Playwrights

I come to writing without an MFA or even a major in English. I come to playwriting from a background in community theatre as actor, singer and dancer and bring the passion of that form of communication. I also bring the background of many years in Family Medicine which has infused my observations of people with compassion, empathy, humor and surprise. I have been writing seriously for about 7 years and have wrtten 7 one act plays. My favorite genre is comedy as a good laugh opens the heart and mind as much as a good cry.

Keith is a musical theater writer living in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. He has enjoyed writing music most of his life and has recently completed coursework in writing music for vocalists, lyric writing and book writing at the Musical Creator’s Institute.

Keith has always had a strong interest in craftsmanship. He spent many years developing technologies and approaches toward the craft of producing professional studio quality portraits. His inventions in this field have been employed to produce tens of millions of portraits each year.

More recently, he has come to embrace the craft of musical theater development and is on the board of the New Musical Theater Exchange in Minneapolis. He is currently developing the musical Anzhelina & Karina. This is the story of two young women, who when coming back together after a long separation, are challenged to renew the loving relationship they shared as children before time and circumstance set them far apart to live very different lives. For this musical Keith is creating the book, lyrics, and score. It is currently in workshop at the New Musical Theater Exchange.

Maureen is a Board Member of the New Musical Theatre Exchange (NMTE: www.nmte.org)  — a nonprofit designed to bring together committed librettists, lyricists and composers to develop new works of musical theater in the Twin Cities and beyond.  Maureen’s most recent work —  A House Divided:  An Intimate Musical of the Lincoln Presidency — is a collaboration with Michael J. Salmanson and Thomas C. Berg.  A grant from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council supported two live concert performances of the piece in 2021 at the Minnesota History Center (St. Paul) and Beard’s Plaisance (Minneapolis). It received its world premiere production in May 2018 in Narberth, Pennsylvania.  The Bluegrass Opera Company of Lexington, Kentucky selected it for its Early Stages series and produced three readings in 2017. NMTE sponsored three Staged Readings in the Twin Cities in 2015-16.

Maureen’s musical comedy Got It Made and its one-act version, (Almost) Got It Made, have been performed in theaters from Georgia to Washington State and published by Heuer Publishing. Maureen developed and co-wrote two musical comedy revues for The Public Offenders, a troupe that performed at Zanies Comedy Club in Chicago.  Her short plays Decomposition, Hopkins Extraordinary Travel, Lawyers In Love, and A Bug In Your Ear have been featured in multiple regional theater festivals. She has written, directed, and produced musical comedy pieces for major corporate events and directed Dido and Aeneas and Orpheus and Eurydice for Garden of Song Opera. Maureen’s twenty+ years as a practicing lawyer have given her insights into the workplace and other human dynamics that inspire her characters and situations.

Maureen is a proud member of The Playwrights’ Center, The Dramatists Guild, and Writer Rung (www.writerrung.blogspot.com).

Agent information

Marta Praeger of The Robert A. Freedman Dramatic Agency, Inc. represents Maureen and her collaborators with respect to A House Divided.   https://www.robertfreedmanagency.com/contact.html

Maureen’s musicals Got It Made (full-length) and (Almost) Got It Made (one-act) are published by Heuer Publishing LLC.  Rights to perform these pieces can be obtained at www.hitplays.com.

For rights to other pieces, you can contact Maureen through her website:  www.maureenkaneberg.com.

Alan M. Berks is the author of full-length plays, one-acts, short plays, and monologues that have been seen in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Chicago, San Francisco, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Indianapolis, and New York. Most recently, as a member of the Workhaus Collective, he developed a new, small-cast, political duel between a Republican politician and a reporter called The Great Divide. He also produced, translated, and directed a new adaptation of Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author set on a reality television show set. His solo show, Goats, premiered in Phoenix, Indianapolis, Chicago, and was produced by the Production Company in New York and nominated for a 2006 New York Innovative Theater Award. In 2011, it was produced by the Minnesota Jewish Theater Company in St. Paul, MN.

The plays 3 Parts Dead, written in collaboration with Burning House Group, and Everywhere Signs Fall, at Gremlin Theatre, were both named in the Minneapolis Star Tribune “Year in Review” as some of the best new work of the year. In 2010, Music Lovers landed in Top 10 lists in Lavender and Metro Magazines. Other awards include: Minnesota State Arts Board (Ringtone), MacDowell Colony Fellow (They Want), and Jerome Fellow (Mourning Rituals). His one-act play for high school students, Home of the Brave, was commissioned by the Guthrie Theatre, published by Playscripts, Inc., and produced by schools from Minnesota and Iowa to Texas and California.

Other work includes: How to Cheat, Fugue, Almost Exactly Like Us, and They Want (based on The Oresteia by Aeschylus). From 2004-2007, he co-founded and co-produced Thirst Theater, a unique artistic and community-building event in Minnesota that brought more than 30 professional playwrights into close collaboration with over 100 Union actors to new, adventurous theater accessible site specific locations around the Twin Cities. Performing only on Monday evenings in 12 week bursts, largely in bars and restaurants, the project helped create more than 62 new plays and incubated countless additional collaborations between professional playwrights and actors in the state.

In October 2008, he also created MinnesotaPlaylist.com, Minnesota’s only trade publication for the performing arts, which has grown into the premier destination for performance-related information from audition listings to thought-provoking articles, with over 14,000 distinct visitors a month.

He is also the Director of Communications at Pillsbury House Theatre in Minneapolis.

Anne Bertram is a playwright and software developer working in Minneapolis. She was a founding artistic associate of Theatre Unbound, a Minneapolis/St. Paul company devoted to work by and about women, and served as its Managing Director (2003-2010) and Executive Director (2010-2018). Her plays, which critic John Townsend praised for their “visceral sense of women’s history,” have been seen in venues from off-Off Broadway to classrooms in Fargo. Murderess (2011) and The Good Fight (2012) remain among Theatre Unbound’s best-selling shows and have gone on to numerous productions in the US and Canada. Awards include the Tennessee Williams One-Act Prize and a Playwrights’ Center Jones Commission. She is currently working on a multimedia piece, Unfrozen, with composer George Maurer, based on the writings of Polar explorers.

Charles T. Betz is a Minneapolis-based composer and librettist for musical theater. He trained in classical and jazz guitar, brass, music theory, and jazz arranging at the University of Minnesota and the University of North Texas, and has performed across classical, jazz, rock, choral, and worship music. He completed the year-long Core program at New Musicals, Incorporated (2022-2023), was invited to return as guest composer the following season, and in 2024 was selected for Nautilus Music-Theater’s Composer-Librettist Studio.

His current work centers on Five Minutes on the Low Road, a musical about near-death experience for which he wrote the book, music, lyrics, and original concept, with additional book, lyrics, and music by Josiah Thomas Turner and orchestrations by Ben Jossi. The show is grounded in the clinical NDE literature  and his engagement with the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS). Other recent works include the commissioned choral-orchestral Wild and Precious (2024) and River Song (2025), and the short musical IQ: The Musical (Los Angeles, 2023). He is a member of the New Musical Theater Exchange, the Minnesota Association of Songwriters, and the Playwrights’ Center.

Kevin Bowen is a playwright and songwriter living in Eagan, Minnesota. He also works as a professional graphic designer at Bowen Design (www.kevinbowendesign.com), which he started and has operated since 1995. He is a member of the Playwright’s Center and the Minnesota Association of Songwriters where he formerly served as their Treasurer. His plays and musicals have been produced and staged throughout Minnesota.

For more information about any of these completed plays or the new works, please email Kevin at: tctheater@gmail.com

Carlyle Brown is a writer/performer and artistic director of Carlyle Brown & Company, based in Minneapolis, which has produced The Masks of Othello: A Theatrical Essay, The Fula From America: An African Journey, Talking Masks, Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been…, and Therapy and Resistance. His plays include The African Company Presents Richard III, The Little Tommy Parker Celebrated Colored Minstrel Show, Buffalo Hair, The Beggars’ Strike, The Negro of Peter the Great, Pure Confidence, A Big Blue Nail, Dartmoor Prison, and others. He has received commissions from Arena Stage, the Houston Grand Opera, the Children’s Theatre Company, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Goodman Theater, Miami University of Ohio, and the University of Louisville. He is recipient of playwriting fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, McKnight Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, Jerome Foundation, Theatre Communications Group and the Pew Charitable Trust. Mr. Brown has been artist-in-residence at New York University School of the Arts Graduate Acting Program, The James Thurber House in Columbus, and Ohio State University Theater Department where he directed his music drama, Yellow Moon Rising. He has been a teacher of expository writing at New York University, African-American literature at the University of Minnesota, playwriting at Ohio State University and Antioch College, African-American theater and dramatic literature at Carlton College as the Benedict Distinguished Visiting Artist, and “Creation and Collaboration” at the University of Minnesota Department of Theater. He has worked as a museum exhibit writer and story consultant for the Charles Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, and the Kentucky Center for African American Heritage in Louisville, Kentucky. Mr. Brown is a Core Writer of the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis, and he is an alumnus of New Dramatists in New York. He has served on the board of directors of The Playwrights’ Center and Theatre Communications Group, the national organization for the non-profit professional theate,r and is a member of the board of the Jerome Foundation. He is a member of the Charleston Jazz Initiative Circle at the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina, where his works and papers are archived. He is the 2006 recipient of The Black Theatre Network’s Winona Lee Fletcher Award for outstanding achievement and artistic excellence, a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow, a 2010 recipient of the Otto Rene’ Castillo Award for Political Theatre, and 2010 United States Artists Friends Fellowship.

Julia Brown is the Office Manager at the Playwrights’ Center. She is also a playwright, songwriter, and performer. She received her B.A. in Theater and English from Macalester College while serving as Business Manager for the Macalester choir program and co-founding the Performing Histories Project. Her adaptation of the Táin Bó Cúailnge was featured at the 2011 IMDA St. Patrick’s Day celebration at the Landmark Center in St. Paul.

Marge J. Buckley is a playwright and painter based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her work examines radical systemic change by transforming the serious into the ridiculous, and vice versa. Her plays include “God is a Woman” (NYC International Fringe 2015), “The Earth Room” (Fresh Ink Theatre 2019), “Detective Chunk, the Multiverse, and Me” (Commutator Collective 2021, 2024), “Grainville Cereals Incorporated” (Commutator Collective 2022), and “Guillotine City” (Commutator Collective 2026). She also writes text for an ongoing series of experimental one-night warehouse-based theatre-and-dance parties.

Marge is a co-founder of Commutator Collective, a Minnesota-based theatre company for which she currently serves as Playwright-in-Residence. She is a 2025-2026 McKnight Fellow in Playwriting at the Playwrights’ Center.

Malick is a playwright, director, and music producer from Brooklyn Park, MN. His play, Waiting in Vain, was workshopped and produced at Augsburg University with Ambiance Theatre Company. He was a finalist for the Many Voices Mentorship through the Playwrights’ Center (Minneapolis, MN) in 2018. His work has been featured in the digital anthology, Black MN Voices (published in 2020) and has been a writer for The Plugged App. He currently resides in Los Angeles, CA where he is pursuing his MFA in Playwriting at UCLA (Graduate Opportunities Fellowship). Synopses and samples of his plays can be viewed on New Play Exchange.

Brian Cern is a Twin Cities based actor and playwright, whose work has won numerous awards and contests throughout North America. A member of the Dramatists Guild, he received his training at Cardinal Stritch University, where his theatre and writing studies lead him to a deep appreciation for the stories that unite us in the human condition. As parables, his work has been called “imaginative,” “beautifully soulful,” and “thought-provoking.” He lives in suburban St. Paul, Minnesota, with his wife and son.

Christopher Childs is a writer, an environmentalist, and an Equity and SAG-AFTRA actor who appeared – primarily in his native New England – in scores of stage productions, and on television and film, prior to a mid-career shift that saw him become an activist and award-winning National Speaker for the U.S. branch of Greenpeace between 1987 and 1996. In the Speaker’s role he was a guest-lecturer at some 300 colleges and universities, was named Lecturer of the Year by the National Association for Campus Activities – chosen from among finalists who included Maya Angelou – and was one of the earlier speakers crisscrossing the country warning of the risks of carbon emissions and a shifting climate. Preoccupied, as a writer, with creative social change, he is the author of The Spirit’s Terrain: Creativity, Activism, and Transformation, published by Beacon Press in 1998 with a Foreword by the Dalai Lama; Publisher’s Weekly called the book a “spiritual manifesto for modern-day social-environmental activists,” and Bill Moyers praised it as “a very powerful insight that has significance for journalism as well as activism”.

Jessica Chipman (she/her/hers) is a theatre director, playwright, and educator based out of Minnesota. She is the co-founder of Dynamo Creative, a female-led theatre company committed to amplifying the stories of women. A longtime theatre educator, Jessica is also an arts curriculum consultant. She is a proud member of New Play Exchange, Communication Arts Minnesota, Minnesota Educational Theatre Association, and Education Minnesota.

Prior to co-founding Dynamo Creative, Jessica directed over thirty-five productions for educational theatre programs, community theater, and is slated to direct at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. She has created improv groups, alumni productions, and twenty-four-hour theatre festivals. Jessica’s plays have been produced across North America by community and university groups. She holds an MA in Theatre Production from Central Washington University and is a candidate in the MFA Directing program at the University of Idaho.

Jessica Chipman (she/her/hers) is a theatre director, playwright, and educator based out of Minnesota. She is the co-founder of Dynamo Creative, a female-led theatre company committed to amplifying the stories of women. A longtime theatre educator, Jessica is also an arts curriculum consultant. She is a proud member of New Play Exchange, Communication Arts Minnesota, Minnesota Educational Theatre Association, and Education Minnesota.

Prior to co-founding Dynamo Creative, Jessica directed over thirty-five productions for educational theatre programs, community theater, and is slated to direct at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. She has created improv groups, alumni productions, and twenty-four-hour theatre festivals. Jessica’s plays have been produced across North America by community and university groups. She holds an MA in Theatre Production from Central Washington University and is a candidate in the MFA Directing program at the University of Idaho.

Lou Clark is an award winning theater artist and applied performance practitioner.

Her plays have been produced as readings, workshops, and full productions in Albuquerque, Austin, Boulder, Denver, New York City, Phoenix, Seattle, and Washington DC. She writes for adults and youth often with a lens relevant for 2SLGBTQIA+ community members. Representative plays for adults include: The Politics of Hair, Godawful Dress, Out on the Road, and A Good Death. Representative plays for Young Audiences include: Wonderdog!, Cinderella and The Beanstalk, and I Sea-directed by Clareann Despain, which won the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival National Playwriting for Youth Award.

Clark has also directed numerous readings, workshops, and full productions of original scripts including In the Name of Things We Need by Alice Stanley for the MFA new play reading festival at Arizona State University; Body Burden by Dale Dunn at New Mexico’s Adobe Theatre; Germs & Viruses by playwright Kirt Shineman for the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, (regional); and for Albuquerque’s Fusion Theatre Company’s 10-minute play festival. She also directed the New Mexico Premiere of I Am My Own Wife for Albuquerque’s Vortex Theatre.

Applied artist work includes developing original performance pieces with native youth as part of Santa Fe Opera educational programming, with people with disabilities at VSA Arts of New Mexico, and with Rising Youth Theatre in Phoenix, Arizona. Additionally, she has worked in healthcare simulation education for 20 years translating her artistic skills to teach and support healthcare learners to grow their clinical communication skills.

Training includes an MFA in Dramatic Writing from the University of New Mexico, Yale Summer Writer’s Program (i.e., juried, memoir/non-fiction), the Professional Arts Training Program-Artistic Internship, (i.e., casting/literary) with Seattle Rep Theatre supervised by former Artistic Director Jerry Manning, and the summer program, (i.e., actor) with London’s Royal Court Theatre.

Vinecia Coleman is a playwright and actor based in Minneapolis/St. Paul, whose artistic aim as a writer is to tell stories that focus on the Black female experience. Her plays have been developed at the Great Plains Theatre Commons Conference, Boise Contemporary Theatre’s BIPOC Playwright Festival, Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Black Swan Lab, id Theater’s Seven Devils Playwrights’ Conference, and others. Her play Christiana Lysistrata had its 2024 premiere at Main Street Players in Miami, FL. As an actor, she has worked at Penumbra Theatre, Pillsbury House Theatre, Jungle Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Portland Playhouse, and more. MFA: University of Idaho.

Born a poet, now a playwright. I have completed my first script. Time since my retirement two years ago has been the greatest gift.

Twin Cities-based playwright, Michelle de Joya, is a ‘25-’27 Jerome Fellow at the Playwrights’ Center, following their previous Many Voices Mentorship in ‘23-’24. A few notable moments for their writing include: a publication in Playground Experiment’s 2021 Faces of America Monologue Anthology; in 2023, their play COYFISH was produced by THEATER23 in the Minnesota Fringe Festival; and they were commissioned for multiple Audio Plays in Wonderlust Productions’ Hidden Herald Series, Seasons 1 and 2. They were a two-time semi-finalist at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale for Playwriting and a member of the ‘22-’23 and ‘24-’25 Exposed Brick Theatre’s Emerging Writers’ Cohort. Lastly, they’ve received support from many notable organizations such as: Minnesota State Arts Board, Penumbra Theater Company, Theater Mu, Theater Latte Da and more. You can keep up with any other upcoming projects at facebook.com/dejoya.michelle