Announcing 13 Semifinalists for the 2025 Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship

The 13 semifinalists are KATIE BENDER, LYNDSEY BOURNE, ANDREW LEE CREECH, ALEXA DERMAN, ADAM ASHRAF ELSAYIGH, LORI FELIPE-BARKIN, JUSTIN HALLE, ADIN LENAHAN, ABIGAIL C. ONWUNALI, DANIELLE STAGGER, ELINOR T VANDERBURG, EMMA WATKINS, and MALLORY JANE WEISS.

Now in its 22nd year, the Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship is the company's most prestigious award, annually supporting a playwright who has yet to have a professional premiere in New York City. Past recipients include Pulitzer Prize winners Sanaz Toossi and Quiara Alegría Hudes, Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony Award nominee Heidi Schreck, and Obie winners Clare Barron and Kirsten Greenidge.

Each Fellow receives an honorarium of $20,000, and an additional $10,000 in development support from Page 73, which can be personalized to support the Fellow’s proposed projects and can include such expenses as research, workshop and reading presentations, and fees for collaborating artists. Each Fellow works with Page 73 on at least one public presentation of the new play, including identifying artistic collaborators like directors, designers, and actors.

The 2024 Playwriting Fellow is JOSE SEBASTIAN ALBERDI.

Katie Bender

KATIE BENDER (she/her/hers) is a playwright, performer and theater maker.  Her plays include Judith, SHE WOLF, The Survivors/Los Sobrevivientes, Instructions for a Séance and Howling, Texas to name a few. Filled with games, physical exertion and a poetic delight in the mundane, her work often examines the surprising ways humans transform within impossible systems. Katie’s work has been developed and produced all over the country including at Hyde Park Theater, ZACH, The Alley, Shrewds, EST, Kitchen Dog, The Playwrights’ Center, LAUNCH PAD, Fusebox Festival, THT Rep, New Harmony Project, ACT Theatre, All For One Theater, Urbanite and Amphibian Stage. She is the co-creator of Underbelly, with whom she made ecstatic site-specific performances such as Slip River which received the Critics Table Award for Best New Comedy. Her play Judith received the B.Iden Payne award for Best New Script. Katie was a Jerome Fellow and is currently a Core Writer at The Playwrights Center. She received her M.F.A from The University of Texas. katiebenderplaywright.com

Lyndsey Bourne

LYNDSEY BOURNE (she/they) is a queer Canadian playwright, teacher and a birth/abortion doula working with The Doula Project. Her plays have been presented and developed at La MaMa, The Mercury Store, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, The Ojai Playwrights Conference, New York Stage and Film, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Ars Nova, Manhattan Theater Club, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Playwrights Horizons, The Public Theater and others. Lyndsey currently teaches Writing and Devising for Performance at Playwrights Horizons Theater School (NYU Tisch). She practices and co-facilitates beekeeping at her community garden in Flatbush, Brooklyn. They are a New Georges affiliated artist, a member of the New Georges Jam, a 2022 New Georges Audrey Resident, a 2022 Writer in Residence at The Ojai Playwrights Conference, a member of the Obie award-winning writers group Youngblood/EST, a member of Ars Nova’s Play Group, the recipient of a 2020 NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music and Theater Grant, and a 2024 Macdowell Fellow. BFA NYU, MFA Brooklyn College (with Mac Wellman and Erin Courtney)

Andrew Lee Creech

ANDREW LEE CREECH (he/him) is a playwright, content creator, educator, and performer, currently based in Seattle. He’s the creator of The Legacy Plays Project—a nine-play, multi-century-spanning meditation on the journey of Black Americans through pivotal moments in American History. His play Golden is set for its World Premiere at ACT Contemporary Theatre in Seattle in 2025. Select Awards/Accolades: 2024 Finalist—Ojai Playwrights Conference (Golden), 2024 Finalist—NNPN National Showcase of New Plays, 2023 Finalist—Seven Devils Playwrights Conference (Golden), 2022 Semifinalist—Blue Ink Award (Last Drive to Dodge), 2021 Winner (Last Drive to Dodge) and 2020 Finalist (Riverwood)—Ashland New Plays Festival. His plays have been produced with companies including: Taproot Theatre Company, Seattle Public Theater, and Copious Love Productions, and have been workshopped, developed, and presented with ACT Contemporary Theatre, Playwrights’ Center, and more. As a content creator, under the names “AndrewThaScribe” and "Papadontcreech", he has built a community of over 90,000 followers across all social media platforms, where he is known for his theater industry analysis and hit comedy series Breaking News!. Andrew is a 2023-2026 Playwrights’ Center Core Writer and serves on the Dramatists Guild national council as the representative for the Western region. He is currently under commission from ACT Contemporary Theatre. BFA: Cornish College of the Arts. Instagram: @papadontcreech. TikTok: @AndrewThaScribe.  andrewleecreech.weebly.com

Alexa Derman

ALEXA DERMAN is a Brooklyn-based playwright and screenwriter. Her plays include The Creature (Playwrights Realm Writing Fellowship; Relentless Honorable Mention; O’Neill NPC Finalist; Princess Grace/New Dramatists Runner-Up; Kernodle Prize), Psychopsychotic (Relentless Honorable Mention), Zionista Rising (Jewish Plays Project Winner; O’Neill NPC Finalist; NYTW Mondays @ 3) and I’ll be in My Hanukkah Place (Ars Nova ANT Fest). She is an alum of Clubbed Thumb's Early Career Writers Group, the Playwrights Center Core Apprenticeship, Orchard Project Audio Lab, and a member of the Lehman-Engels Librettists Workshop. Alexa is under commission from MTC/Sloan and EST/Sloan; as a screenwriter, she's developing projects in film and TV and was a staff writer for Netflix. BA Yale, MFA Brown. alexaderman.com

Adam Ashraf Elsayigh

ADAM ASHRAF ELSAYIGH was born in Cairo and raised in Dubai. His childhood entwined a Muslim Egyptian home, American cable, and British schooling in a migrant-majority city. This upbringing at the cross-section of cultures is at the core of the artist Adam is. Today, Adam is a U.S.-based playwright and theatermaker of stage and screenplays about modern people navigating themes of queerness, labor, and class while living across and between cultures. Adam’s writing (Drowning in Cairo, Memorial, ALAA: A Family Trilogy) has been developed across four continents, including at Sundance, NYTW, and Golden Thread. Adam is a Georgetown Global Performance Lab Fellow. He holds a BA in Theater and Dramatugy from NYU Abu Dhabi and an MFA in Playwriting from Brooklyn College. adamaelsayigh.com

Lori Felipe-Barkin

LORI FELIPE-BARKIN is an English-Spanish playwright, performer and voice over artist based out of NYC and Miami.  Most recently, her short play, The Peepholeman, premiered at BAM as part of the 2024 Weasel Festival. Her three-act play, Flor Underwater, was selected for the 2020 Play Penn New Play Conference, received an Honorable Mention for the 2021 Terrence McNally Award, and was a finalist for the 2023 Risk Theatre Award, the 2023 Austin Film Festival Playwriting Competition, and the 2024 Royer Award. She has had play readings at Playwrights Horizons for Out There in the West, and at INTAR Theatre and at IATI Theater for Ama. Egg. Oyá. She holds an MFA in playwriting from Brooklyn College. 

Justin Halle

JUSTIN HALLE (they/he) is a queer, Jewy, and New York-based playwright and pansy. Their work has been developed by Joe’s Pub, Samuel French, The Vineyard, Red Bull Theater, the Lucille Lortel, and La MaMa ETC. Justin’s play COWGIRL was a semi-finalist for the Princess Grace Award and a Columbia @ Roundabout New Play Award finalist. Their play VILE ISLE recently opened The Tank’s 2024-2025 Core Season. Justin’s playwriting has been published in Best of Red Bull Theater’s Short New Plays and WE/US: Monologues for the Gender Minority. MFA: Columbia. justinhalle.com

Adin Lenahan

ADIN LENAHAN (they/them) is a writer, performer, and receptionist. Their work has been presented/produced at Abrons Art Center, Ars Nova, The Brick, Dixon Place, Culture Lab LIC, Judson Memorial Church, The Kraine, The New Ohio, The Tank, Theater for the New City, Tom Noonan’s Paradise Factory, wild project, diners, drive-ins, and dives. Their solo show FYP, inspired by the TikTok algorithm, is supported by the Brooklyn Arts Council and will premiere at The Brick in December 2024. They were a Fresh Ground Pepper BRB Resident Artist, an alum of Art House Production’s INKubator Cohort, a finalist for the Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellowship, a semi-finalist for the Playwrights’ Center’s Jerome Fellowship, and winner of the Vera Mowry Roberts Foundation Fellowship. BFA in Student Loans at NYU, MFA Playwriting Hunter College. AdinLenahan.com

Abigail C. Onwunali

ABIGAIL C. ONWUNALI is a multi-faceted Nigerian American theater maker. Her acting credits include Jocelyn Bioh’s JaJa’s African Hair Braiding at the Manhattan Theater Club; Half-God of Rainfall and for the honey you gotta say when at the New York Theater Workshop; Bloodwork at the National Black Theater; Sojourners at The Huntington. She is a graduated acting fellow of Lena Waithe’s Hillman Grad Mentorship Program. She was the 2022 John Gore Princess Grace Award winner. She served as the Associate Artistic Director of the 2021-22 Yale Cabaret where, in addition to performing, she has directed projects and a number of plays she has written have been produced like In Between Bitches, and Ikenga in Wahalaland. Abigail’s play, Jewel, was one of the 2021 Red Bull Theater’s Short New Play Festival winners, and she is currently a member of the Liberation Theater Company Playwriting Residency. She received her MFA from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale.

Danielle Stagger

DANIELLE STAGGER is a playwright and performer from Queens, NY. Her plays engage questions of performance, respectability, and shame through the exploration of the appropriate and the forbidden. 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 has been commissioned by Second Stage Theater and Manhattan Theatre Club and is currently a member of WP Theater Lab's 2024-2026 Cohort. Danielle holds a B.A. in Theater and Performance Studies from Stanford University and an MFA in Playwriting from the Yale's David Geffen School of Drama.

Elinor T Vanderburg

ELINOR T VANDERBURG writes plays for and about misfits, creating troubled chimerical landscapes populated by dark-humored antiheroes. She is a co-creative director of Fresh Ground Pepper and one half of the illusory theater company, underlords, alongside her partner, Drew. Elinor has recently written and developed work with SheNYC Arts, Exquisite Corpse Company, and The Actor’s Studio. Born in DC, Elinor lives and works in Bushwick, Brooklyn with Drew, their children, Zara and Raffi, and their calico, Poppy. elinortvanderburg.com

Emma Watkins

EMMA WATKINS is a writer from New Jersey.  Her plays include Pretend it’s Pretend (New Dramatists’ Princess Grace Award Runner Up, Kennedy Center Paula Vogel Prize Runner Up) and Elizabeth is going into the ground (Leah Ryan FEWW Prize Honorable Mention, Bay Area Playwrights Festival Finalist).  She’s developed work with support from the Kennedy Center, Theatre Masters’ Take Ten Festival, and PlayPenn.  She is under commission from South Coast Repertory and EST/Sloan.  BA in English, Theatre & Environmental Studies from Princeton, MA in Celtic Studies from Fulbright/Cardiff University, MFA in Playwriting from UT Austin.  emmacwatkins.com

Mallory Jane Weiss

MALLORY JANE WEISS is a Jersey-born, Brooklyn-based, queer, woman playwright, whose work centers around female friendship, time, and finding the mythical inside the mundane. Select plays include Big Black Sunhats (Great Plains Theatre Conference 2023; The O’Neill National Playwrights Conference 2022; Clubbed Thumb Biennial Commission finalist 2020), Anaphora (The O’Neill NPC finalist 2024; Premiere Play Festival semi-finalist 2024), Lights Out and Away We Go (The O’Neill NPC finalist 2023; Clubbed Thumb reading 2022), The Page Turners (Clauder Competition Gold Prize 2023; Princess Grace Award semi-finalist 2022; The O’Neill NPC finalist 2021), Pony Up (Broadway Play Publishing 2023; Princess Grace Award Finalist 2019), Dave and Julia Are Stuck in a Tree (Playing on Air’s James Stevenson Prize 2020), and Drawbridge (Concord Theatricals 2024; Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival 2023). Mallory is a 2024 MacDowell Fellow. She has worked with Clubbed Thumb, Portland Stage Company, The Sharon Playhouse, The COOP, Gingold Theatrical Group, Fresh Ground Pepper, and more. She is also a screenwriter and a fiction writer. Mallory teaches a series of writing workshops called, "... The Damn Thing," which center around curating a sustainable artistic practice at every stage of creation. She has her B.A. in English from Harvard University and her M.F.A. in Playwriting from The New School. malloryjaneweiss.com