Hosted by
Catherine
Whiteman
Produced by
Eric Berg
Echo Theatre's podcast lures listeners out of the audience and into
the world of Creatives: playwrights, producers, directors and more!
It's Intelligent, Intimate dialogue with Impactful Women+ of Theater.
Season 6 Guest Circle
"Kindred Spirits"
Produced by Eric Berg. Sound Engineer Isaac Young.
Guinea Bennett-Price / 03.20.24 Season 6 : Episode 1
Guinea Bennett Price is an actor, director, playwright, teaching artist, and theatre educator. She has been the Director of the Theatre Conservatory at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts since 2013 and received the Irma P. Hall Arts Mentorship Medal in 2018.
She has directed numerous productions including Black Nativity, The Freedmans, In the Blood, for colored girls…, Once on This Island and Dreamgirls. In 2022, she directed SoulRep’s sold-out run of Travisville, the debut play by William Jackson Harper.
Rebecca Martínez is an award-winning director, writer, producer, and choreographer and has served as the BOLD Associate Artistic Director of WP Theatre since 2020. She has directed productions of: I Am My Own Wife (Long Wharf Theatre); Mojada (Repertory Theatre of St. Louis), Miss You Like Hell (Baltimore Center Stage), Wolf at the Door (Milagro Theatre, NNPN rolling world premiere), and Anna in the Tropics (Fine Arts Center, Colorado Springs).
She is an ensemble member with Sojourn Theatre and has worked with INTAR, Signature Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, the Lark, New Dramatists, Milagro Theatre, and Brave New World Repertory Theatre among many others!
Nidia Medina is the Associate Producer and Director of the Studio at Theatre for a New Audience. Other producing positions include being a Line Producer at The Public Theater and was recently named the Producing Director at INTAR.
She produced the internationally touring one-woman show The God Box, off-off Broadway shows, fundraiser performances, and some wacky variety shows. She’s held a variety of other positions in the theater, and has spent the past ten years backstage, onstage and in the offices of some great NYC theater companies — including Cherry Lane, Ars Nova, MCC, MTC, and LAByrinth Theatre Company. She holds a BFA in Acting from Emerson College and a Master’s degree in Arts and Cultural Management from Pratt Institute.
Becca Blackwell / 04.03.24 Season 6 : Episode 3
Becca is a NYC-based trans actor, performer, and writer. Existing between genders, and using the pronoun "they," Blackwell works collaboratively with playwrights and directors to expand our sense of personhood and the body through performance.
As an actor, their screen credits include High Maintenance, Shameless, and Marriage Story. On stage, they appeared in the Obie Award-winning production of Is This a Room on Broadway and originated the titular role in Madeline George’s Hurricane Diane.
Their solo shows They, Themself and Schmerm and Schmermie's Choice have toured nationally and their show Snatch Adams and Tainty McCracken Present: It’s That Time of the Month just finished its extended run at Soho Rep.
Women's Theatre Festival:
Johannah Maynard Edwards / 04.10.2024 Season 6 : Episode 4
Johannah is a director, producer, and theatre advocate who has created theatre in New York, Minneapolis, and North Carolina. She is the Executive Artistic Director of the National Women’s Theatre Festival based in Raliegh, NC.
She is also a Chief Rep for the Parent Artist Advocacy League and serves on the South East Theatre Conference Equity Diversity Inclusion + Access Task Force. Johannah is a graduate of NYU/Tisch School of the Arts/Playwrights Horizons Theatre School.
Hilary Bettis / 04.17.24 Season 6 : Episode 5
Hilary Bettis is a playwright, screenwriter, and producer. Her work as a playwright includes The Ghosts of Lote Bravo (NNPN Rolling World Premiere), Alligator (New Georges), Queen of Basel (a bilingual adaptation of Miss Julie), and 72 miles to go... (Roundabout Theatre, 2019 Egerton Foundation New Play Award & Blackburn Prize finalist)
In television, Bettis won the 2019 WGA Award for her work on the Golden Globe and Emmy Award winning FX series The Americans. She wrote for the Hulu miniseries The Dropout, starring Amanda Seyfried. She has also written and produced four short films: B’Hurst, The Iron Warehouse, Amarillo by Morning and Connor.
Bettis is a graduate of The Juilliard School. Bettis is a member of the Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group at Primary Stages, Ensemble Studio Theater, a Usual Suspect at NYTW, an Affiliated Artist at New Georges, The Kilroys, and a proud member of the WGA.
Dallas Children's Theater:
Robyn Flatt / 04.24.24 Season 6 : Episode 6
Robyn Flatt is a renowned actor, director, & arts leader in Dallas, Texas. She was a member of the Dallas Theater Center Resident Acting Company for 20 years. She was nominated for Texan of the Year in 2010 by Dallas Morning News.
Robyn founded the Dallas Children’s Theater and served as executive & artistic director for forty years. Under her leadership, DCT was named one of the top five children’s theatres in the country by Time Magazine.
Lauren Gunderson / 05.03.2023 Season 6 : BONUS Episode 7
Lauren is a playwright, screenwriter and short story author from Atlanta, GA. She received her BA in English/Creative Writing at Emory University, and her MFA in Dramatic Writing at NYU Tisch, where she was also a Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship.
She has been one of the most produced playwrights in America (American Theatre Magazine) since 2015, topping the list thrice including 22/23.
To kick off its 25th Season, Echo produced two plays by Lauren Gunderson, so Catherine sits down with Lauren to dig into Natural Shocks, I and You, and how she came to be America's most produced playwright (spelled w-r-i-g-h-t)!
Season 5 Guest Circle
"Reinvention"
Produced by Eric Berg, Kateri Cale, and Jonathan Villalobos
Danielle Georgiou / 08.03.2022 Season 5 : Episode 1
Danielle is a first-generation Cypriot-American director, choreographer, and performer based in Dallas, TX. Her stage and video work deal with puzzles found in gender and cultural identity—vulnerability, deformity, and beauty. With her performance project, the Danielle Georgiou Dance Group, Georgiou has created and directed a series of collaborative, devised dance theatre productions and dance musicals. She is particularly interested in the interplay of performative elements and collaborative, devising techniques eliciting a response from an audience. In addition, she is a Movement Coach, Intimacy Director, and a Professor of Dance, Humanities, and Visual Arts at Dallas College-Eastfield Campus. She is also the former Associate Artistic Director of The Undermain Theatre.
Ariana Cook / 08.10.2022 Season 5 : Episode 2
Ariana is an actor, director, arts administrator, and all-around theatre-maker in Dallas, Texas. She received her Masters Degree in Drama from Texas Woman's University and her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Musical Theatre from Sam Houston State. Ariana is an anti-racist facilitator and also recently served as the Managing Director of Cara Mía Theatre.
Ariana is an alumnus of the Lincoln Directors Lab in New York and the inaugural artEquity Cohort that convened at Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She is an Artistic Ensemble Member of Cara Mía Theatre Company, where she wrote, directed, and starred in her original play, Where Earth Meets the Sky.
Kathy A. Perkins / 08.17.2022 Season 5 : Episode 3
Kathy is an award-winning lighting designer, theatre historian, and educator. Her lighting designs have been seen across the country at regional theatres such as the American Conservatory Theatre, St. Louis Black Repertory, the Goodman, Steppenwolf, Manhattan Theatre Club, Actors Theatre of Louisville, and many, many more. Most recently, she became the second Black woman to design lights on Broadway for the production of Alice Childress’s Trouble in Mind.
As a theatre scholar, she has edited or co-edited seven anthologies on Black theatre and serves as the senior editor for Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance. She has also served as co-curator and theatrical consultant for Lincoln Center and the Smithsonian. She has served as faculty member at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Smith College, and University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. She received her BFA in Drama from Howard University and her M.F.A. in Lighting Design from the University of Michigan. In 2021, the University of Michigan awarded her a Doctor of Fine Arts.
Jaynie Saunders Tiller / 08.24.2022 - Season 5 : Episode 4
Jaynie is the managing director and producer at New Georges, a strategically small theater company with a national reputation for taking a first look at new and experimental plays and artists and as a home for women+ and TGNC theater artists. Previously, she worked at the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York and as part of her graduate studies, worked at Brooklyn Academy of Music, New Dramatists, and the Princess Grace Foundation. Before moving to New York, she worked for five years in the artistic office at Dallas Theater Center, where she co-produced the Fresh Ink/Forward Motion Series, a showcase of new works. Currently, Jaynie is an adjunct faculty member at Marymount Manhattan College. She has previously taught at Brooklyn College (her alma mater) and Montclair State University and has served on panels for the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Brooklyn Arts Council, A.R.T./New York and Theatre Communications Group. Jaynie holds a B.F.A. in Drama Performance and a B.F.A. in Musical Theatre Performance from The University of Oklahoma and an M.F.A. in Performing Arts Management from Brooklyn College.
Liz Mikel / 08.31.2022 Season 5 : Episode 5
Liz is an award-winning stage/film actress and vocalist who has toured both nationally and abroad, working alongside some of the industry's biggest celebrities. She had a recurring role as Corrina Williams on NBC's Emmy-Award-Winning Series, Friday Night Lights. She body slammed Ben Stiller in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. She portrayed Gertrude Saunders opposite the late, great Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis in the James Brown biopic, Get On Up. Liz has appeared Off-Broadway and on Broadway as Hetaira in Lysistrata Jones. Liz had the prestigious honor of being personally invited by Activist/Playwright, V, to participate in the star-studded 10th anniversary of the Vagina Monologues. Most recently, she portrayed John Hancock in American Repertory Theatre’s revival of 1776 in Boston, which moved to Broadway from Sept 16, 2022, through January 9, 2023, and then toured nationally. As a vocalist, Liz has opened for Erykah Badu, Branford Marsalis, Isaac Hayes, Joan Rivers, Gennifer Flowers, Chrisette Michele, Ledisi and her friend, Blues legend, Lucky Peterson. Liz is a proud member of the Brierley Resident Acting Company of the Tony-Award-winning Dallas Theater Center, where she has just celebrated her 30th year!
_edited.jpg)
Lynn Nottage / 10.07.2022 Season 5 : Episode 6
Lynn Nottage is a playwright and a screenwriter. She remains the first and only woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama - twice. Most recently, Nottage premiered MJ the Musical on Broadway, Clyde's at Second Stage Theater on Broadway, and an opera adaptation of her play Intimate Apparel commissioned by The Met/Lincoln Center Theater. Her other work includes, Floyd's (retitled- Clyde's); the musical adaptation of Sue Monk Kidd's novel The Secret Life of Bees; Mlima’s Tale; By The Way, Meet Vera Stark; Ruined; Intimate Apparel; Fabulation, or The Re-Education of Undine; Crumbs from the Table of Joy; Las Meninas; Mud, River, Stone; Por’knockers; and POOF! Her play, Sweat (Pulitzer Prize, Obie Award, Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Tony Nomination) moved to Broadway after a sold-out run at The Public Theater. Lynn is also the co-founder of the production company Market Road Films and she has developed original projects for Amazon, HBO, Showtime, and many others. She was a writer and producer on the Netflix series She's Gotta Have It, directed by Spike Lee. Lynn is the recipient of a MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellowship, Steinberg "Mimi" Distinguished Playwright Award, and many, many others, including being named one of the Top 100 Most Influential People by Time Magazine in 2019. She is a graduate of Brown University and the Yale School of Drama. She is an Associate Professor in the Theatre Department at Columbia School of the Arts.
Season 4 Guest Circle
"Balancing Act"
Produced by Eric Berg, Lauren Floyd, and Jonathan Villalobos
Actor's Roundtable:
Gloria Vivica Benavides, Jenny Ledel,
and Denise Lee / 03.16.2022 Season 4 : Episode 6
Gloria Vivica Benavides earned her BFA in Theatre from the University of North Texas. Credits include Real Women Have Curves and White Rabbit, Red Rabbit (Dallas Theater Center); Dracula (Theatre Three); A Doll’s House, Elliot, and A Soldier’s Fugue (WaterTower Theatre); Romeo and Juliet (Stage West); Where Earth Meets the Sky (Cara Mia Theatre), so go the ghosts of mexico, part two (Undermain Theatre), Within (Walkabout Theater), American Mariachi (Goodman Theatre), and Somewhere Over the Border (Syracuse Stage and Geva Theatre Center). She is currently the voice of Scarlett on One Piece with FUNimation and is represented by the Campbell Agency.
Jenny Ledel is an actor with over 15 years professional experience in stage acting, screen acting, and voiceover. She specializes in both the dramatic and the hilarious. She also teaches acting to interested adults, writes, acts in, and directs plays in her free time. She’s a fearless improviser unafraid to make bold choices when given the chance. She’s grateful for her husband, family, mentors, and her cat for their unending support and inspiration. She’s currently an artistic Associate at Second Thought Theatre and an acting company member at Kitchen Dog Theater in Dallas, TX. She has also worked with Circle Theatre, Theatre Three, Firebone Theatre, Watertower Theatre, Undermain Theatre, and more.
Denise Lee is an award-winning actress, singer and down-to-earth diva! She is based in Dallas and has worked in many area theaters, including the Dallas Theater Center, AT&T Performing Arts Center, Bass Hall, WaterTower Theatre, Casa Manana and the Sammons Center for the Arts. She has also worked internationally in Shanghai, Beijing, Switzerland and France. Her company, Denise Lee Onstage, produces a Cabaret Series at Fair Park, and she has also developed multiple one-woman shows, including Too Old, Too Fat, Too Black – Songs I’ll Never Sing On Broadway for which she won a Broadway World Award for Best Cabaret Performer. She is the recipient of the Sammons Center for the Arts Cabaret Artist of the Year and multiple DFW Theater Critics and Dallas Voice Awards. Other performances include The Sunshine Boys – with Dick & Jerry Van Dyke; Crowns – Directed by playwright Regina Taylor, The Wiz, A Christmas Carol, Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill, Doubt, Avenue Q and Intimate Apparel. Denise Lee Onstage co-produced Ruined with Echo Theatre and she played the role of Mama Nadi. Her television and film acting credits include roles in Mad Money, with Diane Keaton, Cowgirls & Angels, with James Cromwell, Dallas, Memphis Beat, The Good Guys and The Lying Game.
Glory Kadigan / 03.09.2022 / Season 4 : Episode 5
Glory founded Planet Connections Theatre Festivity and currently serves as the Artistic Curator and Executive Producer of their renowned Playwrights For A Cause benefit. Under “Playwrights For A Cause” she has presented world premieres by Erik Ehn, Halley Feiffer, Israel Horovitz, Neil LaBute, Wendy MacLeod, Winter Miller, Dominique Morissea, Jose Rivera, John Patrick Shanley, and Regina Taylor. She is an alum of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, La Mama Directors and Playwriting Symposium and of The Labyrinth Theater Company’s Master Class.
She is a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers and the Actors Studio, PDU, and she has been the recipient of the Meritorious Achievement Award in Direction from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. Her directing credits include Clover (La Mama), Safe (the 14th Street Y), Mean Girls (Alvin Ailey), and Biting The Bullet (The Atlantic). Glory is a member of the League of Professional Theatre Women which works to promote the visibility of women in the arts.
Yvonne Miranda / 03.02.2022 / Season 4 : Episode 4
Yvonne is a costume, fashion, and scenic designer, as well as a US Marine veteran. Her passion for visual storytelling has led to work as a freelance fashion illustrator (where her art was featured on the Real Housewives of Dallas,) to designing the shirt worn by the 50-foot animatronic mascot Big Tex at the 2016-2018 Texas State Fair while working as the design coordinator for apparel company Williamson-Dickie.
A recent graduate from Meadows School of the Arts at SMU with an M.F.A. degree in Stage Design, she has garnered such achievements as the competitive Television Academy's costume design internship, as well as winning the 2019 Black Theatre Network's Judy Dearing Costume Design Competition. She recently married & relocated to the Chicago, IL area where she has several exciting productions all over the U.S. as a new member of the USA local 829, I.A.T.S.E Union, as well as the Design Action coalition.
Adrienne Dawes / 02.23.2022 / Season 4 : Episode 3
Adrianne is an Afro-Latina writer, producer, and teaching artist from Austin, TX. She received her bachelor’s degree from Sarah Lawrence College and studied sketch and improv with The Second City. Adrienne has been a resident artist with Colt Coeur, an Alice Judson Hayes Fellow, a MAPFund, NEA, and NALAC Fund for the Arts grantee, and a selected playwright in the 2018 Fornés Playwriting Workshop. Her play Am I White won an award for Outstanding Original Script by the B. Iden Payne Awards.
Her full-length plays have been produced by Salvage Vanguard Theater, Sacred Fools, and American Theatre Company. She has developed new work with The Workshop Theater, Queen City New Play Initiative, Stages Repertory Theatre, Teatro Milagro, National Black Theatre, and more. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, ScriptWorks, and a company member of Salvage Vanguard Theater. (And a reading of her play, Teen Dad, was produced through Echo Reads in 2017!)
Estefania Fadul / 02.16.2022 / Season 4 : Episode 2
Estafania is a New York-based Colombian-American director and deviser of new work. Her recent projects include The Garbologists (Philadelphia Theatre Company), Eva Luna (Repertorio Español), the Drama League Award-nominated Carla's Quince (The Voting Project), Kamloopa (WAM), Zoom Intervention (Weston Playhouse, NYTimes Critics' Pick), and the world premieres of C. Quintana's Azul (Southern Rep) and Scissoring (INTAR).
She was the 2020 recipient of New York Stage and Film's Pfaelzer Award and has been a directing fellow at Clubbed Thumb, the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, the Drama League, and Repertorio Español. She is also an artist with the Center for Performance and Civic Practice and a member of the New Georges Jam, The Latinx Theatre Commons advisory committee, and the Lincoln Center Theatre Directors Lab.
Tina Parker / 02.10.2022 Season 4 : Episode 1
Tina is a graduate of Southern Methodist University Theatre, where she studied acting and directing. Active with Kitchen Dog Theater since 1993, she has been directly involved with over 58 of their productions. Her work has also been seen at the Dallas Theater Center, Junior Players, Shakespeare Dallas, WaterTower Theatre, Undermain Theatre, and the Arts & Letters Live Reading series.
Tina has appeared in many film and TV projects, including MINARI, WHAT/IF, and a recurring role on the award-winning Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad. Over the years, she has received awards from Dallas/Ft. Worth Critics Forum, Leon Rabin Awards, D Magazine and Dallas Observer. Tina is an active member of SAG/AFTRA.
Season 3 Guest Circle
"A New Direction"
Produced by Eric Berg, Jonathan Villalobos, and Kateri Cale
Regina Taylor part I / 09.08.21 Season 3: Episode 4
Regina Taylor part II / 09.15.21 Season 3: Episode 5
With an impressive body of work that encompasses film, television, theatre and writing, Regina Taylor is best known to television audiences as Lilly Harper in the series I'll Fly Away and as Molly Blane in CBS's hit drama The Unit. In Part I of Catherine's conversation with the Golden Globe award-winning actress, they discuss life-lessons from Regina's mother, how she got started acting, and working with Spike Lee.
In Part II of Catherine's discussion with Regina Taylor, they discuss her work as a playwright, from her acclaimed musical Crowns to her Trinity River Play Cycle set in Dallas, TX.
Natalie Nicole Dressel / 09.01.21 Season 3: Episode 3
Catherine is joined by actress, stand-up comedian, poet, and playwright Natalie Nicole Dressel to discuss sadness in comedy, making "mistakes," and her play There is Evil in This House, which was presented in our Echo Reads series in October 2021!
Natalie is a transgender writer/actress currently living in North Hollywood, California, but is originally from Muskegon, MI. She has a BFA in theatre from Michigan State University and a Masters in Writing for the Stage and Screen from Park Point University. She is a stand up comic who won the 2012 Funniest Mouth of the South contest in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and is a graduate of United Citizens Brigade LA's improvisation program.
Christie Vela Associate Artistic Director / Theatre Three
Theatre Three illuminates the human experience with exemplary, intimate theatre by nurturing authors, artists and audiences. Theatre Three is a recognized pillar of the North Texas arts community ― enriching lives by bringing audiences engaging, provocative, and professionally produced theatrical experiences in an intimate space.
Founded in 1961 (!) T3 is now in its 6th decade as a professional theatre-in-the-round in Uptown Dallas producing musicals, dramas, and comedies year-round.
Tonya Holloway Co-Artistic Director / Soul Rep Theatre Company
Soul Rep Theatre Company exists to provide quality transformative Black theater.
Founded in 1995 by Dallas/Fort Worth natives Guinea Bennett-Price, Anyika McMillan-Herod, and Tonya Holloway. Guinea and Anyika are both products of Dallas ISD's Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (Class of ’89), while all three co-founders hold BFAs in Theater from the dynamic undergraduate programs of Howard University and Prairie View A&M University. The trio returned to Dallas in the mid 90’s after attending graduate school programs and internships at regional theaters across the country. They shared a tremendous desire to establish a theater company in Dallas dedicated to the Black experience.
/ 08.25.21 Season 3: Episode 2
Dallas, Texas Artistic
Directors Roundtable
/ 08.18.21 Season 3: Episode 1
For the season three debut, Echo brings you a part one of our new Round Table series, where Catherine leads a discussion with a select group of guests to discuss current topics in American theatre! This Round Table episode focuses on BIPOC women+ artistic directors in Dallas as they discuss the lasting effects of COVID in theatre and our country's continuing racial reckoning.
Part II The panel discusses building connections with BIPOC audiences, the new AEA Open Access program, and what theatres can do for women+ artists.
Kateri Cale Managing and Artistic Director / Echo Theatre
Echo Theatre champions the diverse voices of women+.
Founded in 1998, Echo has led the charge for gender parity on our region's stages for 24 years. Echo enjoys plays that encourage learning, growing, and evolving together as people and as an institution. Whether an experiment in form and language, a comedy, a drama, a historical piece, or a new translation, Echo produces rich and compelling work with high quality artistic effort.
Season 2 Guest Circle
Produced by Eric Berg, Jonathan Villalobos, and Kateri Cale
Reina Hardy / 03.31.21 Season 2: Episode 6
Reina Hardy is a playwright whose work explores elements of magic and science! Her play, The Other Felix, was a finalist for Echo’s Big Shout Out play contest in 2010, was honored by the Kilroy List in 2020, and received its regional "play-as-movie" premiere April 3, 2021, as part of Echo’s main stage season! Her other plays include Annie Jump and the Library of Heaven, Glassheart, and many other titles. Her plays have been produced across the country, including at Rorschach Theatre in DC, the Vortex in Austin, and the NNPN National New Play Showcase.
She’s a Michener Fellow, winner of the Kennedy Center ACTF TYA Prize, finalist for the Terrence McNally Prize, and the recipient of an Interact 20/20 Commission. She is a graduate of Columbia University, and she holds an MFA in Playwriting from UT Austin.
Kay Richardson / 03.17.21 Season 2: Episode 4
Kay Richardson is an award-winning sound designer and engineer, who serves as the Sound Supervisor at Princeton University. She is best known for her work on Eclipsed at Synchronicity Theatre (Suzi Bass Award nominated), Thurgood at Theatrical Outfit, Between Riverside and Crazy and Gut Bucket Blues (Suzi Bass nominated) at Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre Company.
She was named one of the "Six Theatre Workers You Need to Know" by American Theatre Magazine in 2018. She has done sound work for national tours, opera, Six Flags, and Royal Caribbean Cruises.
Mia Chung / 03.10.21 Season 2: Episode 3
Mia Chung is a playwright whose works include You for Me for You, Catch as Catch Can, and This Exquisite Corpse. Catch as Catch Can was produced at Steppenwolf in 2020 and will be part of our Echo Reads season this July! You for Me for You has been performed at the Royal Court Theatre (UK), the National Theatre Center of Korea, and the Woolly Mammoth Theatre (DC).
Her work has been supported by awards, commissions, and fellowships including: the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Clubbed Thumb, Kennedy Center, LAByrinth Theatre Company, Ma-Yi Theatre, the NEA, Playwrights' Center Jerome Fellowship, Stella Adler Studio, TCG, and many others. She is an alumni of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab, the Huntington Theatre playwright fellows, and New Dramatists. She attended Yale (BA), the University of Dublin, Trinity College (M.Phil.), and Brown (MFA).
Becca Chapman / 03.03.2021 Season 2: Episode 2
Chapman is the Executive Director of Prescription Joy, a healthcare clowning nonprofit in New Orleans that promotes healing through human connection and education. She holds a Master’s in Education from The University of New Orleans, a Bachelor’s of Performing Arts from the University of Southern Mississippi and has taught at Trinity Episcopal School for over a decade.
She trained in static trapeze, aerial sling, and partner acrobatics at Fly Circus Space and New England Center for Circus Arts and is certified by Dueling Arts International in broadsword, rapier dagger, unarmed combat, and quarter staff.
Madeleine George / 02.24.2021 Season 2: Episode 1
An award-winning playwright and author, Madeleine George's play, Hurricane Diane, received the Obie Award, and The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. She is a founding member of 13P (Thirteen Playwrights, Inc.), an Obie-Award-winning playwriting collective, along with notable writers such as Anne Washburn,Young Jean Lee, Sarah Ruhl, and many others.
Echo audiences will be familiar with her work: Precious Little, a drama about a linguist who learns that her unborn child may never speak, was produced by Echo in 2015; Hurricane Diane, which "combines suburban New Jersey housewives, climate change, and Greek tragedy," was also produced by Echo as part of Dallas Pride Month in 2018.
Season 1 Guest Circle
Produced by Eric Berg, Jenna Richanne Burnett, and Kateri Cale
Anyika McMillan-Herrod / 11.30.2020 Season 1: Episode 6
Author... Essayist... Playwright... Poet... A native of Dallas, Texas, Herod is co-founder of Soul Rep Theatre Company and former editor of The Dallas Examiner. Herod’s play about her journey through breast cancer, THE MONARCH, made its world premiere in June 2018, in a co-production with Echo Theater. She adapted two Latin American short stories by Juan Rulfo and Alfredo Cardona Peña for Teatro Dallas’ 2017 Day of the Dead production –AN EVENING WITH TWO GIANTS. Herod was commissioned to write a play - DO NO HARM - inspired by three enslaved women who served as "guinea pigs" for" the "Father of Gynecology." DO NO HARM makes its world premiere in 2021 as a film. Anyika is a 2019 Public Voices Fellow with the OpEd Project, holds a BFA in Theater from Prairie View A&M University, and studied acting in California Institute of the Arts’ MFA program.
Anyika is joined on the podcast by her Soul Rep colleague, Tonya Holloway, who served as cinematographer when the play DO NO HARM was produced as a film instead of onstage.
CQ (Christina Quintana) / 11.15.2020 Season 1: Episode 5
Playwright... Television Writer... Consultant... Poet... Queer with Cuban and Louisiana Roots... SCISSORING via Dramatists Play Service... CQ's poetry, fiction, and lyric nonfiction are published in Santa Clara Review, Wildness Journal, OnCuba, Nimrod Journal, Foglifter, great weather for MEDIA, and beyond... Author of poetry chapbook The Heart Wants (Finishing Line Press)... fellowships and residencies from WP Theater, MacDowell (Ernest and Red Heller Fellow), Playwrights Realm, Van Lier/New Voices at The Lark, CubaOne, Queer/Art, and Lambda Literary, as well as commissions from Audible, The Civilians, Palo Alto Playhouse, EST/Alfred P. Sloan Project, Peppercorn Theatre Company, and more. She holds an MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University.
There is "other" and "in-between" in all of us; CQ tells stories that mine the misconception of dissimilarity and proclaim, "You are not alone." (In 2021, the Echo Reads play reading series will present her play THE GREAT LONELY ROAMER AND THE NIGHT THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING.)
Deborah Zoe Laufer / 10.31.2020 Season 1: Episode 4
Playwright... Director... BFA in acting from SUNY Purchase... Graduated Julliard Playwriting program under Marsha Norman… Plays produced at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Cleveland Playhouse, Geva Theatre Center, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Portland Stage, and The Humana Festival…Recipient of the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award, the Lilly Award, grants and commissions from The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, The Edgerton Foundation, The National New Play Network, the NEA, and the LeCompte du Nouy grant (Lincoln Center Foundation.) Echo Theatre has produced Deb’s plays: End Days (2010) and Leveling Up (Echo Reads play reading series.)
On writing during the COVID pandemic: “With playwrighting, these are very tough times, and I know a lot of writers who are saying, ‘Why write right now; what do I have that’s important enough to say, am I of service in writing this?’ ...I don’t know my place in the world and can’t understand what’s happening around me unless I start writing about it, so it’s not even a choice anymore.”
Rhiana Yazzie / 10.15.2020 Season 1: Episode 3
Navajo playwright... filmmaker... director... performer... producer...based in the Twin Cities and founded New Native Theater in 2009...2018/19 Bush Leadership Fellow...2017 Sally Award Winner for Vision...2016/2017 Playwrights’ Center McKnight Fellow, 2010/2011 and 2006/2007 Playwrights’ Center Jerome Fellow...Playwrights’ Center Core Member for three years. She is in post production with her first feature film, A WINTER LOVE (writer/director/starring).
New Native Theatre is a new way of looking at, thinking about, and staging Native American stories. NNT produces, commissions, and devises authentic Native American stories for the stage which means NNT’s artists are intricately connected to the concerns and voices of their communities. Meant to be played for its most vital audience, Native people, because stories made for the Native community become undeniably powerful for the broader community too, no translations required.
Ann Timmons / 09.30.2020 Season 1: Episode 2
MFA in Acting, University of Illinois...NYC to seek her fortune...honed playwriting skills at Playwrights Horizons Theatre School. Produced one-woman show, Off the Wall: The Life and Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Off-Broadway; toured it nationally for 16 years. Other productions explore accepted history, featuring protagonists who upend the status quo. …actor…director…playwright...communication coach...producer.
Ann is a proud member of Actors' Equity Association, SAG-AFTRA, the Dramatists Guild, Honor Roll!, The Playwrights Circle, and is a founding producing playwright of the Pipeline Playwrights, a collective of five women committed to supporting, promoting, and presenting each other’s work, with the goal getting more women’s stories onstage and into the local and national theatre pipeline.
Caridad Svich / 09.15.2020 Season 1: Episode 1
2012 OBIE for Lifetime Achievement Playwright… 2018 ATHE Ellen Stewart Career Achievement in Professional Theatre… 2018 Tanne Foundation Award… songwriter…translator…editor…educator.
Born in the US of Cuban-Argentine-Spanish-Croatian parents.
"As a playwright, songwriter, editor and translator living between many cultures, including inherited ones, the idea of departure has always been not only an actual or metaphorical basis for writing the work, but also an idea made manifest through the enactment of writing, its performance, and my living of it."
Heading 2
Hayley Finn / 03.24.21 Season 2: Episode 5
Hayley Finn is the Assoc. Artistic Director at the Playwrights’ Center and is one of seven co-artistic directors at Red Eye Theatre. She is also a director, producer, playwright, and advocate for new work. She has directed nationally and internationally including at the Cherry Lane Theatre, Edinburgh Fringe, Guthrie Theatre, Flea Theater, The Kitchen, Labyrinth Theater Company, New Dramatists, O’Neill Theater Center, Public Theater, Playwrights’ Horizons, South Coast Repertory Theater, and the Nine Gates Festival in Prague.
Finn is an alumna of the Drama League Director’s Program and recipient of the Ruth Easton Fellowship, TCG Future Leader Grant, NEA support, and a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant. She received her BA and MA from Brown University.
Press for Echo Offstage
New Podcast Goes Backstage with Prominent Women in Theatre
"Poppin' Podcast" Series 10-15-2020 Good Morning Texas interview
