The Foundry in its Fourth Cycle Under New Leadership at PlayPenn Adds Three New Members

PlayPenn welcomes natyna bean, Nick Jonczak, and Pravin Wilkins. L M Feldman and R. Eric Thomas who will continue as Lead Artists, led the search. The new members, all Philadelphia-based playwrights, natyna bean, Nick Jonczak, and Pravin Wilkins, round out the 2025 Foundry class of nine.

PlayPenn Artistic Director Che’Rae Adams says, “We are so excited to add natyna, Nick, and Pravin to the PlayPenn family. As one of PlayPenn’s coreprograms, The Foundry provides free mentorship to Philadelphia-based writers for three years. This is the cornerstone of the work we do”.

natyna bean is a writer, director, and producer for the stage, screen, and sound. natyna’s storytelling centers Black women and femmes in relentless pursuit of sanity & sovereignty in heartbreakingly humorous worlds. These stories have been produced, published, and/or developed by For Harriet,Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, The Fire This Time Festival, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, SPACE on Ryder Farm, and more. natyna’s production work ranges from nationally syndicated news programming to educational tarot through a Black queer lens. natyna has a dual BFA inDramatic Writing and Africana Studies from NYU; and an MFA in Playwriting from the New School.

Nick Jonczak (he/him) is a writer, director, and producer of live performances. He co-founded the Cannonball Festival, which centers peer-to-peer curation and redistributes resources to independent artists. Nick's original scripts include Man Of La Manchin (Winner, Christ Church NeighborhoodHouse New Play Festival), Death Hustle (Semifinalist, Sundance Episodic Lab), and RUST (Finalist, Creative Capital). As a producer, Nick has led more than 20 original, full-length, live productions, including massive outdoor performance events (Invisible River), sprawling immersive adventures (NewParadise Laboratories), bawdy funk bands (Red 40 and the Last Groovement), and intimate, experimental circus (Almanac Dance Circus Theatre).

Pravin Wilkins (he/him) is a published playwright and poet from San Diego, California, whose works typically deal with race & class struggle--and the many intersections between. He began writing plays in the mid-2010s, during his time at the University of California, San Diego.

There, he received the faculty-nominated Eric Bowling Award for his site-specific protest piece, #takebackgraffitihall. After graduating in 2018, he continued his playwriting journey by traveling to Pittsburgh to pursue a master’s degree at Carnegie Mellon University. In May 2020, Pravin received his MFA in Dramatic Writing from the CMU School of Drama; since then, he has received significant national & international recognition, having been selected as a finalist for the 2020 O’Neill National Playwrights’ Conference & subsequently winning the Theatre503 International Playwriting Award for his first full-length play, Moreno. Pravin received an Offie nomination for Most Promising New Playwright in recognition of Moreno, which–in March 2022–received its world premiere at Theatre503 in London. The London production was also a finalist for three Standing Ovation awards, including bestnew play. Moreno is scheduled for its US premiere this November at InterAct Theatre in Philadelphia.