James Ijames

play 1: Moon man walk
community development & marketing

James is a Philadelphia based actor and playwright. He has appeared regionally at The Arden Theatre Company, The Philadelphia Theatre Company, The Wilma Theatre, Baltimore Center Stage and Interact Theatre Company. James’ plays include The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington (Flashpoint Theater), Moon Man Walk (Orbiter 3), WHITE (upcoming, Theater Horizon), Kill Move Paradise, Matter Out of Place, Abandon, The Threshing Floor, and Osiris:Redux.

His plays have been developed at PlayPenn (...Miz Martha, WHITE), the Wilma Theater, InterAct Theatre Company, and the Gulfshore Playhouse New Works Festival.

He is the recipient of the F. Otto Haas Award for an Emerging Artist, two Barrymores for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Play, and a Barrymore for Best Direction of a Play. James is an Independence Foundation Fellow, a 2015 Pew Fellow, the 2015 recipient of the Terrence McNally New Play Award (WHITE), and the 2015 Kesselring Honorable Mention Prize (...Miz Martha). He is Assistant Professor of Theatre at Villanova University. BA in Drama, Morehouse College; MFA in Acting, Temple University.

Emma Goidel

play 2: a knee that can bend
marketing & Graphic Design

Emma's plays include The Gap (upcoming: Azuka Theatre, 2017; developed at Ars Nova, Labyrinth Theatre Co., and Theatre Exile); A Knee That Can Bend (Orbiter 3, finalist for seven Barrymore Awards, American Theater Critics Association/Steinberg Award nominee); Local Girls (Azuka Theatre, developed at Playwrights Realm); and We Can All Agree To Pretend This Never Happened (Tiny Dynamite & InterAct Theatre Co. in Philly, Òran Mór in Glasgow, Ensemble Studio Theatre in NYC).

Her work has been supported and developed through residencies and fellowships at Ars Nova, Playwrights Realm, InterAct Theatre Company, the Playwright’s Center in Minneapolis, New York Stage & Film, and PlayPenn’s Philadelphia writing workshop, The Foundry.

Emma was a finalist for the 2016 F. Otto Haas Award, the Virginia Brown Martin Philadelphia Award (with Orbiter 3), the Independence Foundation Award for an Outstanding New Play/Musical, and the 2015 Princess Grace Award, and was a 2017 Lanford Wilson Award nominee. EmmaGoidel.com

Maura Krause

play 4: breathe smoke (director)
Artistic director

Maura is a new work director, dramaturg and producer. She is a former National New Play Network Producer-in-Residence at InterAct Theatre Company, and is an Associated Artist with Applied Mechanics. Maura has also worked with the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, EMP Collective, PlayPenn, The Renegade Company, Arcadia University, Philadelphia Young Playwrights, and Tiny Dynamite, among others.

Recent projects include Lost in the Meadow (PearlDamour), Red Ash Mosaic (Cleveland Public Theatre), Breathe Smoke by Douglas Williams (Orbiter 3), flesh flesh flesh: A Ghost Play by Lena Barnard (self-produced), Dogs of Rwanda by Sean Christopher Lewis (InterAct), and Tilda Swinton Adopt Me Please (The Greenfield Collective).

Emily Acker

Play 3: I Am not my motherland
operations & development

Acker is a founding member of Orbiter 3, and was a Core Playwright at InterAct Theatre Company (2014-2016). Her plays include The Matter of Nadiyah Hassan (development: Azuka Theatre & Northwestern University), Kill Me Softly, Lower Merion (development: InterAct Theatre Company & The Foundry) and I Am Not My Motherland (2016 Finalist O’Neill Playwrights Conference, produced: Orbiter 3) and BRUTISH (development: InterAct Theatre Company).

She contributed to the final season of "All My Children" on Hulu+ and is the creator of the remake of "Three Up Two Down" with The Weinstein Company.

She received her B.S. from Northwestern University.

Douglas Williams

Play 4: breathe smoke
press, membership & marketing

Williams is the Playwright-In-Residence at Azuka Theatre. His play Shitheads (Azuka Theatre) was the winner of four Philadelphia Critics' Awards including Best New Play and Best Overall Production. Other plays include Moon Cave (Azuka Theatre) and Breathe Smoke (The Painted Bride & Orbiter 3).

Williams has had two plays developed at PlayPenn (Moon Cave, Shitheads), he was a finalist for the Lark’s Playwrights Week, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and InterAct’s 20/20 Commission. His plays have also been developed at  Bristol Riverside Theatre, New York Theatre Experiment, Act II Playhouse, Distilled Theatre Company, and the Philadelphia New Play Initiative.

Williams’ experimental and collaborative work has been produced in the SoLow Fest (Four’s the Floor, Solstice) and the FringeArts Festival (Holly’s Dead Soldiers, Safe Space). Playwright Sam Shepard presented him with the Silver Award from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts.

Williams is a former member of the Foundry, a lab for new plays, and a company member of the Apocalypse Club. He is a graduate of Temple University. douglaswilliamsplaywright.com

L Feldman

development

L Feldman is a playwright (Another Kind of Silence, Amanuensis, The Egg-Layers, A People, Fill Our Mouths, Grace, or the Art of Climbing), a devised-work collaborator (And If You Lose Your Way, Or A Food Odyssey, Lady M, The Apocryphal Project), a dramaturg, an adjunct professor of playwriting (Bryn Mawr College), and a creator-performer of theatrical contemporary circus (Tinder & Ash).

She has been nominated for the New York Innovative Theatre Award, Barrie and Bernice Stavis Playwright Award, Wendy Wasserstein Prize, Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, ATCA/Steinberg New Play Award, Barrymore Award, Carbonell Award, and the Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award. A graduate of both the Yale School of Drama and the New England Center for Circus Arts, Lauren is also a New Georges Affiliated Artist, a member-mentor of The Foundry, and a 2015-2016 Playwrights Realm Fellow. Hailing from Miami, Florida, she has lived in seven cities and is now in Philadelphia. www.laurenfeldman.com

Sam Henderson

marketing & production

Sam is a local actor who has appeared at the Arden Theatre Company, Lantern Theater Company, Theatre Exile, and the Wilma Theater, among others. Recent productions include 100 (2015 FringeArts Festival) and the Renegade Company's Damned Dirty Apes!. Readings include The Brownings (PTC@Play Festival) and HEART (Theatre Exile's Studio X-Hibition Series). A recent finalist for the Smith Prize for Political Theatre, Sam is a member of InterAct Theatre's Core Writer's Program, and the Foundry, a lab for emerging playwrights.

Mary Tuomanen

development

Mary is a graduate of the Lecoq School of Movement Theatre in Paris and a 2014 finalist for the Haas Emerging Artist Award. Her solo work has been performed at the Annenberg Center (Saint Joan, Betrayed, 2014) Bloomsberg Theater Ensemble,  and the Kimmel Center Innovation Studio (Hello! Sadness!, 2015), among others. 

Hello! Sadness! was developed through an invitation to the Dael Orlandersmith Solo Performance Residency at the Kimmel Center. Her physical theater collaboration with Aaron Cromie, The Body Lautrec, was supported by the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage and the O'Neill National Puppetry Conference. She has also collaborated on commissions from the American Philosophical Society (A Paper Garden, 2011) and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Between Clinics, 2016). In 2017, she will have the inaugural residency at Christ Church Neighborhood House for her Orbiter 3 play.

As a performer, she has worked in many regional theaters including the Arden, Interact, Azuka, People's Light and Theater Company, Actor's Theatre of Louisville, and most recently, Opera Philadelphia/Bearded Ladies premiere of Andy: A Popera, in which she starred as young Andy Warhol.

Her play Marcus/Emma was developed at Theatre Exile in 2015 and will premiere in the 2016-17 Interact Theater season. She is an InterAct Core Writer, a member of the Foundry and a company member of Applied Mechanics, an immersive theater ensemble. www.appliedmechanics.us