Dramatists Guild Foundation to Present Work of 2024-2025 Musical Theater and Playwriting Fellows

The Dramatists Guild Foundation will present selections of work by the 2024-2025 Class of Musical Theater and Playwriting Fellows on Friday, October 10, at Open Jar Studios. The Musical Theater presentations will take place from 2-3:30pm, followed by the Playwriting presentations from 4:30-6pm. 

David Alpert will direct the Musical Theater Fellows presentation, and Laurie Woolery will direct the Playwriting Fellows presentation.

The DGF Fellows program propels promising creative talents to their full potential to help shape the future of theater. The year-long intensive serves New York City-based emerging playwrights, composers, lyricists, and librettists who are looking to develop existing projects nearing completion and learn production strategies in order to reach the next level of their careers. This cohort of theater artists work together under the guidance and leadership of professional artists to develop current work in pursuit of commercial development and production. 

The Fellows program also welcomed a new group of Chairs this year. Anne Washburn and Migdalia Cruz serve as the Playwriting Chairs for this year’s Fellows class. Rona Siddiqui and Itamar Moses serve as the Musical Theater Chairs for this year’s Fellows class.

The 2024-2025 Musical Theater Writing Fellows, and their work that will be presented, are as follows:

Ari Afsar

THAT GIRL

A lighthearted comedy about breaking generational trauma among AAPI women. The story follows a love triangle between a South Asian aspiring rock star in the 1970s and two very different women set in competition—exploring the ripple effects on their daughters and how they wrestle with their inherited legacies.

Emma Ashford

MISS AMERICA

MISS AMERICA tells the story of Eve - a driven, idealistic, and accidentally pregnant Indiana 17-year-old on the eve of her freshman year at college. After a foiled abortion attempt, Eve ends up at the New Life Center- a pilot prison created by the McGowan administration, which has codified abortion as murder. Over the next 8 months, Eve - alongside her fellow inmates - must reckon with parenthood, purpose, and the gendered expectations that confine all of us. 

Sophie Boyce and Veronica Mansour

THE DARK LADY

An electrifying synth-pop musical exploring the much-speculated ‘what-if’ scenario whereby Emilia Bassano is the true author of Shakespeare's works. An audacious blend of historical fact and speculation, a tale of love, betrayal and sacrifice, this story ultimately celebrates that one doesn’t need acclaim to leave their mark on the world.

Fouad Dakwar

FOUAD OF NAZARETH

Based on a true story, Fouad of Nazareth is a darkly comic musical about a Palestinian-American teen sent to summer camp in his ancestral hometown. Part summer camp satire and part cultural reckoning, this 90-minute identity crisis is complete with love triangles, tug-of-war crimes, and a healthy dose of trauma bonding. Accompanied by an Arabic-infused pop-punk score as culturally intertwined as its protagonist, the show finds humor in the absurd search for belonging.

Jaime Lozano

ROJA
Fusing traditional Mexican folk music and Mestizo folklore, ROJA is a new twist on the Little Red Riding Hood story. At the edge of the desert in Northern Mexico, Roja rescues a mischievous, magical coyote who offers her the chance to see her father again — what follows is a miraculous journey for all ages.

The 2024-2025 Playwriting Fellows, and their work that will be presented, are as follows:

Jen Diamond

PAGEANT PLAY

Each year, Derby, Nevada (population 3,529) hosts the Derby Dolls Pageant to commemorate the sacrifices the town's foremothers made when they resorted to cannibalism in order to survive a snowstorm. In this laugh out loud, break your heart comedy about teetering on the brink of womanhood, four pageant girls compete to win the Derby Dolls crown, only to discover that there are more ways to be a woman than they ever realized.

Matthew Jellison 

A RE-READING OF THE LORD OF THE RINGS TRILOGY BY THE PLAYWRIGHT AND HIS FATHER NIGHTLY BEFORE BED 

Eight-year-old Matthew can't tell the difference between scary fantasies and daily realities. It's the middle of the nineties in the middle of the night, and the only thing that forty-five-year-old out-of-work-actor John can do to calm his spiraling child, is read him his favorite book from when he was a kid. And now seventy-four-year-old John is in a deep sadness. It's 2025, and the world has become a place he no longer recognizes, and so the only thing that his thirty-eight-year-old playwright son Matthew can do to lift his father, is write him a play to act in.

Yilong Liu

WE BORROWED BROKENNESS

Five strangers gather at the tail end of Brooklyn, chasing the dream of running the New York City Marathon. Except that they aren't really strangers, and this isn't really their dream: they are a group of organ transplant recipients determined to honor their donor Jeremy's dying wish. But between getting in shape and building an AI version of Jeremy to share with his parents, it soon becomes clear each of them is running a race of their own.

Ro Reddick

UNLINED ● HARDCOVER ● LAYFLAT

A play about a bunch of dykes in the dangerous world of luxury paper planners. Morgan, a recent grad with a unique ability, stumbles into a prestigious design mentorship program. Under the guidance of Madam, a glamorous notebook magnate, Morgan is on her way to becoming the second most well-known producer of high-end analog time management resources in North America! If she survives her mentor, that is.

Phillip Christian Smith

GOD SAVE THE QUEEN

Gregory, a Black Gay Costume Designer with early onset Alzheimer’s, is being taken care of by his lifelong friend and no-nonsense dramaturg, Morgan. Gregory only comes alive when he is put into copies of the dresses, he has made in his own size, of the leading ladies that he has designed throughout his career: to go to parties, to go to the club, to cruise the boys, to stun the children. Morgan has been having problems keeping a nurse’s aide until Inga comes into their lives.

Fellows receive a $5,000 stipend, access to career resources, an industry mentor, and the opportunity to partner with several arts organizations. The Fellows program is highly sought after for its uniquely successful format of partnering playwrights and musical theater writers together in the learning process, who come together bringing a variety of backgrounds, identities, styles, and experiences to the program. 

The Fellows program was founded in 2000 by Lynn Ahrens, Stephen Flaherty, Janet Neipris, and Susan Miller, with leadership from Michael Korie over the past decade. They believed it was vital to put playwrights and musical theater writers in the same room to learn from each other’s different perspectives, to see how collaboration creates magic, and to foster community.  The program's success has been proven by the careers of various dramatists and collaborations, including launching the careers of more than 250 writers. With alumni that include Pulitzer finalists, Tony Nominees, and recipients of Oscars, Grammys, Emmys, Tonys, Larson Awards, Kleban Awards, and Fred Ebb Awards, the DGF Fellows program is an opportunity to grow in community and professionally

Former Fellows include Michael R. Jackson (Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award Winner, A Strange Loop), Antoinette Nwandu (Pass Over), Lauren Yee (Cambodian Rock Band), Kristen Anderson-Lopez (Academy Award winner, Frozen), Rajiv Joseph (Pulitzer Prize finalist, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo), Benjamin Velez (Tony Award Nominee for Best Original Score, Real Women Have Curves), and Benj Pasek & Justin Paul (Academy Award for La La Land, and Tony Award for Best Original Score, Dear Evan Hansen).