William Missouri Downs is a playwright and director. His plays have been produced by The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, The Orlando Shakespeare Theatre, The InterAct Theatre in Philadelphia, The San Diego Rep, The Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the Salt Lake City Acting Company, the Actors Theatre of Charlotte, the International Theatre Festival in Israel, the Stadt Theater Walfischgasse in Austria, the Jewish Theatre of Toronto, The Bloomington Playwright's Project, the Detroit Rep, the New York City Fringe Festival, the Durban Performing Arts Center in South Africa, and 150 theatres worldwide. His numerous playwriting awards include two rolling premieres from the National New Play Network ("Women Playing Hamlet" and "The Exit Interview"), and twice he was a finalist at the Eugene O'Neill ("Mad Gravity" and "How to Steal a Picasso"). Samuel French, Playscripts, Next Stage Press, and Heuer have published his plays. In addition, Bill has authored several articles and three other books, including SCREENPLAY: WRITING THE PICTURE and NAKED PLAYWRITING, both published by Silman/James. In Hollywood he was a staff writer on the NBC sitcom "My Two Dads" (starring Paul Reiser). He also wrote episodes of "Amen" (starring Sherman Hemsley) and "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" (starring Will Smith) as well as sold/optioned screenplays to Imagine Pictures and Filmways. Trained under the Oscar Nominated Polish Director Jerzy Antczak, Bill has directed over 40 college and professional productions. He holds an MFA in acting from the University of Illinois and an MFA in screenwriting from UCLA. Lanford Wilson and Milan Stitt at the Circle Rep in New York City trained him in playwriting. Lou Anne Wright is an actor, dialect coach, professor, and writer; she holds an MFA in Voice, Speech, and Dialects from the National Theatre Conservatory and is a certified Fitzmaurice Voicework teacher. Lou Anne has served as voice/dialect coach for such companies as the Colorado Shakespeare Festival and the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, and her film roles include Judy Shepard in HBO's "The Laramie Project" and Nell in "Hearsay". As a playwright, she authored "Kabuki Medea", which won the Bay Area Critics Award for Best Production in San Francisco. It was also produced at the Kennedy Center. She is the coauthor of the book PLAYWRITING: FROM FORMULA TO FORM, and her screenwriting credits include the film adaptation of Eudora Welty's "The Hitch-Hikers", which featured Patty Duke and Richard Hatch (for which she was nominated for the Directors Guild of America's Lillian Gish Award). Lou Anne teaches acting, voice, speech, and dialects at the University of Wyoming, where she has won several teaching awards. Erik Ramsey is an Associate Professor of Playwriting in the MFA Playwriting Program at Ohio University. His plays have been developed at various theaters including Cleveland Public Theatre, American Stage, Victory Gardens, and Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre, and been published by Samuel French and Dramatic Publishing. As a new play dramaturg, he has worked in diverse settings from Steppenwolf Theater to WordBridge Lab. Over the past decade he has been a guest artist and taught playwriting, new play development, and narrative theory in a variety of national and international venues, including the St. Petersburg Academy of Dramatic Arts “New American Plays” Conference and Lubimovka Playwrights Laboratory at Teatr.doc in Moscow. Erik’s newest play, a two-hander for actresses in their 40s, explores the intersection of rodeo clowning and time-travel.
