meet the Judges

Andrea Alton

Andrea Alton is a New York based actor, writer, comic/improviser. As a solo performer, Andrea has written and performed four solo shows including White (Trash) Wedding (The PIT), The F*cking World According to Molly (FringeNYC/TerraNOVA Solo Festival/Dublin Theatre Festival), Possum Creek (FringeNYC) and Molly’s World (FrigidNY). She’s also written two comedies with Allen Warnock including Carl & Shelly; Best Friends Forever (FringeNYC & commercial run) and A Microwaved Burrito Filled with E. coli (FringeNYC). She is the creator of the popular character Molly “Equality” Dykeman and has performed the character to sold-out houses all over New York City including The Laurie Beechman Theatre, FringeNYC, Gotham Comedy Club, Dixon Place, UCB, The PIT, Emerging Artists, Frigid NY, Comix, NY Sketch Fest, among others. National performances include the San Francisco Comedy Fest, DC Sketch Fest, Chicago Sketch Fest and Provincetown, MA during Women's Week. International performances include the Dublin Gay International Theatre Festival and Toronto Sketch Fest. In 2015, Andrea won The Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award. She is a proud member of Emerging Artists Theatre, TOSOS (The Other Side of Silence), SAG/AFTRA and Actors Equity Association. Andrea is also a publicist for off and off-off Broadway theatre. www.andreaalton.world www.altonprandproduction.com

J.Stephen Brantley

J.Stephen Brantley is a playwright and performer whose work includes Billy Baal, The Emilies, Eightythree Down, Furbelow, The Jamb, Shruti Gupta Can Totally Deal, and The Wedded Bachelors Of Second Garrote. Theatre 167’s production of his play Pirira was named Outstanding Premiere Production at the 2014 New York Innovative Theatre Awards before transferring Off-Broadway, and then opening regionally at Luna Stage. Brantley has also written in collaboration with Theatre 167 on The Jackson Heights Trilogy plays and The Church Of Why Not. His acclaimed one-man autobiographical ‘recovery cabaret’ Chicken-Fried Ciccone: A Twangy True Tale Of Transformation, directed by Obie-winner David Drake, played to audiences in New York, Dublin, Provincetown, and East Hampton. He is an eight-time NYIT nominee, an O’Neill semifinalist, and recipient of the 2017 Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award. More at jstephebrantley.com.

Renee' Flemings


Renee´ Flemings: Recipient of the 2020 (2021) Quick Silver Theatre Company’s POC Summit. Her plays include: empty spaces, What Did You Do? Fact Checking, The Brotherhood and Strange Weather (O’Neill Finalist) with readings at Roundabout Theatre Company (NYC), New Federal Theatre, The New Professional Theatre and Centenary Theatre. Additional plays include Rendered, Daddy’s Home, Coyote Calls, Monsters, Secondhand Smoke, Legend, BFFS, Scars (Sam French Finalist) and The Jam (Genesis Festival @ Crossroads Theatre and The Blank Theatre in L.A.) ADDITIONAL WORKS: Love Rose (Book and lyrics): Transgressions (Festival of New Works); A full-length multi-media work about the Little Rock Nine, With All Deliberate Speed. Renee´is the writer/performer of a number of solo shows including From the Front Porch, “…secrets…”, The Bible Belt, and Women Power & The Bard. She is producer/director of the award -winning short film adaptation of her play The Brotherhood. Publications include: Bounce & Roll, Bel Canto, Rewind and The Visitation (Bechdel Plays). Renee´is the author of It Started With A Kiss, a collection of short stories. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, SAG-

AFTRA, AEA and Honor Roll. She is a singer/songwriter with the blues band Alias Smith & Jones formerly known as Renee´& The Derelicts.

Kevin R. Free

Kevin R. Free is a multidisciplinary artist whose work as a storyteller has been showcased many places, including Target Margin, the Where Project, QED: A Place for Storytelling; and on the Moth Mainstage. As an actor, Kevin has appeared on television and in film.

New York audiences have seen Mr. Free Off-Broadway, playing the role of Bellomy in The Fantasticks (the first African-American to play the role in the New York Production's 54-year history). His plays include Face Value; (Not) Just a Day Like Any Other (written & performed with Christopher Borg, Jeffrey Cranor, and Eevin Hartsough; recipient, 2009 NY IT Award for Outstanding Ensemble); and A Raisin in the Salad: Black Plays for White People, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, or TRIPLE CONSCIOUSNESS, and You Are in An Open Field (written & performed with Eevin Hartsough, Marta Rainer, Carl Riehl, and Adam Smith); Night of the Living N-Word!! (FringeNYC 2016); AM I DEAD? The Untrue Narrative of Anatomical Lewis, The Slave (Commission from Flux Theatre Ensemble); BALBOA IS NOT DROWNING. In 2010, He was named one of NYTheatre.com’s 15 people of the year. Mr. Free has produced a borough-wide celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Louis Armstrong’s “What A Wonderful World” in Queens Libraries. He is the former Education Director of Queens Theatre in the Park, bringing arts to underserved communities in Queens. He is former Producing Artistic Director of The Fire This Time Festival, a platform for early career playwrights of the African Diaspora, winning an Obie for his efforts in 2015. He maintains a collaboration with Frigid New York as curator of QUEERLY, a multi-arts LGBTQ+ festival. He is the 2014 winner of the Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award.

Donnetta Lavinia Grays

Donnetta Lavinia Grays is a Brooklyn based playwright-actor from Columbia, SC. Her plays include Where We Stand, Warriors Don’t Cry, Last Night and the Night Before, Laid to Rest, and The Review or How to Eat Your Opposition among others. Donnetta is a Lucille Lortel, Drama League, and AUDELCO Award Nominee. She has received the Whiting Award for Drama, the Helen Merrill Playwright Award, NTC’s Barrie and Bernice Stavis Playwright Award, Lilly Award, Todd McNerney National Playwriting Award, and is the inaugural recipient of the Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award. She holds commissions with Steppenwolf, Denver Center, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, WP Theater, and True Love Productions. Acting credits include Broadway: In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play andWell. Off-Broadway: Where We Stand (WP Theater/Baltimore Centerstage), Men on Boats (Playwrights Horizons/Clubbed Thumb), O Earth (The Foundry Theatre), Of Government, Tin Cat Shoes and 16 Words or Less (all with Clubbed Thumb), Be the Death of Me and In the Footprint (The Civilians), andShipwrecked! An Entertainment (Primary Stages). Regional Theater: American Conservatory Theater, Barrington Stage, Westport Country Playhouse, Arena Stage, Hartford Theaterworks, Portland Stage Company, Baltimore Centerstage,

Huntington Theatre, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She is a 2-time Connecticut Critic's Circle Award Winner and a Helen Hayes Award Nominee. Film: The Book of Henry, Wild Canaries,The English Teacher, and The Wrestler. TV: New Amsterdam,Happy!, Rubicon, Mercy and Law and Order: SVU, High Maintenance, The Night Of, Blue Bloods, The Blacklist, A Gifted Man, Law and Order, Law and Order: CI, and The Sopranos.

Julienne Hairston

Julienne L. Hairston was born in Kenitra, Morocco. She lives and writes in New Rochelle, New York. She received her BA in Creative Writing from Hunter College, NY. She was selected to participate in Hunter College’s inaugural MFA in Playwriting with Tony-Nominated Playwright Tina Howe. She has written for Our Men Productions and The Mission Herald. Her plays have been featured in Hunter’s Playwrights festival; Project Y’s Racey Play Festival; Obie-award winning The Fire This Time Festival (season six); Project Y’s Techno Plays; Project Y’s Parity Plays; NY Indie Theater Annual one-minute Play Festival; Project Y’s Women in Theater Festival; Madness Theater Ten Minute Festival. Julienne was a member of Project Y’s 2015-2017 Playwright Group. She was commissioned to write for WIT The Hrosthwitha Project 2017. She was a contributing member with Athena Writes 2017 fellowship. In 2018 She became a company member playwright with NYMadness. 2020 Tutti Bravi produced Little Rock of the North. Julienne is an Associate Producer with TFTT.

Barbara Kahn

Barbara Kahn is a multi-award winning playwright, actor and director. She started acting in Philadelphia while a teenager. She returned to Philadelphia in 1998 to appear in her own play "CO-OP" and in 1999 in "Cyma's Story." "Cyma's Story" was presented in Los Angeles by the Jewish Women's Theatre Project in NOHO (North Hollywood) Theatre Festival and the University of Gutenberg in Mainz, Germany, in 2003. She has directed plays in New York, Paris and at the National Theatre in London. Barbara's plays have been produced in New York, California, Boston and Philadelphia and have won awards on both coasts. Theater for the New City has been the New York City home for her plays since 1994. Unorthodox Behavior was presented by Moving Parts Theatre Group in Paris, France in January 2003. Barbara was honored with the TORCH OF HOPE AWARD for "lifetime achievement." She received the JAMES R. QUIRK AWARD for the Performing Arts for her "memorable contributions to American theatre" and was awarded participation in The Field's Independent Artist Challenge Program. Barbara's play "Whither Thou Goest" was published in the anthology, MAKING A SCENE: The Contemporary Drama of Jewish-American Women. Her work was also published in More Monologues for Women by Women, Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly and All In the Seasoning (Bywater Books). Memorabilia from her early productions is in the permanent collection of the Cultural History Collection at the New York State Museum in Albany. She co-authored the lyrics for the song "Actions Are the Music of the Free" for "Bringing Beijing Home" rally at NYU, later performed at the United Nations Memorial to Dame Nita Barrow, and at the 17th Annual Lower East Side Festival of the Arts. Barbara has been a panelist at the OutWrite conference in Boston and a panel moderator at the International Conference of Gay and Lesbian Jewish Organizations. She was the sole U.S. presenter at the Jewish Women’s Writing Conference in Mainz, Germany in 2003. She is a member of The Dramatists Guild, Sisters On Stage

(co-founder), Actors Equity Association and Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA). Barbara received the Robert Chesley Foundation /Helene Wurlitzer Foundation Award for achievement in Playwriting. She received the award for Best Short Play for "CO-OP" at the 2012 Downtown Urban Theatre Festival. Barbara was the recipient of a 2017 Acker Award for her work in the Theater. Barbara was the recipient of the 2019 Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award. Barbara is a member of the Actors Fund Performing Arts Legacy Project. https://performingartslegacy.org/kahn/