Cleveland Play House

Eric Coble was born in Edinburgh, Scotland and bred on the Navajo and Ute reservations in New Mexico and Colorado. His plays include “Bright Ideas”, “The Dead Guy”, “Natural Selection” and “For Better” have been produced Off-Broadway, throughout the U.S., and on several continents, including productions at Manhattan Class Company, The Kennedy Center, Playwrights Horizons, Actors Theatre of Louisville Humana Festival, New York and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals, Alliance Theatre, The Cleveland Play House, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Laguna Playhouse, Stages Repertory, Great Lakes Theater Festival, and the Contemporary American Theatre Festival. Awards include the AT&T Onstage Award, National Theatre Conference Playwriting Award, an NEA Playwright in Residence Grant, a TCG Extended Collaboration Grant, the Cleveland Arts Prize, and two Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Grants. Eric is a member of the Cleveland Play House Playwrights Unit, as well as a writer for several nationally broadcast radio programs, and currently has three screenplays in the labyrinth of Hollywood.

David Hansen

David Hansen lives in Cleveland Heights. His solo performance I Hate This: A Play Without The Baby was named one of the Best Plays of 2003 by The Plain Dealer, and received an award for Excellence in Solo Performance at the New York International Fringe Festival. I Hate This has also been performed in Columbus, Akron, Chicago, Louisville, Minneapolis and a seven-date tour of Great Britain. David has been a member of the Great Lakes Theater Festival Education Department since 2001. As an actor-teacher and Associate Supervisor of GLTF’s school residency program, David has worked with thousands of students in Northeast Ohio. He has also been a member of the educational theater department at Karamu House. Plays David has written include The Vampyres and Shakespeare Who, collaborated on the plays The Gulf and This Vicious Cabaret. David has been a contributor to Muse, Angle and Cleveland magazines.

Margaret Lynch

Margaret Lynch has been a member of the Playwrights Unit of the Cleveland Play House since 1996. Her free adaptation of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman was read at the CPH FusionFest in May 2008. In 2005, she was awarded an Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship on the basis of the play now titled At the Fault Line, which was given a staged reading at Cleveland Public Theatre in 2006. Her play Crossroads Dancing was directed by Caroline Jackson Smith at Dobama Theatre in Cleveland, Ohio, in January 2000. Her play The Heart Rising received a staged reading at Dobama Theatre in June 2002, as winner of the Owen Kelly Adopt-a-Playwright Award, and a production at Stagedoor Manor in 2005. Ms. Lynch's plays and adaptations have been performed by the Great Lakes Theater Festival, The Cleleland Play House, and the Cleveland Contemporary DanceTheatre. Ms. Lynch is the founder and producing director of Pathway Productions, a theater ensemble that creates theatrical presentations for educational purposes, and through that Lynch has written and directed more than twenty-five scripts about workplace issues since 1994, as well as adaptations of folk-tales for young audiences. She is also co-founder and co-director of the Cleveland Theater Collective, a service organization whose mission is to provide support services for professional theater in northeast Ohio. She served as dramaturg for Great Lakes Theater Festival from 1983-2003.

Deborah Magid

Deborah Magid's career has spanned most areas of theatrical experience. She has sung and acted on Broadway, with The Santa Fe Opera, and in venues worldwide; her direction credits include new works, musicals, operas, and comedies; and The Sommersault Company, which she founded in 1971, has produced mostly chamber operas and musicals. She began playwrighting in 2008, and her short play "The Wedding Night" was a 2010 Heideman Award finalist and won the 2009 6 Women Playwriting Festival. Her chamber opera, "Costumbrismo, or Khandihba Wars," won a production grant from Cleveland Public Theatre; "Being Earnest," a pop musical, was read at Dramatists Guild in New York and workshopped at Cain Park in Cleveland Heights, Ohio; her Impressionist play "The Doppelganger" received a grant and was read in CPT's Little Box series of new works; her verse play "The Queen's Fool" was read in Santa Fe Playhouse's Benchwarmers IX Festival; and "Descent of a Diva," a one-person play with music, was read at Dramatists' Guild and in CPT's Dark Room. Her most recent directing credit was Assistant Director of CPH's "Emma," and she has composed and arranged music for various theatrical events. Deborah holds a Master of Music degree from the University of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia, and she is a member of the Cleveland Play House Playwrights Unit, Dobama Playwrights Gym, International Centre for Women Playwrights, Actors' Equity Association, and the Dramatists Guild. http://deborahmagid.com

Michael Oatman

Michael Oatman earned an English Degree from Cleveland State University in 2004. In the summer of 2008, Michael will graduate with a Masters of Fine Arts from the Northeastern Ohio Masters of Fine Arts consortium. In October of 2007, Michael was appointed Playwright-In-Residence at The Karamu Theater, the oldest black theater in the country. His playwrighting credits include The Rainy Season at The Church; Lost Prospect at the Ingenuity Festival in 2006; Not a Uterus In Sight, Oglephish and Indelible at the Factory Theater; staged readings of Indelible and In Man at Karamu Theater, and a staged reading of The Chittlin’ Thief by the African American Playwright Exchange in Washington D.C. He has also directed the staged reading, Hip Hop for Eva at Karamu Theater and Billy’s House of Pancakes and The Way of the Dance, at Cleveland State University. In June of 2007, Oatman was featured in the National Public Radio Essay Series, This I Believe. February 29th, Oatman’s piece, Let It Bleed premiered at The New Work, New Ways Festival hosted by the University of Nebraska at Omaha, February 29th, 2008. May 7th, The Cleveland Play House, Before I Die: The War Against Tupac Shakur at its annual FusionFest. Michael Oatman has been a reporter and columnist for the Cleveland Free Times, City News, I.E., The Crusader, The Cauldron, The Vindicator and Cleveland Life. He also served as a reporter for the Botswana Gazette in Southern Africa covering the AIDS crisis.

Eric Schmiedl

Eric Schmiedl is a native of Cleveland, Ohio, and a graduate of Kent State University and the University of Hawai’i. His plays have been produced by the Denver Center Theatre Company, The Cleveland Play House, the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, TheatreVirginia, New Stages Theatre, the Honolulu Theatre for Youth, the Oregon Children’s Theatre, BackStage Theatre in Chicago, Dobama Theatre, Karamu House, Theatre at Lime Kiln, and the Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati. His acclaimed adaptation of Kent Haruf’s best selling novel Plainsong won the 2008 Westword: Best of Denver award for Best Dramatization of a Novel. His rock inspired Ghosts of Treasure Island, created with recording artists Captain Bogg and Salty for the Oregon Children’s Theatre, recently performed for thousands of Portland area students. He is currently working on a commission for the Denver Center Theatre Company, an adaptation of Kent Haruf’s remarkable novel Eventide. Eric is a member of The Cleveland Play House’s Playwrights’ Unit and is on the faculty of the Low-residency Master of Fine Arts in Writing program at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. He is also the recipient of the Lisa Toishigawa Inoye Playwriting Award. As a director, Eric has worked for theatres including, The Cleveland Play House, the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, the Honolulu Theatre for Youth, Dobama Theatre, and Ensemble Theatre.

Faye Sholiton

Faye Sholiton has been developing her work in the Cleveland Play House Playwrights’ Unit since 1996. A three-time recipient of Individual Artist Grants from the Ohio Arts Council and winner of dozens of other prizes, she has seen her plays performed or read all over the U.S. and in London. Her work appears in anthologies from Smith & Kraus, Meriwether and Applause publishing. Among her full-length plays are The Interview, The Good Times, A Form of Hope, Telling Lives, V-E Day, and All Things Being Equal. Her current project, U.S. v. Howard Mechanic, is an adaptation of Fugitive Candidate, the Autobiography of Howard Mechanic, “The Last Prisoner of the Vietnam War.” A longtime journalist, Sholiton is theater writer for Northern Ohio Live Magazine. Memberships include the Dramatists’ Guild, the International Centre for Women Playwrights, and Cleveland Theatre Collective. She has taught playwriting workshops, including a “Playwrights at Sea” class for the Crystal Cruise line. www.fayesplays.com