Playwrights Workshop

CCM Playwrights Workshop

The CCM Playwrights Workshop began in 2016 with three main goals:

  • To bring professional theater artists and student playwrights together at CCM to focus on developing the craft of playwriting;
  • To commission professional writers to create plays for CCM Acting and its students;
  • To build a community of playwrights in Cincinnati, with CCM serving as its hub.

The Playwrights Workshop serves as a hub for writers and new play development in Cincinnati. It brings writers and CCM Acting students together and it commissions plays for CCM’s stages.

In 2020, the Workshop commissioned four writers to create original audio dramas for CCM Acting students. The CCM Acting Radio Plays will be released in 2021, and include:

  • Coming Back by Liz Coley*
  • The Missing by Sakinah Hofler
  • Nostalgia! by Paul Strickland
  • Exposure Therapy by Maggie Su*
  • = CCM Playwrights Workshop alum
Playwrights Workshop

In the last five years, the Playwrights Workshop has united playwrights from across the country together to work on their plays with our Resident Dramaturg Lisa Timmel, commissioned professional writers and Cincinnati theatre professionals.  Playwrights also developed their work with director Richard Hess in open barn sessions with CCM Acting students. At the end of each Workshop, all participating playwrights saw their work in a staged reading performed and directed by CCM Acting students and faculty. The commissioned playwright’s work also received a staged reading.

Regular master class leaders have included:

  • Blake Robison, Artistic Director at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park
  • D. Lynn Meyers, Artistic Director at Ensemble Theater Cincinnati
  • Andrew Hungerford, Artistic Director at Know Theater
  • Hannah Rae Montgomery, Resident Dramaturg at Actors Theater of Louisville
  • Bridget Leak and Trey Tatum, Queen City Flash Theater

Commissioned playwrights include:

  • 2016: Todd Almond, The Earth is Flat
  • 2017: MJ Kaufman, Association of Controlled Dreamers
  • 2018: Eydie Faye, Women’s Studies
  • 2019: christopher oscar peña: Los Feliz

CCM Playwrights Workshop alumni include:

  • Amelia Phillips
  • Angela Klocke Forbes
  • Brenda Lilianski
  • Cathy Earnest
  • Celia Tucker
  • Colin Kessler
  • Dot Christenson
  • Eugenia Mazur
  • Gray Shaw
  • Liz Coley
  • Nancy Jones
  • Ruby Berryman
  • Ryan Smith
  • Sara Swartout
  • Wayne Page
  • Ryan Steffen
  • Natalie Margolin
  • Sue Meyer
  • Carmel Reichnitzer
  • Charles Stephan
  • Bethany Dickens
  • Jerold Fink
  • Daniel Brothers
  • Teri Foltz
  • Isaiah Reaves
  • Sharon Butler
  • Stephanie Moore
  • Sarah Knott
  • Lauren Smith
  • Erynn Masi de Casanova
  • Henry Casanova
  • Ashfeen Farhadi
  • Derek Snow