Nocturnal Commissions: A theatrical whirlwind

EVENT SPONSOR 

Charlotte & David Ackert 

LUCK OF THE DRAW SPONSOR

Jill Matichak

PREMIUM COMMISSIONERS

Shelby Jiggetts-Tivony

Abbie Van Nostrand

COMMISSIONERS

Customers Bank - Margaret Monigan & Tom Kasulka

Tina Fallon

Robert Kuchner 

Lindsay Magid Aviner

THE WRITERS

NEENA BEBER Recent work includes A Mother, co-conceived with Jessica Hecht (Baryshnikov Arts); Kate Suspended (The O’Neill National Playwrights Conference); Iphigenia (libretto), opera with composer Anthony Brandt (scheduled for The Hobby Center next spring) . Other upcoming projects include Frida (lyrics and co-book with composer Jaime Lozano); Someday Soon, a new musical adapted from the diary of Rutka Laskier (book writer); A Foreign Body (with director Theresa Rebeck).  Her plays The Dew Point, Hard Feelings, Tomorrowland, A Common Vision, and the widely-produced one-act Misreadings are published by Concord/Samuel French. She is the recipient of Obie, Lilly, and Weissberger awards; Sloan and Amblin Commissions; Royal Court Exchange; Paulette Goddard and MacDowell fellowships; finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Her TV writing (including co-EP The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) has garnered two Emmy nominations. A member of the BMI Lehman Engel Advanced Musical Theatre Workshop and graduate of Harvard University and NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Neena is a writing mentor at The Campfire Project and an adjunct faculty member at Columbia School of the Arts. Ever grateful for her seven years of community, friendship and support as a member of New Dramatists. 

KRISTOFFER DIAZ  is a playwright, librettist, screenwriter, and educator. His play The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. His musical Hell's Kitchen was nominated for 13 Tony awards (including Best Book and Best Musical), won a Grammy, recently concluded a nearly two-year run on Broadway, and is in the midst of both its first national tour and first international production (in Seoul, South Korea). Other full-length titles include Welcome to Arroyo’s, Reggie Hoops, Things With Friends, and Football Football Football Football. His work has been produced, commissioned, and developed at The Public Theater, Dallas Theater Center, Geffen Playhouse, ACT, Center Theatre Group, The Goodman, Second Stage, Victory Gardens, Woolly Mammoth, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival, among many others, including Chicago's American Blues (where he is an Artistic Affiliate). Awards include the Guggenheim, Jerome, Van Lier, NYFA, and Gail Merrifield Papp Fellowships; New York Times Outstanding Playwright Award; Lucille Lortel, Equity Jeff, and OBIE Awards; and the Future Aesthetics Artist Regrant, among others. As a screenwriter, Kristoffer has developed original television pilots for HBO and FX, written for the first season of Netflix's GLOW, adapted the musical Rent for FOX, and wrote the opening video for Wrestlemania 42. Kristoffer teaches playwriting and theater history at New York University. He is an alumnus of New Dramatists and a member of its Board of Directors, as well as a member of the Dramatists Guild Council.  

C.A. JOHNSON is a Brooklyn-based playwright originally from Metairie, Louisiana. Her plays include ALL THE NATALIE PORTMANS (MCC Theater), THIRST (2017 Kilroys List, CATF), THE CLIMB (Cherry Lane Mentor Project, InterAct Theatre Company), THE WITNESSES (Chautauqua Theater Company), AN AMERICAN FEAST (NYU Playwrights Horizons Theater School), I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW, SOMEBODY’S BODY, and LAGNIAPPE. Most recently, she was awarded the Horton Foote Award by the Dramatists Guild and a Helen Merrill Award by the New York Community Trust. She is currently a resident playwright at New Dramatists and was previously the Tow Playwright in Residence at MCC Theater, the 2018 P73 Playwriting Fellow, a Van Lier Fellow, a Dramatists Guild Fellow, a MacDowell Fellow, a Core Writer at The Playwrights Center, and a Sundance Theatre Lab Fellow. Her work has been commissioned by Manhattan Theatre Club, Seattle Rep, Page 73, and Chautauqua Theater Company. C.A. was recently nominated for a 2026 NAACP Image Award and 2026 Emmy Award for her writing on the hit Netflix series THE BEAST IN ME. BA: Smith College MFA: NYU

SARAH RUHL is an American playwright, author, and teacher. Her twelve plays include In the Next Room, or the vibrator play (Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2010; Tony Award Nominee, 2010); The Clean House (Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2005; Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, 2004); and Eurydice (Named one of the most impactful plays of the last 25 years by The New York Times). Her plays have been produced on Broadway and across the country as well as internationally and translated into fourteen languages. Most recently, Signature Theater dedicated a season to her body of work. Her opera Eurydice (with composer Matthew Aucoin) debuted at the Metropolitan Opera and earned a Grammy nomination, and her musical Wonder with A Great Big World recently finished running at the American Repertory Theater.  Her books include Smile, a memoir,  100 essays I don’t have time to write, and Lessons from my Teachers. She is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a PEN Center Award for mid-career playwrights, a Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, and a MacArthur “genius award” Fellowship. She teaches at the Yale School of Drama and lives in Brooklyn with her family.

SARAH GANCHER loves big ideas, epic stories, and deep comedy. Her writing has been seen on stages worldwide including London’s National Theatre, Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre, The Public Theatre, New York Theater Workshop, Steppenwolf, Berkeley Rep, La Jolla Playhouse, Hartford Stage, RoundHouse (DC), Seattle Rep, Forward Theatre, and Ars Nova. (Upcoming: Playwrights Horizons Soundstage and Vineyard Theatre/En Garde Arts.) In 2020, the online production of her play Russian Troll Farm: A Workplace Comedy (dir. Jared Mezzocchi and Elizabeth Williamson, Theaterworks Hartford/Theatre Squared/The Civilians) was included in the New York Times' Top 10 Theater of 2020 list.  

Honors include the Richard Rodgers Award, New York Stage and Film Founders’ Award, The Edgerton Foundation New Play Award, the Edinburgh International Festival Fringe Award, the James Stevenson Prize for Comedy, a Toulmin Foundation commission, several Lortel, Drama Desk, and Drama League nominations, and the AR Gurney Prize.

Her plays include I’ll Get You Back Again (Round House, dir. Rachel Chavkin), Seder (Hartford Stage, dir. Elizabeth Williamson), The Place We Built (The Flea, dir. Danya Taymor) and Klauzál Square (Quarter6Quarter7 Festival, Budapest, dir. Eszter Kalman.) She frequently collaborates on musicals, including Hundred Days (Public Theatre, New York Theater Workshop, national tour) and The Lucky Ones (Ars Nova) with The Bengsons and Anne Kauffman, and Mission Drift with Heather Christian, Rachel Chavkin, and The TEAM (National Theatre, Traverse, world tour.) Her work in the realm of large-scale spectacles includes partnerships with Blue Man Group, Madison Square Garden and Cirque du Soleil.

Sarah loves working with devisers and musicians.She currently teaches graduate and undergraduate playwriting at The New School and NYU Tisch School of the Arts' Department of Dramatic Writing. Alumna: Women’s Project Lab, Playwrights’ Realm Writing Fellowship, P73’s writers’ group, and Ars Nova Play Group. MFA: NYU.