Huntington Theatre Company Announces 2012-2014 Cohort of Playwriting Fellows

Lila Rose Kaplan writes bittersweet comedies that delve into the mysteries of human relationships. Her play Wildflower made its Off-Broadway debut in 2009 at Second Stage Uptown and was published by Dramatists Play Service. Her other works include We All Fall Down, Home of the Brave, 100 Planes, Entangled, Bureau of Missing Persons, and Tink. Her plays have been seen and/or developed at Second Stage, Arena Stage, La Jolla Playhouse, The Old Vic, Chalk Rep, Perishable Theatre, The Kennedy Center, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Center Theatre Group, Theatreworks, PlayPenn, and The Lark. Awards include The National Science Award in Playwriting, The International Women’s Playwriting Award, The Shank Playwriting Fellowship, and the I.J. Kapstein Award in Playwriting. She was selected as an Old Vic/New Voices T.S. Eliot Exchange Playwright, and one of her short plays debuted at the Old Vic in London 2010. Ms. Kaplan has been in residence at Cornerstone Theatre Company, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics. She is a graduate of Brown University and received her MFA in Playwriting from UC San Diego. She has taught at UC Santa Barbara, Westmont College, Dartmouth College, and Primary Stages. Ms. Kaplan lives in Cambridge and will be teaching at Lesley University and The Gamm Theatre this coming year. She is a proud founding member of The Playwrights Union in Los Angeles. www.lilarose.org

Walt McGough’s plays The Farm and Priscilla Dreams the Answer (recently published by Playscripts) are past Independent Reviewers of New England Award nominees. He has worked around the country with Boston Playwrights Theatre, Fresh Ink, Boston Actors Theatre, Sideshow Theatre Company, The Orfeo Group, Nu Sass Productions, Chicago Dramatists, and The Second City Chicago. Mr. McGough was the 2011 recipient of the Best Comedy Award from the Capital Fringe Festival in Washington, DC and was named one of The Boston Globe’s 2012 Artists on the Rise. He received the Kennedy Center’s 2010 Ken Ludwig Scholarship and the O’Nell Playwrights 2010 Conference’s writing fellowship and was a finalist for ACTF’s John Cauble Short Play and ten-minute awards. He was previously Company Manager at Chicago Dramatists, and currently serves on staff at the SpeakEasy Stage Company in Boston. He is also a founding ensemble member of Slideshow Theatre Company, for which he acts as Literary Manager. Mr. McGough received an undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia and an MFA in Playwriting from Boston University. He currently teaches playwriting at the Boston Center for Adult Education.

Lenelle Moïse’s two-act comedy Merit was the winner of a 2012 Southern Rep Ruby Prize. She also wrote, composed, and co-starred in the critically acclaimed drama Expatriate, which launched Off Broadway at the Culture Project in 2008. Her other plays include Matermorphosis (Serious Play Theatre Ensemble), Little Griot (Drama Studio), Purple (Kitchen Theatre Company), Cornered in the Dark (Insight Out Theatre Collective), and The Many Faces of Nia. Her solo performances Womb-Words, Thirsting, and Ache What Make have been presented at colleges and theatres across the USA. Ms. Moïse was a 2010 Hedgebrook Women Playwrights Festival Fellow, the 2010 recipient of the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund Award in Poetry, the 2011 Artist in Residence in Performance Studies at Northwestern University, the 2012 Visiting Performing Artist in African & African Diaspora Studies at UT Austin, and the fifth Poet Laureate of Northampton, MA. Her poetry and prose have been published in several anthologies including Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution. She received an undergraduate degree from Ithaca College and holds an MFA in Playwriting from Smith College.