The Playwrights

Little Black Dress celebrates the following collaborators, contributors, and comrades…

Shanee Edwards began pursuing her dream of being an actress at the age of seven. Performing on both the stage and screen, she received the “Best Actress” award at HBO’s Aspen Comedy Arts Festival for the film Dead Silence, in which she played the lead opposite Danny Aiello.  But as passionate as she was about acting, Shanee yearned to create her own characters and give them exciting, meaningful stories to tell.  Recently, Shanee completed her Master’s Degree in Screenwriting at the UCLA Film School and is now pursuing a new dream of writing movies.

While at UCLA, she received the Samuel Goldwyn Excellence in Screenwriting Award, the Women in Film Award and the Alfred P. Sloan Award all for her screenplay Enchantress of Numbers, which is set to shoot in March 2012.  The cast includes Zooey Deschanel and Billy Crudup.  Lucy Walker (Countdown to Zero, Waste Land) is directing.  Shanee’s ultimate goal is to write stories for film about strong, spirited women whose passion, humor and courage inspire us.  It is through these stories that she hopes to reflect our world and shape its future. 

KATE HAWKES:  Originally from Australia, Kate holds degrees in Education and Counseling, and an MFA in Directing from the University of Portland. She is a freelance theatre professional, arts in healthcare consultant, educator and personal guide. Her one woman show Performing Wellness: 1 Woman,10 Stories On Stage was first co-produced in July 2010. Professional directing credits include: Secret Bridesmaid’s Business, Quilters, The Weir, and Sweet Phoebe. As adjunct faculty at Linfield College credits include: Mother Courage, Antigone, Reckless, Voice of The Prairie, and Keely and Du. On stage Kate’s favorite roles include leads in The Gingerbread Lady, Medea, Equus, Painting Churches, and Eleemosynary. Writing credits include professional productions of Composers In Skirts and Singing Our Way Home. Sky….Diamonds, about a family living with Alzheimer’s, has been seen in readings.

Kate created Performing Wellness ™ and later co-founded the Well Arts Institute in Portland, Oregon. For many years she was the Education/Outreach Director and Artistic Associate at Artists Repertory Theatre, (Portland).  Her book Personal Magic-Creativity and Spirit for Empowerment in Times of Change will be out later this year.  Kate is available for consulting, workshops, personal coaching and performances of the Performing Wellness work.  (Contact Kate at her website::  www.wellnesswithkate.com)

Jen Huszcza is a playwright currently based in Los Angeles.  She has a BFA in Dramatic Writing and an MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from NYU.  After many years in New York, she moved to Los Angeles for better weather and more trees.  In Los Angeles, four of her plays have been presented as staged readings in the Monday Night Living Room Series at The Blank Theatre in Hollywood.  She wrote and acted in Gunfighter Nation’s collectively written piece, LA History Project: Pio Pico, Sam Yorty, and the Secret Procession of Los Angeles, presented at the Lost Studio last year.  She is a member of the Playwrights and Directors Lab at the Actors Studio West.  She blogs for the Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative. In addition to plays, she has written ad copy, film reviews, blogs, bad poetry, screenplays, an unpublished epic novel, and several short stories.  Jen’s play Rinse was performed in Little Black Dress INK’s Dirty Laundry Festival last year. 

Sara Israel’s introduction to the world of theater came when she was cast in the title role of a kindergarten play, The Magic Letter E (cap to cape, fad to fade).  She has been engaged by words-in-space ever since.  As a playwright and director, Sara’s work has been seen on both coasts (the middle of the country eludes her, for now. . .) and has garnered her the American Theatre Co-op Playwriting Prize and a Playwrights Circle Award.  She was also a Princess Grace Award semi-finalist for her play, bad Art.  As a television writer, her first two produced scripts aired simultaneously— same night, same time, different channels.  In addition, her television script Triumvirate was named “Best Un-produced Pilot” by Written By, the magazine of the Writers Guild of America.  Sara is a graduate of Dartmouth College and an alumnus of Directors Lab West.  She is currently ensconced in her short film, The Happiest Person In America.

Katherine James (MFA from A.C.T.) has been in the theatre since her father first put her onstage in one of his shows at the age of five. Still crazy about the theatre fifty-five years later. An accomplished actress and director as well as playwright, she currently makes her home in Los Angeles where she is part of the Theatricum Botanicum company and on The Seedlings (new plays) Committee. Recent projects include a workshop of her jamming spoken word opera, OLYMPUS, at the Sontag Greek Theatre, staged reading of THE OLD SALT at Theatricum, and DIRTY LAUNDRY for The Dirty Laundry Festival. She has been the artistic director of Free Association Theatre for 35 years.

Karen Murphy is a journalist by trade and a thespian by choice, with a BA in journalism and an MA in theatre arts. She has learned the craft of theatre through hands-on immersion during 25-plus years volunteering as an actress on stage and crew member back stage at community theatres in Texas and Arizona. Karen has penned several short plays, her thesis one-act Parched, and the scripts for Prescott’s annual Ghost Talk. Mattie’s miracle has been Karen’s muse through several literary incarnations, starting with his original appearance in the short story Will Miracles Never Cease? to his top billing in the screenplay for the short film The Pope of Pontius County, the audience choice award winner at the Bare Bones Film Festival, to his starring role in this 10-minute play submission for From the Mouth of Babes.

Jennie Webb is an independent Los Angeles playwright whose plays, including Yard Sale Signs, Remodeling Plans, The Big Red Naugahyde Booth (or, Would-be Elks), The Complete Story of the War, Men & Boxes, Tilting, Buying a House and Unclaimed Assets, have been presented on stages and in/at/around alternative venues throughout the U.S. and internationally at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Her works have been published by Heinemann Press and International Centre for Women Playwrights. She is currently playwright-in-residence at The Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga, California where she created and runs “Botanicum Seedlings: A Development Series for Playwrights.” She is also a member of LA’s acclaimed Rogue Machine Theatre (where Yard Sale Signs premiered last fall) and The Playwrights Union (with whom she developed her plays Anticipating Leftovers and, most recently, Blood Replacement) and co-founder an instigator of the LA Female Playwrights Initiative (LA FPI). More at jenniewebbsite.com.

Past Collaborators:

Micki Shelton (S. Michele McFadden)began studying playwriting with John Glore in 1992, as a member of South Coast Repertory’s professional conservatory. Shortly thereafter, her first full-length play, Circles, was included in the Ashland New Plays Festival. Since then, her plays have been produced at City Lights Theater Company (San Jose); Theatre Artists Studio (Scottsdale); Arizona Classical Theatre (Prescott); El Camino Real Theatre (San Juan Capistrano); and as a part of SCR’s conservatory series.

Micki is a Resident Playwright at Theatre Artists Studio in Scottsdale, AZ, and an active member of the Arizona arts community. Along with Charissa Menefee of Prescott College, she co-founded “Tomorrow’s Theater Tonight,” a monthly series of works-in-progress read in downtown Prescott.  Her play, Fred and Mary: An Unconventional Romance, celebrating Arizona history, is scheduled for production at Prescott’s historic Elks Opera House in July, 2012, as a part of Arizona’s Centennial Celebration.  Contact Micki at her website: www.mickishelton.com.
(Dirty Laundry, 2011)