2024 Ojai Playwrights conference & new works festival playwrights
Libby Carr
Libby Carr is a writer and dance artist from Houston who uses rhythmic specificity, movement spectacle, and visual imagination to celebrate queer and trans communities. Recent plays include CALF SCRAMBLE (O’Neill NPC finalist, Playwrights Horizons New Works Lab, Workshop Theater Lab) and sad girl hours (Kennedy Center MFA Playwrights Workshop, Muhlenberg College Theater Association). Libby’s a proud member of EST/Youngblood and has been an artist-in-residence with Invulnerable Nothings’ Barn Lab and MOtiVE Brooklyn. They have a BA in Playwriting from UT Austin.
Lee Cataluna
Lee Cataluna’s (she/her) plays include Heart Strings (Atlantic Theater), Flowers of Hawaii (Native Voices workshop, Chautauqua Institute, University of Hawaii), and Home of the Brave (La Jolla Playhouse, Honolulu Theatre for Youth). Current commissions include Emalani for Arena Stage, Super Aunty for the national BIPOC Superhero project, and Sons of Maui for San Francisco Playhouse, which was a Eugene O’Neill 2023 finalist. Her work has been supported by NEA grants and the ReImagine TYA/USA grant. She was part of the inaugural Oregon Shakespeare Festival Indigenous Playwrights Cohort. She is Native Hawaii, grew up on Maui, and now lives in Honolulu.
Alex Lin
Alex Lin is just a girl from Jersey. Plays developed at Roundabout, Second Stage, NYTW, MTC, the O'Neill, South Coast Rep, New Harmony, Two River, Playwrights Realm, Central Square Theatre, Amphibian Stage, Theater Mu, and Cape Cod Theater Project. Guest lectures at CMU, Rutgers, and Union College. As an actor, she has performed at Actors Theatre of Louisville, New Victory, Ensemble Studio Theater, HVSF, Ma-Yi, Jewish Plays Project, and Commonwealth Shakespeare. Susan Smith Blackburn Prize finalist and Weissberger Award nominee. Juilliard.
CHRISTINA PUMARIEGA
Christina Pumariega (she/her) acts and writes. She performs in her play ¡VOS! in its world premiere at Two River Theater in 2025. Other plays include Joan Dark (Colorado New Play Summit), Lei Chiede/She Asks and Her Math Play (EST/Sloan Grant). An O’Neill NPC finalist for the last three years, Christina’s work has been developed at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater, the New Harmony Project, the Lark, New Georges, Hartford Stage and AMMO. She is currently under commission by the Denver Center and Two River Theater, and will attend Hedgebrook later this fall. TV writing credits include Turner & Hooch (Disney+) and Bluff City Law (NBC). Acting on and Off-Broadway and in television and film, Pumariega has cross examined Coach Taylor, made out with the Fly and set a Cuban pharmacy ablaze in a corset. MFA Acting, NYU.
Mfoniso Udofia
Mfoniso Udofia is a first-generation Nigerian-American storyteller and educator. Her plays Sojourners and The Grove will be produced by the Huntington Theatre, and Sojourners, Runboyrun, Her Portmanteau and In Old Age have been seen at New York Theatre Workshop, American Conservatory Theater, Playwrights Realm, Magic Theater, National Black Theatre, Strand Theater, and Boston Court. Mfoniso served as staff writer on 13 REASONS WHY, executive story-editor on Pachinko, co-producer/consulting producer on Little America, supervising producer on A League Of Their Own, co-executive producer on Lessons In Chemistry, and co-executive producer on Let The Right One In. Education: BA Wellesley College, MFA American Conservatory Theater. Recipient of the 2017 Helen Merrill Award, 2017-18 McKnight National Residency/Commission, 2021 Horton Foote Award, and member of New Dramatists. www.mfonisoudofia.com.
writers-in-residence
Jaclyn Backhaus
Jaclyn Backhaus (she/her) is a playwright, screenwriter, and educator hailing from Phoenix, Arizona. Her Off-Broadway plays include Out Of Time (NAATCO and The Public Theater, dir. Les Waters), Wives (Playwrights Horizons, dir. Margot Bordelon), India Pale Ale (Winner, 2018 Horton Foote Prize, MTC, dir. Will Davis), Men On Boats (Clubbed Thumb, Playwrights Horizons, dir. Will Davis), Folk Wandering (dir. Andrew Neisler, Pipeline), and You On The Moors Now (TRE, dir. John Kurzynowski). Other plays include The Orchards, Dana During Tech Week, Oracle, and End-Of-Life. Her work for TV/film includes Doulas, a half-hour comedy pilot about birth workers in New York City, and Preeti Popped It (written with Mahira Kakkar and Purva Bedi), a Punjabi-American road trip comedy that was selected for last year's 1497 Features Lab. She is one the core members of The Kilroys, a professor of playwriting at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and a creative director at Fresh Ground Pepper, an artistic process lab in NYC. She was the 2016 Tow Foundation Playwright-in-Residence at Clubbed Thumb and is currently a New Dramatists resident playwright. jaclynbackhaus.com
Stephen Adly Guirgis
Stephen Adly Guirgis is a writer and an actor and a member and former co-artistic director of NYC’s LAByrinth Theater Company. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Between Riverside and Crazy. His award-winning plays have been produced on five continents and throughout the United States. They include Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven, Our Lady of 121st Street, Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train, In Arabia We’d All Be Kings, Den of Thieves, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, The Little Flower of East Orange and The Motherfucker with the Hat. His upcoming play Dog Day Afternoon was workshopped at OPC and will premiere on Broadway next year. As an actor, he has appeared on film, television, and the stage and most recently played Frank Mariani for two seasons on HBO’s Winning Time.
Steve Yockey
Steve Yockey (he/him) is a Los Angeles-based writer. His plays Bellwether, Pluto, Afterlife, Octopus, Large Animal Games, Subculture, Cartoon, Very Still & Hard to See, Blackberry Winter, The Thrush & The Woodpecker, The Fisherman’s Wife, Wolves, Disassembly, and Niagara Falls are published and licensed by Concord Theatricals. He holds an MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Steve recently adapted the NYT Times Bestseller The Maid by Nita Prost into a film for Universal Studios and is working on the horror comedy Violent Shimizu Wants Revenge for Sister Studio. In television, he was a Co-Executive Producer on the series Supernatural and is the Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated creator/showrunner of HBO Max’s darkly comedic thriller The Flight Attendant. He is also the creator/showrunner of Netflix’s Dead Boy Detectives, adapted from the cult Vertigo/DC comic books.