Life Jacket Theatre Company and Page 73 Select Playwrights for 2026 Writers Room
The selected playwrights are Justin Halle, Dhari Noel, Audley Puglisi, and Danielle Stagger.
Life Jacket Theatre Company and Page 73 have revealed the four playwrights selected for the 2026 Writers Room, a new three-week immersive residency in Upstate New York designed to give early-career LGBTQ+ playwrights the time, space, and creative community to develop new works inspired by real people and events.
This year's cohort includes Justin Halle, Dhari Noel, Audley Puglisi, and Danielle Stagger—four members of the Page 73 Writers Group whose work has earned national recognition through prestigious fellowships, commissions, festivals, and new-play development programs.
The Writers Room Residency offers something increasingly rare for emerging playwrights: uninterrupted time to write, experiment, take creative risks, and imagine what a new play can become.
The residency reflects the shared commitment of Life Jacket Theatre Company and Page 73 to providing playwrights with meaningful resources, dedicated time, and artistic community during the formative stages of developing new work. The 2026 Writers Room Residency is supported by a generous grant from the New York State Council on the Arts.
Through the Writers Room Residency, Life Jacket Theatre Company and Page 73 seek to create the conditions in which bold, original stories can take root—giving four emerging LGBTQ+ playwrights the rare opportunity to step away from the demands of everyday life and devote themselves fully to the work.
Justin Halle
is a queer, Jewy, and sometimes-funny playwright from NYC. They were a member of the 2025 Page 73 Writers Group. Their work has been developed and performed at theaters including La Mama, Red Bull, Lucille Lortel, The Vineyard, Prototype Festival, and Joe's Pub. Their recent plays include Vile Isle (The Tank, semifinalist for the Terrence McNally/Rattlestick Fellowship) and Cowgirl (semifinalist for the New Dramatists' Princess Grace Award; Columbia @ Roundabout New Play Award). Justin's work has been published: most recently, their solo piece, "Judy New Year!" in WE/US: Monologues For the Gender Minority. Justin has developed new operas with companies including The Cincinnati Opera and The Why Collective, and they also play the drums (Joe's Pub, Rough Trade, TV Eye, more). BFA: NYU, Experimental Theater Wing. MFA: Columbia, where they studied under David Henry Hwang and Lynn Nottage. @justin.a.halle
Dhari Noel
is a Queer Black Caribbean Harlemite artist whose work explores the incoherence of race, failures of gender, and inherited performances. Dhari is a member of the 2026 Page 73 Writers Group. Recent plays include Paris. (CWP Reading Series), Black Ram//White Ewe (Classics in Color @ Dramatic Question Theater), Is Cry You Cry'n? (Brown University & Clubbed Thumb Showcase), Money Shot (Brown University, 2025 O'Neill NPC Finalist), Penguin Sex With Mr. Morgan (ANTfest/Ars Nova), Man Made (2024 O'Neill NPC Semi-Finalist), and Spirit Junkie (Cherry Picking, The Wild Project). Recent performances include Black Exhibition (Bushwick Starr) and In the Penal Colony (Next Door at NYTW, The Tank). Honors include a Tennessee Williams Scholarship at the Sewanee Writers' Conference and an Emerging LGBTQ Voices Fellowship at Lambda Literary. Dhari has a BA in Sociology from Columbia University and an MFA in Playwriting from Brown University. @dhari.no_l
Audley Puglisi
is a playwright and poet. They were a member of the 2023 Page 73 Writers Group. Fellowships include NYSCA/NYFA, The Playwrights Realm Writing Fellowship, VONA/Voices, and Lambda Literary. They have been a member of EST/Youngblood, a resident at Djerassi and Blue Mountain Center, and a Pedagogies of Art for Social Change Fellow at Penumbra Theatre. Plays have been developed with Playwrights Horizons, Page 73, Skylight Theatre, The Playwrights Realm, Breaking the Binary Festival, Checkmark Productions, Mile Square Theatre, and the New York State Council on the Arts. Audley has been a finalist for the Lorraine Hansberry Award, Fault Line Theatre's Irons in the Fire, and the Blue Ink Playwriting Award. Their writing has been published in Garage Magazine, Lucky Jefferson, Color Bloq, and elsewhere. Audley received a BA in Africana Studies from Oberlin College and an MFA in playwriting from the Yale School of Drama.
Danielle Stagger
is a playwright and performer from Queens, NY. She was a member of the 2025 Page 73 Writers Group. Her plays largely engage questions of authenticity, respectability, and shame as they intersect with identity and performance. She prioritizes the authentic presence of Blackness, queerness, and womanhood both on and off stage and, as an artist in practice, works to decentralize and destabilize the product-driven, linear theatrical process. Danielle is the inaugural recipient of the Lily's Lorraine Hansberry Fellowship, is a two-time Eugene O'Neill NPC Finalist, and was a nominee for the 2024 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Danielle's plays have been finalists for the SoHo Rep Writer/Director Lab, the Ollie New Play Award, and the Lark's Venturous Playwrights Fellowship. She is a member of the 2024-2026 WP Theater Lab and has been commissioned by Second Stage Theater and Manhattan Theatre Club. Danielle holds a B.A. in Theater and Performance Studies from Stanford University and an MFA in Playwriting from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale. @daniellestagger
