Emerging Artists Celebration 2023

Mara Nelson-Greenberg’s work has been developed at Playwrights Horizons, Clubbed Thumb, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Berkeley Rep, and ACT Theatre, among others. Her play Do You Feel Anger? premiered at the 2018 Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville and was produced at Vineyard Theatre in 2019. She is an alum of Youngblood at Ensemble Studio Theater and Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writers Group. She received her MFA from UC-San Diego under Naomi Iizuka.

Josiah Davis (he/him) is a director, choreographer, performer, designer whose work weaves expressive movement, live music, technology, and ritual into storytelling. He is the Associate Artistic Director of On The Verge Theatre Company-Santa Barbara, a New York Theatre Workshop 2050 Fellow, Clubbed Thumb Directing Fellow, and Soul Directing Resident with the National Black Theatre. He received an MFA from Brown/Trinity Rep in Directing and a BA from UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television. Recent work: Mary Gets Hers (Playwrights Realm), Clyde’s (Alabama Shakes & Arkansas Rep), AMANI (NBT/Rattlestick), Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (TheatreWorksUSA), Omar Offrendum’s Little Syria (BAM), Associate Director of Mr. Saturday Night (Broadway). josiahdavis.net

Rudi is a playwright, educator, and performer who creates solo theater and devised theater work. As an acclaimed dancer, he has toured nationally, and internationally, competing, adjudicating, and teaching with his award-winning group Flipside Kings. Rudi is a three-time recipient of playwriting awards from the Kennedy Center, the distinguished achievement for the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award, and an O’Neill Finalist; as well as the Future Aesthetics Artist Re-grant, two Miami-Dade County Choreographer Awards, a FEAST Award for his book of poetry “A Bag of Halos and Horns,” and a Theater Masters’ Take Ten Playwright. He is a founding member of Teo Castellanos/D-Projects and Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre, and he has trained and worked with Cirque De Soleil and DV8 Physical Theater. Publications include Theater Magazine, Imagined Theatres: Writing for a Theoretical Stage, and Samuel French/Concord Theatricals. Rudi holds an MFA in playwriting from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University.

PAULA VOGEL is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright whose plays include Indecent (Tony Award nomination for Best Play), How I Learned to Drive (Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony Award nomination, the Lortel Prize, OBIE Award, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle and New York Drama Critics Awards for Best Play), The Long Christmas Ride Home, The Mineola Twins, The Baltimore Waltz, Hot’n’Throbbing, Desdemona, And Baby Makes Seven, The Oldest Profession and A Civil War Christmas. Her Mother Play play will premiere on Broadway in April 2024. In June 2020, she founded Paula Vogel’s Bard at the Gate, a uniquely curated virtual reading series designed to become a widely accessible platform for powerful, overlooked plays by BIPOC, female, LGBTQIA+, and disabled artists.  Lifetime achievement awards include:  American Theatre Hall of Fame Award, the Obie Award, and NY Drama Critics Circle Award.  She is honored to have awards dedicated to emerging playwrights in her name: The American College Theatre Festival’s Paula Vogel Award in Playwriting, and the Paula Vogel Award given annually by the Vineyard Theatre. She was the 2019 inaugural UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television Hearst Theater Lab Initiative Distinguished Playwright-in-Residence. Her plays are published in six volumes by TCG Press and her memoir will be published by Penguin Press. She teaches playwriting workshops throughout the United States and abroad. www.paulavogelplaywright.com

A five-time Tony Award winning director and choreographer most known for Crazy For You, Contact, The Scottsboro Boys, and The Producers. Her work has been honored with Olivier, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Lucille Lortel and a record six Astaire Awards.

She directed and choreographed The Producers, winner of a record-making 12 Tony Awards including Best Direction and Best Choreography.

She co-created, directed and choreographed the Tony Award winning musical Contact for Lincoln Center Theater, which was honored with a 2003 Emmy Award for “Live from Lincoln Center”.

She directed and choreographed the critically acclaimed musical The Scottsboro Boys on Broadway and in the West End, where it was honored with the Evening Standard Award for Best Musical. She most recently directed and choreographed the new Broadway musical New York, New York and she directed the Broadway play POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive.

Other Broadway credits include Oklahoma!, Show Boat, Prince of Broadway, Bullets Over Broadway, Big Fish, Young Frankenstein, Thou Shalt Not, The Music Man, The Frogs, Big, Steel Pier, Picnic, and Crazy for You.

Off-Broadway credits include: The Beast in the Jungle, Dot, Flora the Red Menace, And the World Goes ’Round, Happiness and The Last Two People on Earth: An Apocalyptic Vaudeville starring Mandy Patinkin and Taylor Mac.

For ten years she choreographed Madison Square Garden’s annual spectacular A Christmas Carol. She made her Metropolitan Opera debut directing and choreographing The Merry Widow, starring Renée Fleming.

Her London West End productions include Crazy For You, Oklahoma!, Show Boat, Contact, The Producers, and Young Frankenstein.

For New York City Ballet, she created Double Feature, a full-length ballet featuring the music of Irving Berlin and Walter Donaldson, and For the Love of Duke, featuring the music of Duke Ellington. 

‍Other ballet credits include But Not For Me for the Martha Graham Company and Take Five…More or Less for Pacific Northwest Ballet. Her choreography received an Emmy Award nomination for the HBO presentation Liza – Live from Radio City Music Hall, starring Liza Minnelli. She received the American Choreography Award for her work in Columbia Pictures feature film Center Stage. She directed and choreographed The Producers: The Movie Musical, nominated for 4 Golden Globes. 

In collaboration with the Williamstown Theatre Festival, she directed the play Photograph 51 for Audible and directed and choreographed the Broadway bound Ahrens/Flaherty musical Little Dancer for The Kennedy Center and Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theater. 

She is an Associate Director for Lincoln Center Theater and a member of the Board of Directors for the Ronald O. Perelman Center for the Performing Arts located at the World Trade Center.

She is the recipient of the George Abbott Award for Lifetime Achievement in the American Theater and an inductee of the Theater Hall of Fame in New York City.

In 2023 Colman Domingo produces and stars in the independent film Sing Sing directed by Greg Kwedar which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, which sold to A24 for a 2024 release. Colman received the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival Tribute Award for Distinguished Career Achievement. Earlier this year Domingo was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Production of a Play for the Pulitzer Prize winning play Fat Ham on Broadway. He won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama, a Hollywood Critics Association Award for Best Actor in a Limited Series/Anthology, and an Imagen Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama for his role as Ali in the HBO series Euphoria. Colman stars in an eight part limited series for Netflix entitled The Madness, directed by Clement Virgo, due in 2024.

Colman Domingo stars in the Netflix | Higher Ground film Rustin as Bayard Rustin which premiered at Telluride and TIFF. He also stars as Mister in the Warner Brothers | Oprah Winfrey | Steven Spielberg produced The Color Purple musical motion picture that premieres on Christmas Day. A two time Film Independent Spirit, Gotham, SAG, Critics Choice, NAACP Image, Tony®, Sir Lawrence Olivier, Drama Desk, Drama League and NAACP Theatre Award nominee for his work on stage and screen, Colman is an OBIE and Lucille Lortel Award winning actor, playwright, director and producer.

Colman has starred in some of the most profound films in recent years such as Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk, Steven Spielbergs’ Lincoln, Lee Daniel’s The Butler, Ava DuVernay’s Selma, Nia DaCosta’s Candyman and Janicza Bravo’s Zola. As a writer, his plays and musicals include Dot (Samuel French), Wild with Happy (Dramatist Play Service) and A Boy and His Soul (Oberon Books), the Tony Award nominated Broadway musical Summer: The Donna Summer Musical and Geffen Playhouse’s groundbreaking musical Light’s Out: Nat King Cole. His plays have been produced by The Public Theater, Vineyard, La Jolla Playhouse, Humana Festival of New American Plays, New York Stage and Film, A.C.T, The Tricycle Theater in London, Brisbane Powerhouse in Australia, among others.

Domingo received his Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from Ursinus College. He is on the faculty of University of Southern California, School of Dramatic Arts as a Professor of acting, after having served as a Juilliard School Creative Associate and a faculty member of the Yale School of Drama. He has been honored with the inaugural Denver Film CinemaQ-LaBahn Ikon Film Award, the National Hispanic Media Coalition Impact Award, the Creative Coalition Television Humanitarian Award and the Atlanta’s Out On Film Icon Award. Through his award-winning production company, Edith Productions, Colman develops television, film, theater and animation projects.