Introducing 2020 National Young Playwrights in Residence
Mike Batistick, Mentor
Mike Batistick is the author of three Off-Broadway plays: Chicken, Port Authority Throw Down and Ponies. Ponies was designated a New York Times Critics’ Pick when it was released as a film in 2012. In television, he has written for The Affair, The Americans (WGA Nomination), Mr. Mercedes, and Chicago PD on NBC. Other plays include Bodega Lung Fat (Public Theater New Work Now), Tempo (Steppenwolf First Look) and Flag (Hangar Theater workshop in Ithaca, NY). Commissioned by the Atlantic Theater, he has developed plays with the Cape Cod Theater Project, Ars Nova Play Group, and MCC’s Playwrights’ Coalition. A graduate of Juilliard’s writing program, he grew up in New Jersey and went to undergrad at Fordham University in the Bronx. His plays are available through Dramatists Play Service.
Norma Lilia Ruiz Cruz, Playwright
Norma Lilia Ruiz Cruz was born in Tijuana, Mexico, and is currently living in Oklahoma where she is a senior in Dramaturgy at the University of Oklahoma. In her plays she enjoys exploring her Mexican identity and comparing it to the culture of the United States. Her latest play A Night in the Library was just published in a zoom edition of the Student Playwriting Festival at the University of Oklahoma. She plans to work as a freelance playwright and dramaturg after her graduation.
Bernardo Cubría, Mentor
Bernardo Cubría was recently nominated for best playwright at The Ovation Awards, Stage Raw Awards and The Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards for his play The Giant Void In My Soul. The play is receiving its Regional Premiere at Stages Repertory Theatre in Houston, Texas in 2021 and its International Premiere at Foro Shakespeare in Mexico City in 2021. The play received a reading at Circle in the Square on Broadway in 2019. He was the co-writer of the short Spanish Class that won Best Comedy at The NBC Universal Shorts Awards in 2018. His play, Neighbors: A Fair Trade Agreement was a Semi-Finalist for the O’Neil in 2017. It received a world premiere at INTAR in NYC in the fall of 2017. It also received its South East Premier at the Studio Theatre in Florida in December 2019. His play The Judgment of Fools has received three critically acclaimed production in NYC, LA, and Houston, TX. He is currently working on a screenplay with Gina Rodriguez for her production company “I Can and I Will.”
Phanésia Pharel, Playwright
Phanésia Pharel is a Haitian-American playwright who addresses the divine metaphysical dilemma of Black and Latinx girlhood. Her plays span revolutions, islands, and Afro-Futurism. Her play, Penelope, was selected as one of four in the nation to be workshopped at the International Thespian Festival and was subsequently published in Dramatics magazine and by Samuel French. Her play, Shovel Me Away, was produced at Micro Theater Miami and received the Best Of The Best 2016 award. Her monologue, My Kid, My Life, appears in the 2015 City Theatre anthology. She attends Barnard College of Columbia University where she recently won the Brandt Playwriting award and the Helen Prince Memorial Prize for excellence in dramatic composition. She is currently an Artist in Residence for New York Stage and Film and a proud member of the Dramatist Guild of America.
Chiara Atik, Mentor
Plays include: Five Times in One Night, BUMP, Poor Clare, and WOMEN, a mashup of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and HBO’s “Girls.” Her work has been developed at New York Theater Workshop, Clubbed Thumb/Playwrights Horizons Superlab, Williamstown, Northern Stage, and Colt Coeur. Other writing credits include “Paris is Lovely/Lonely When You’re Alone” (Amazon Kindle) and “Modern Dating: A Field Guide,” (Harlequin, 2013). Her feature film script, Fairy Godmother, was on the 2016 Black List. Chiara is a member of the Ensemble Studio Theater and an alum of EST’s Youngblood.
Rachel Saruski, Playwright
Rachel Saruski is a 19-year-old from Miami Beach, Florida. She is a student at Sarah Lawrence College, where she is studying Theatre and Literature. She prides herself in her Jewish-Hispanic upbringing, and loves her family a little more than the average teen. She can often be found in theatre spaces late into the night, taking naps, or watching Netflix for hours on end.
Kira Obolensky, Mentor
Kira Obolensky’s plays have been produced Off Broadway, in Los Angeles, in Prague and Terezin, and in such locations as homeless shelters, prisons, tribal colleges, chemical dependency centers and immigrant centers. She has received awards and fellowships for her work, including the Kesselring Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship and most recently a Mellon Foundation National Playwright Fellowship, which put her in residence with the award-winning theater Ten Thousand Things for six years. She has created a theater program in a maximum security prison, and worked in an interdisciplinary way with scientists, business people through an innovative organization called The Gymnasium. She has co-written a national bestseller about architecture, called The Not So Big House, lectured extensively on her work “Imagining the redistribution of the wealth of theater,” and recently worked with Pandies Theater in New Delhi, India on a tour of their production of Medea. Her novella, The Anarchists Float to St. Louise, won Quarterly West’s Novella prize. She attended Juilliard’s Playwriting Program, Williams College and is a core writer at the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis.
Xavier Clark, Playwright
Xavier (he/him/his) is a multidisciplinary theatre artist, born and raised in Turkey. As a playwright, his full-length plays include: merry merry merry merry, supper, retrofit(s) (2020 O’Neill Center NPC Semi-Finalist, 2019 Mitten Lab Finalist, The Lark 2019 Playwrights’ Week Finalist) and backstroke boys (New Harmony Project 2020 Spring Conference Finalist, 2019 Theatre Viscera Queer Playwriting Contest Finalist). He has worked at many theaters across the country in various capacities including: Williamstown Theatre Festival, La Jolla Playhouse, Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Ojai Playwrights Conference, The Civilians and more. He earned his B.F.A. from NYU Tisch and his M.F.A. from UC San Diego, where he was mentored in playwriting by Allan Havis and Deborah Stein.
Boni Alvarez, Mentor
BONI B. ALVAREZ is a Los Angeles-based actor-playwright. His plays include Emmylu, America Adjacent, Bloodletting, Fixed, Nicky, Dallas Non-Stop, Dusty de los Santos, Driven, Refuge for a Purple Heart, and Ruby, Tragically Rotund. His plays have been produced at Center Theatre Group – Kirk Douglas Theatre, Echo Theater Company, Coeurage Theatre Company, Skylight Theatre Company, Theatre Rhinoceros, and Playwrights’ Arena. He is an alum of the CTG Writers’ Workshop, Echo Writer’s Lab, Humanitas Play LA, Moving Arts’ MADlab, and the CBS Writers Mentoring Program. He is currently in Skylight Theatre’s Skylab, the Geffen Playhouse Writers’ Room and a Resident Playwright of New Dramatists.
