverside Park. Recent work includes My First Time (Voting Writes); Pacific Coast Trail (OutCast Productions), Sad Maps (Vaccine Monologues); and Tree Confessions, an audio play starring Kathleen Chalfant now premiering in the “Beuys for Future” international exhibit in Berlin and next playing the Brighton and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals and in a live version at Guild Hall in East Hampton. Her plays include Equally Divine (Theatre at the 14th St. Y), Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library (Luna Stage), and None of the Above (New Georges). Short works include Worldness (Humana Festival of New American Plays) and Beta Testing (Symphony Space). Honors include “Best Documentary One-Woman Show” Award (United Solo), Athena Playwriting Fellowship, Lark Fellowship, and Edith Oliver Award (O’Neill Center). Her plays have been published by Dramatists Play Service, Vintage, Smith & Kraus, Applause, and Plays International + Europe. Her verse play In Flight was a winner of the NAAA Festival (London), premiered at Turn to Flesh Productions in New York, and is forthcoming from Next Stage Press. She belongs to the Dramatists Guild, Playwrights Gallery, League of Professional Theatre Women, and Honor Roll. www.jennylynbader.com

With productions on five continents, Sammy Buck is an award-winning writer, story consultant, and creator of Structure! The Musical: Everything You Need to Know About Musicals You Can Learn From Star Wars. He is the bookwriter/lyricist of Like You Like It (Broadway Licensing, Broadway Records) and StinkyKids® The Musical (TRW, Off-Broadway Alliance Award: Best Family Show, Vital Theatre), bookwriter/co-lyricist of Small Town Story (American Theater Group/SOPAC, NYTB commission, Richard Rodgers Award Finalist, Village Originals, NAMT Writers Residency Grant), bookwriter of Leonard Bernstein’s Cast Party (Roundabout), and lyricist of The Doll Maker’s Gift (Rose Theater) and …And Then I Wrote A Song About It (Luna, Diversionary). Films include Red Hook (eOne Films) and Fade to White (Free Range Humans). An Emmy® winner with TVLand digital, he has also mentored for ETC’s Young Playwrights Festival. He is a member of BMI and The Dramatists Guild, Inc. www.sammybuck.com

Andi Lee Carter (he/they) is a Brooklyn-based musical theatre writer, director, and webseries/podcast producer. He recently produced a successful run Judson Memorial Church of his new musical play OPPY: A Mars Rover Story, one of the first post-pandemic productions with a live indoor socially-distanced audience. He is a graduate of the NYU Tisch Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program where he presented two thesis musicals: Pompeii: A Gender Explosion! and S.T.E.M. GRLZ! Scientific Strategies for Starting a Feminist Rock Band. His first original full-length musical Rent A White Guy was dubbed “often very funny” by the New York Times. His work has been seen at many of New York's finest pre-COVID cabaret venues including Under St. Marks, the Duplex, Joe's Pub, and Feinstein's 54 Below. His most recent virtual musicals can be found online: 14 DAYS (music/lyrics) at apacny.org and Rejected! (music and lyrics) at nypl.org. He has also written lyrics for an exciting new ASL musical short film to be released soon through Heart Productions. Stay tuned! Follow on social: @andileecarter

EllaRose Chary (she/hers) is an award-winning writer and advocate for inclusion in media. She is a Richard Rodgers Award Winner, Drama League Award Nominee, Dramatists Guild Fellow, O’Neill, Kleban, NYFA and Kernodle Finalist, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat Triple R, Ars Nova, and Catwalk resident and a Harvard TDM Guest Lecturer. Her work has been featured by The Civilians (Joe’s Pub), GPTC, The Rose Theater, Encores! Off-Center, & UArts Polyphone Festival. Her play The Séance Machine was part of the Tank’s 2019 Obie-Award winning season. As part of her advocacy, she has written for The Lilly Awards Blog, HowlRound, and Musical Theater Today (where she is a contributing editor) and has appeared on panels at NYMF and with Honest Accomplice Theater. Previously with Prospect: Portraits, By The Numbers, World Views. She believes the future of American theater is universal healthcare. MFA: NYU Tisch, BA: Brown University. www.ellarosechary.com

David Davila is an award-winning playwright and comedian from South Texas, where the border wall has stood since George W’s administration. He’s the current playwright fellow at Indiana University, an alumnus of The Second City Training Center in Chicago, and the Primary Stages ESPA playwriting school in Manhattan. His work focuses on the intersection between queer culture and the Latinx/Mestizaje experience. His plays and musicals have been produced in New York, California, Texas, England, Mexico, and France, and he is the 2021 winner of the New American Voices National Playwriting Award for his trilogy Aztec Pirates, a Latinx Fantasia on National Themes. He’s the founding Artistic Director of Lone Star Theatre Company, and most recently founded the Voices of America Writers Workshop in response to the inequality of opportunities for marginalized communities. Learn more about his plays and musicals at daviddavila.net or follow him on social media: @davidodavila.

Ty Defoe (Giizhig), Oneida and Ojibwe Nations, is an writer and interdisciplinary artist, and Grammy Award winner. Ty aspires to an interweaving approach to artistic projects with social justice, indigeneity, indiqueering, and environmentalism. Robert Rauschenberg Artist in Residence, Jonathan Larson Award. Works created and authored: 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), among others. Ty is core member of All My Relations Collective, GIZHIBAA GIIZHIG | Revolving Sky (Under the Radar Incoming!, The Public Theater). Movement Direction: Mother Road, Dir. Bill Rauch (OSF), Manahatta, Dir. Laurie Woolery (OSF + Yale Rep), and Choreographer for Tracy Lett’s The Minutes (Broadway). Netflix show: "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt," and Young Jean Lee’s Straight White Men, Dir. Anna Shapiro (Broadway). Degrees from CalArts, Goddard College, + NYU Tisch. Lives in NYC + loves the color clear. He|We, www.allmyrelations.earth, tydefoe.com

Jennifer Fell Hayes is an award-winning playwright with the Workshop Theater Company in New York City. She is published by Samuel French, the Dramatic Publishing Company, and Smith & Kraus. Rosemary and Time was performed at the Paradise Factory Theatre, New York, in 2018 and had a Zoom reading in Winchester, UK, February 2021. An Amateur Match, Seal Song and Second Chance all had Zoom readings in 2020. Her book, Pioneer Journeys: Drama in Museum Education (New Plays Inc.) co-authored with Dorothy Napp Schindel, won the Distinguished Book of the Year award from the American Alliance of Theatre and Education. She has received Honorable Mention twice in the Gideon Poetry Review competitions of 2019 and 2020. A poem and a Tiny Love story were published in the New York Times 2021. jenniferfellhayes.com

Timothy Huang is a New York based composer/lyricist/librettist. His musical American Morning (Prospect Theater, 2016 Village Theater Festival, 2015 NAMT Festival, 2012 BMI Master Class hosted by Stephen Sondheim, 2011 ASCAP Musical Theater Workshop.) Winner 2015 New American Musical Award, and 2016 Richard Rodgers Award, making its author the first and only Asian American to win the latter as a triple-threat composer/lyricist/librettist. Studio album available on all digital platforms. Other works include Gates of Remembering (Artistic Stamp), Peter and the Wave (DGF Fellows, Rhinebeck), The View From Here, And the Earth Moved, LINES: A Song Cycle (NYMF 05, 04, 08), A Relative Relationship (SoundBites, Best Musical) Missing Karma (City Theater of Miami, Theater Elision) and Koi Story (Sam French OOB SPF). Proud husband to Laura and father to Haven. www.timothyhuang.net

AriDy Nox is a multi-disciplinary black femme storyteller and social activist with a variety of forward-thinking creative works under her/their belt including the historical reimagining of the life of Sally Hemmings Black Girl in Paris (2020), the ancestral reckoning play A Walless Church (2019), the afrofuturist ecopocalypse musical Metropolis (2019), and many others. AriDy creates out of the vehement belief that creating a future in which marginalized peoples are free requires a radical imagination. Their tales are offerings intended to function as small parts of an ancient, expansive, awe-inspiring tradition of world-shaping, created by and for black femmes. As a graduate of the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program at Tisch School of the Performing Arts at NYU and a beneficiary of the Emerging Writer’s Group at the Public Theater and The Civilians’ Research and Development Group, they have been inordinately privileged to share the workings of her imagination among a vast array of inspiring and supportive artists of various radical backgrounds throughout the city.

Corinna Schulenburg (she/her) is an artist and activist committed to ensemble practice and social justice. She’s a white queer transgender woman, a mother, a playwright, an actor, a director, a Creative Partner of Flux Theatre Ensemble, and the director of communications at Theatre Communications Group. Corinna supports the #LandBack movement, lives on Munsee Lenape and Canarsie lands, and has generational ties to the lands of the Wampanoag. She is an active member of the Working Families Party and a virtual field captain for the Dianne Morales mayoral campaign. Corinna’s produced plays include Carrin Beginning, Rue, Riding the Bull, Other Bodies, Honey Fist, Jacob’s House, DEINDE, Dream Walker, Encryption, Jane the Plain, The Lesser Seductions of History, Salvage, The Sea Concerto, and Operating Systems. Her plays have been produced and developed at The Lark, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Portland Stage Company, Flux Theatre Ensemble, and many more. She was a 2013-14 Lark Playwrights Workshop Fellow and a member of the Propulsion Lab with Mission to (dit)Mars. https://corinnaschulenburg.com

Marcus Scott (he/him) is a playwright and journalist. Selected works: Fidelio (Libretto; Heartbeat Opera at Baruch Performing Arts Center, 2018; called “poignant” by the New York Times), Sibling Rivalries (Long-listed for the 2020 Theatre503 International Playwriting Award; finalist for ATHE’s 2021 Judith Royer Excellence in Playwriting Award and the 2021 Seven Devils Playwrights Conference; semifinalist for 2021 Blue Ink Playwriting Award), Tumbleweed (Finalist for the 2017 BAPF; semi-finalist for the 2017/2018 New Dramatists Princess Grace Fellowship Award), Cherry Bomb (recipient of the 2017 Drama League First Stage Artist-In-Residence; 2017 Finalist for the Yale Institute for Music Theatre) and Sundown Town (Finalist for Abingdon Theatre Company’s Virtual Fall Festival Of Short Plays). He has been developed/presented at Joe's Pub, Feinstein's/54 Below, APAC, Dixon Place, Space on Ryder Farm, Symphony Space, NYC LGBT Center, Out of the Box Theatrics, Theatre West, New Circle Theatre Company, MicroTheater Miami, among others. Scott is a four-time finalist for the R&D Group at The Civilians, a two-time finalist for NBT’s I AM SOUL Playwrights Residency, and a 2019 finalist for the Bushwick Starr’s Starr Reading Series. His articles appeared in Time Out NY, American Theatre, Playbill, Elle, Out, and Essence among others. MFA: NYU Tisch.

SEVAN is an award-winning playwright-actor. whose work has been seen in London and New York at The Public Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, The Flea Theatre, The Sheen Center, The Bush Theatre, Theatre Royal Stratford East, Theatre503, Rich Mix, The Old Red Lion, The Space, and Access Theatre. Member of the Bush Theatre inaugural 2015 Emerging Writers Group; The Public Theater 2011 Emerging Writers Group; NYTW Usual Suspect; Rising Circle Theatre Collective 2010 InkTANK Writer's Lab. NYTW 2011/2012 Teaching Artist. 2017 O'Neill National Playwrights Conference Finalist. 2016 Kondazian Playwriting Award for Armenian Stories. 2016 Arch and Bruce Foundation Playwriting Prize. 2014/2015/2016 Princess Grace Award Semi-Finalist. 2014 Papatango Playwriting Prize Shortlist. 2014 Saroyan Social Justice/Human Rights Playwriting Award Finalist. 2010/2012 William Saroyan Playwriting Prize Finalist. As an actor: New York: Mrs. Christie (world premiere), Lortel Award‐Winning Betrayed (Culture Project, LATW, Kennedy Center, PBS), Dead are my People (NYTW/Noor), Bunty Berman Presents, Betty Shamieh’s The Strangest, NYTW’s Aftermath, NYMF’s Les Enfants des Paris, Prospect’s Mapquest, FringeNYC’s hit Perez Hilton Saves the Universe…. TV/Film: The Dictator, "Evil," "The Equalizer," "Madame Secretary," “Blue Bloods,” “Damages,” “M.O.N.Y.” London: Scenes from 68* Years, bi, Maroon. Regional includes: world premiere of Language Rooms at the Wilma Theatre, Evita, City of Angels, Into the Woods, Company. www.justsevan.com

Nandita Shenoy is an actor-writer living in New York City. Her play Washer/Dryer has been produced multiple times across the country including an Off-Broadway run in which she also starred. Her play Baby Camp is currently in development, and her Rage Play (Kilroys List 2020) was in production with Flux Theatre Ensemble in New York City when the coronavirus hit. Nandita sits on the Steering Committee of the Asian American Performers Action Coalition (AAPAC) which won an Obie in 2020 for their advocacy in the field of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. She recently served as a delegate to AEA’s first National Convention and is also a member of SAG-AFTRA. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Ma-Yi Writers' Lab, and the Dorset Theater Festival's Women Artists Working Group. BA, Yale University.

Claire Tran is a lyricist and book writer, playwright, and screenwriter. Claire is a Jonathan Larson Grant Finalist 2020. Musical Theatre writing includes Akira & the Merpeople, (Polyphone Festival 2020, Musical Theater Factory's 4x15 2019, THEatre ACCELERATOR 2019), Livin’ the Dreamboat (Astoria Performing Arts Center), Grandma Kim vs. America with Jiyoung Kim, (HERE Arts Center Theater), and Oh Soy (Bella Concert Hall in Calgary and the Duplex Theatre). Claire’s songs have been performed at the National Alliance for Musical Theater, 54Below, and Joe’s Pub. Claire’s screenplay, Steel Cutter, was the winner of the Fresh Voices Screenwriting Contest, Fresh Voices Award for Diversity and Inclusion, and CineStory Feature Retreat & Fellowship Semi-Finalist. Playwriting credits include Steel Cutter, Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference Finalist 2017, and Fluffy (Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, Playwrights Showcase, optioned by JJ Films). Dramatist Guild Member. New York University, Tisch School of the Arts. www.clairetran.net