In McClintock’s Corn

Carolyn Gage is a playwright, performer, director, and activist. The author of nine collections of lesbian and feminist-themed plays and eighty-three plays, musicals, and one-woman shows, she specializes in non-traditional roles for women, especially those reclaiming famous lesbians whose stories have been distorted or erased from history. Many of her plays center on radical narratives for survivors of sexual violence. Her catalog is online at www.carolyngage.com

See Thru Women Scenes

Thrü-Line, A Theatrical Production Company, our Voices of Women Theatre Festival Partner, features two shows: Elective Amnesia from their Headline Playwright Gretchen Suarez-Pena and See Thru Women from Gretchen and 6 other female playwrights from across the United States.

Scroll below for Headline Playwright Gretchen Suarez-Pena’s Bio. Click here to read the bios of Thrü-Line playwrights’ Carrie Klewin Lawrence,  Janet S. Tiger, Laurie E. Tanner, and Katharine Rex.

No Fall My Hand

Amy Losi is an actor, writer, editor, and educator. She has written and directed dramas, comedies, several plays for children, and a historical play. Over the last twenty-five years, her writing has been published in educational materials including poems, passages, stories, a play, and countless reading and writing test items. As an actor, Amy has appeared in seventy-five plays, a commercial, TV shows (Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations and Celebrity Ghost Stories), and web and independent projects. Amy has had two plays produced in the Strawberry One-Act Festival in NYC. Both plays made it to the semifinals, and were nominated for a total of seven awards, winning three. Two short plays were produced in other NYC festivals. She wrote and directed a Zoom Comedy which won the Spirit of the 2020 Hartford Fringe Festival award, as well as awards for Excellence in Directing and Best Ensemble. The Zoom play will be part of the 2021 Rochester Fringe Festival this fall. Amy is a member of The Dramatists Guild of America.

Once Upon…. Uhhh

Deborah Bostock-Kelley is a multi-time playwright whose one-acts and full-length plays have been seen across stages in Tampa Bay including Carrollwood Players’ One-Act Weekend, Tampa Bay Theatre Festival, Powerstories’ SheVolution and Voices of Truth Theatre Festival, and Tarpon Arts. She is a theatre reviewer for Broadway World – Tampa Bay, and Creative Loafing, a reporter for Tampa Bay News and Lifestyles Magazine, and a past journalist for The Tampa Tribune, in addition to running her creative services (graphic design/web design/PR copywriting) agency since 2005. She is a published author of a children’s early reader and teen YA fiction anthology. She won the inaugural Tampa Bay Theatre Festival “Denise Deneen” Award in 2019 for her work in theatre. Her last play collaboration won 2021 “Critic’s Choice” in Powerstories Theatre’s inaugural Voices of Truth Theatre Festival. Deb is a past educator, Florida native, and graduate of the University of Tampa. www.thewriteonecs.com

My Year of Saying No

Janice Creneti is an award-winning actor and director with 4 decades of experience. She has appeared in over 100 productions including live theater, TV and film. During her last decade she has worked with Powerstories Theatre as an actor (Bernadette’s Bravo, SheVolution), director (SheVolution II) and teacher (Girlstories Theatre) learning to deeply embrace and leverage theater to create social change and a more loving, empowered world. She extends immense gratitude to Fran Powers for teaching her the power of story and serving as a role model for living fully into one’s purpose and dreaming big! Janice is thrilled to share her newest story with you.

THE PRIDE OF BANGOR [or What Not to Wear]

Laura Emack’s plays have been produced in New York City and throughout Maine. Her work appeared in “100 Monologues from New Plays – Men (2019) published by Applause Theatre and Cinema Books. She was the only Maine CPA to have an essay (Solving the Child Care Conundrum) included in Save Wisely, Spend Happily (2012), published by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. Laura edited At Play: An Anthology of Maine Drama, published by Levant Heritage Library (2004), which contained her script “Writers Block.” The Voices of Women Theatre Festival will be Laura’s third streamed play of 2021, following a Dramatists Guild Footlights New England production of “Jerry’s Top-Ten List & After Math,” by Snowlion Rep of Portland, Maine, and a YouTube production of “Death Match,” by Monmouth Community Players.

No Justice

Dana Hall has been an actor for over two decades. She is also an accomplished and award-winning author, playwright, speaker, and mental health therapist. Her award-winning children’s book, Beyond Words was released in 2020. She has been featured in the anthology, Made to Overcome and We All Belong: Musings on Inclusion, Acceptance, and Kindness. Her plays have been featured this year at Inkwell Theatre Ca., Drawing Cats Theatre (NYC), Palos Village Players (Chicago), Equity Theatre (NYC), Triangle Rainbow Theatre & Riante Theatre (NYC), The New Deal Deal Creative Arts Center (NY), Dramatic Question Theatre (DQT) (NYC), Scripps Onstage (CA), and 5 & Dime Theater (FL). She is the co-founder and artistic director of This Moment Productions, a virtual theatre company with the mission to increase access and equity in the theatrical arts. She is a member of the Dramatist Guild of America, International Centre for Women Playwrights, and HonorRoll! DanaHallCreates.com

Kenisha Morgan is an actress that became tired of waiting for opportunities, she decided to create them.  She is a proud alumna of Northwestern University’s theatre program in Evanston, IL, and the Atlantic Acting School’s Evening Conservatory program in NYC.  When not writing or acting, she works as a ServiceNow Developer for a tech company. Her experience in tech fuels her writing to focus on sci-fi and put people of color and women in these roles.

Meet You Downstairs

Katy Copeland is an actor, dancer, choreographer and emerging playwright living in New York City. She graduated from Western Michigan University with a BFA in Theatre and Dance and has been working professionally in film, television and theatre ever since. Credits include: Rachel on Mary Beth Barone’s Comedy Central special “Drag His Ass”, Agrippina in “Britannicus” at Theatre for the New City, featured dancer and co-choreographer in “For: Maggie”, a dance film that premiered at The Tank NYC, and featured dancer/actress in Chadwick Stoke’s music video “Mother Maple”. Katy is a certified HIIT, yoga and dance instructor and has set award winning choreography for numerous dance studios around the country. During the pandemic last year, Katy wrote her first full-length play “Meet You Downstairs” and is very excited to workshop this piece at the Voices of Women Theatre Festival in collaboration with Powerstories Theatre and Thru-Line Theatrical Production Co. in the fall of 2021. Instagram: @katycopes

Jeannette Rankin Fights Back

Beth Urech founded Speak for Yourself, Inc. and wrote her book “Speaking Globally” to help thousands of speakers adapt their messages for audiences around the world, while living in Switzerland. Returning to Chicago, Beth shed her corporate blazer to blaze a creative life. She premiered “ActYourAge!” in 2013 which she has since performed nationally and internationally. Now living in New Mexico, Beth writes for the local newspaper and sings in her husband’s jazz band. Summers they live aboard their sloop Speakeasy on Lake Michigan. Beth’s maiden name is Rankin. Discovering that she and Jeannette are related, she was inspired to write about the feisty, eloquent first woman ever elected to the US Congress.

Holy Inappropriate

Allison Fradkin delights in applying her Women’s & Gender Studies education to the creation of satirically scintillating stories that (sur)pass the Bechdel Test and enlist their characters in a caricature of the idiocies and intricacies of insidious isms. An enthusiast of accessibility and inclusivity, Fradkin freelances for her hometown of Chicago as Dramatist for Special Gifts Theatre, adapting scripts for actors of all abilities; and as Literary Manager for Violet Surprise Theatre, curating new works by queer women, trans folx, and non-binary folx. Allison’s auxiliary activities include vintage shopping, volunteering, and tending to her thespian tendencies.

Elective Amnesia

Thrü-Line, A Theatrical Production Company’s Headline Playwright, Gretchen Suárez-Peña is a long-time playwright and lover of the theatre. She’s a Puerto Rican playwright based in Central Florida. Her musical, Melina: A Steampunk Musical Tragedy was an official selection of the 2020 Atlanta Musical Theatre Festival. Other successes include winning the writer’s grant and best play in the Table Read Category at the Inaugural Be Original Festival 2019 in Orlando, Florida for her play Trafficked. Also, winning best full-length play at the 2018 Tampa Bay Theatre Festival for her show Conversations in the Car and first prize for her piece Dry Spell at the 30 by Ninety Theatre in Mandeville, Louisiana in their Night of One Acts Competition in 2018. She also had success with her show Conversations in Bed, which premiered to a sold-out audience at the 2017 Tampa Bay Theatre Festival. Her short play, The Arithmetic of Memory, was produced in New York, Rockford, and Central Florida and was published in the Stonecoast Review. A portion of her work is available to be read on the New Play Exchange and she is a proud member of the Dramatist Guild.

L’Artiste, It’s French

Joi Banks is a graduate from the University of South Florida with a degree in Finance. She has a passion for art as much as business. It was after a trip to New York where she experienced The Phantom of the Opera that Joi realized the profound cultural impact theatre could have and returned home pursuing ways to support it. Joi went to see plays. Whether a Broadway show or community theatre she went for the diversity of the experience and even spent a few years volunteering at a local theatre festival. Wanting to see stories that related to her own experiences, Joi decided toacreate. She wrote, produced and directed her original stage comedy L’Artiste, It’s French in 2018 at USF Theatre and was warmly received by the Tampa audience. The script received recognition as a 2019 ScreenCraft QuarterFinalist and the production was an official selection in of the 2019 Atlanta Black Theatre Festival. Joi hopes to continue to grow as a playwright and screenwriter to pioneer a new style of urban contemporary entertainment for the next generation by sharing unique and culturally enlightening stories on stage and film.

Neechie-itas

Jo MacDonald (She/Her) is Anishinaabe and living on Treaty 1 Territory. She is a budding beader, awesome scrunchie maker, short film creator, playwright, and a member of Prairie Theatre Exchange’s (PTE) Emerging Playwrights Unit. She created Winn Nipi, an audio piece for PTE’s Winnipeg Stories Safe at Home Manitoba Project. Her play Neechie-itas won the Native American New Play contest and was produced in Oklahoma, by the Oklahoma Indigenous Theatre Company. Other works include Mother’s Little Secret (Winnipeg Fringe), OUR HOME & native land (Sarasvati Productions FemFest Bake Off winner), Songide’ewin (Sarasvati Productions) and four radio plays SS Keenora, Fire and Ice: The Arborg Fire, The Colorado Low, and In the Blood (Theatre Projects Manitoba). She is currently working on her comedy play Land Claim.