The Garden State New Play Festival: Bridging Art and Community 

Andrew Bentley is a playwright and theatre deviser from Charlotte NC. His play Angel Boy was staged as the Developmental Set at Drew University Spring 2025. He also received a certificate in Moment Work from the Tectonic Theatre Project last Spring. Whether through playwrighting or devising, his goal is to create new theatre that evokes goosebumps.

Alia Berry is a licensed community-based social worker and national consultant with 25 years of experience serving individuals from 0-75 years old across settings ranging from daycares and schools to group homes, correctional facilities, and reentry programs. A former special education teacher, school leader, clinician, and mentor, she approaches community violence through a trauma-informed, healing-centered lens that supports people before, during, and after incarceration. In 2020, she founded The Village Revival Project, an arts organization that builds social cohesion with those found on both sides of violence. Throughout her career, Alia has supported healing on both sides of violence— example, guiding a mother through her son’s murder trial while also emotionally supporting an incarcerated man through his own. This deep, culturally responsive experience fuels her commitment to VRP’s mission to “revive the collective heartbeat of the village.”

MC Crosby (she/they) is a playwright, director, performer, and choreographer with participatory physical theatre produced in New York City, Scotland, Japan, China, Singapore, Indonesia, and Madagascar. Their plays thread dance, dialogue, and poetry into a tapestry of inclusivity. MC was a finalist for the Playwrights’ Center McKnight National Residency and won the Kaufman Playwriting Award for the immersive yoga play Um…Om. Their socially conscious play Sleeping Soldiers received four stars at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and semi-finalist status for Amnesty International’s Freedom of Expression Award. MC’s plays challenge social norms and address mental health, Queer and gender identity, spirituality, and body image.

Emmanuel Ebba III is a performer, playwright, and director, majoring in Theatre studies at Montclair State University. Emmanuel is passionate about writing plays that allow the audience to experience theatre in new ways. He has worked on several play festivals and films in both Georgia and New Jersey and is excited to work with the Garden State New Play Festival. Emmanuel is passionate about conveying themes of intersectionality through his plays and is excited to do so with the Garden State New Play Festival.

Danielle Frimer is a queer playwright whose work interrogates the systems and stories we inherit. Her plays, including “P. Pan et al.,” “Monarchs,” and the award-winning “a marriage is a story we tell and keep telling,” have been developed and performed at theaters and festivals nationwide, and published in Smith & Kraus’s “Best Short Plays” and “The Cincinnati Review”. Also an Emmy-nominated conversation designer, Danielle holds degrees from Yale and American Conservatory Theater and lives in the Hudson Valley with her wife and their badly behaved but utterly cherished rescue dog, Dory.

Amanda Faye Lacson, MA-TLA is a first-generation Filipina-American writer, historian and teaching artist. Her work is centered on exploring how identities are shaped, what stories are missing from our histories, and how we can dismantle limiting myths. Selected for the 2025-2026 Garden State New Play Festival; 2024-2025 Echoes Writers group cohort at Primary Stages; writer, co-deviser, performer of Raised Pinay, 5th generation; company member of Bree O’Connor’s Playful Substance. As a historian and archivist, Amanda is a founding member of Biographers Guild of Greater New York, and has shifted from creating archives for clients to sharing resources, writing prompts, and missing stories on her Substack, Reclaiming Space in a Colonized History. Learn more at http://www.amandafayelacson.com.

Victoria Lenga is a young woman studying English literature. She recently completed the TSI program at Princeton University, and strives to challenge herself academically. Victoria is passionate about informing community college students about their transfer pathways and scholarship opportunities, as seen by her role as a CSS-mentor. Victoria also enjoys working alongside Professor Egan and Professor Acevedo on the Hudson Oral History Project and listening to Hudson County residents accounts of the past. To Victoria, the ability to create is deeply important–and finds poetry a way to express herself in ways words cannot describe.

Palesa Mazamisa is an award-winning playwright, dramaturg, director, and producer with a distinguished career spanning over two decades across theatre, television, and literature. She is best known for her critically acclaimed play Shoes & Coups, which won the Naledi Theatre Award for Best New South African Play and has become a featured text in university drama curricula. A versatile creative force, she has directed and provided dramaturgy for notable productions including most recently Dancing the Death Drill, an adaptation of acclaimed and award-winning novelist Fred Khumalo, Dusk by Mark Scheepers, I Am A woman by acclaimed novelist Nthikeng MohleleBubbly Bosoms, featuring industry legends, and stage adaptations of works by noted writers like Nthikeng Mohlele.

In television, Palesa made a significant contribution as a writer for the groundbreaking series Queen Modjadji, the first of its kind in the Kelobedu language. Her literary work is published in respected anthologies such as Open, and she has served as guest editor for Wordsetc. magazine. Committed to fostering new talent, she has also played a key role in initiatives like the Mzansi Women’s Film Festival, underscoring her dedication to elevating underrepresented voices in the arts.

Nancy Méndez-Booth, Diasporican writer/artist/performer and educator (and recent The Moth StorySLAM winner). Published in print and online, including Poets & Writers and Salon. Select performances on YouTube. Alum of Rutgers-Newark and Amherst College, recipient of residencies/distinctions including Vermont Studio Center and NJ Women Playwrights Program. Developing a manuscript, This Boricua Life: Part 1. Follow on Instagram and subscribe to her Substack.

Aaron Morrill is a journalist, musician, and lawyer who loves the theater. He is particularly interested in theater as a medium for exploring the intersection of politics and human relationships. For the last ten years (crazy right?) he has been developing a musical (he wrote the book, music and lyrics), Facings, which uses the workplace as the setting for an examination of identity, entrepreneurship, love, and immigration.

Tracie E. Morrison is a veteran educator, published author and early career playwright. She enjoys building the capacity of others through speaking engagements, facilitating workshops and her writing. In November 2021, Tracie released her book: PRAY-ER Talk, Listen Obey: Starting and Strengthening Conversations with God. She continues to develop her craft as a playwright through membership in the Dramatist Guild (DG), African American Playwrights Group (AAPG), Honor Roll Playwrights, and Playwrights’ Center. Tracie is excited to share her writing with others and hopes to inspire, encourage and empower diverse audiences!!!

M. D. Schaffer (They/He) is an award-winning, Non-Binary, Ashkenazi, African-American playwright, librettist, lyricist, and Horror scholar born in Houston, Texas, and residing in New York City. They evoke American history, embodying historical and scientific facts to ground narratives that explore, uplift, and empower marginalized experiences in contemporary times. Their previous productions include “A Rodeo Clown” with the Obsidian Theatre Festival & “Drapetomania: A Negro Carol” with the We Will Dream Festival. Their dramatic works have been developed in collaboration with Art House Productions, Lighthouse Ladies LLC, National Queer Theatre, New Jersey Play Lab, Tier5 Theatre Company, and the Obie Award-winning Harlem9 Inc.

Sam Sultan is a NY-born theatre-creator, performer, and teaching artist with a passion for sharing stories that bring voice to unrepresented voices on stage. Sam is a proud member of AEA, DGA, and the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop and Librettist Workshop. Sam’s first full-length musical, Saint Stephen & the Children’s Crusade, was selected to take part in the Spring 2020 Apples & Oranges THEatre Accelerator cohort. It was later featured on Allen and Gray’s digital New Voices Concert series.