Joye Otto
Playwright, Solastalgia
3x33 Festival 2023
Joye Otto is a playwright and theater-maker who resides in Southern Oregon. She is thrilled to be working with Theatre 33 for this production of Solastalgia. Since 2020, Joye has been an active member of the Experimental Writers Theatre Workshop. She received her MFA from Brandeis University, where she was awarded the Howard and Mimi Steinberg Prize for Playwriting. When she is not writing, you can catch her on her couch, watching NBA hoops with her two dogs.
Kate Danley
Playwright, Working For Crumbs
3x33 Festival 2023
Kate Danley is a USA TODAY bestselling author. She was honored with the Garcia Award for Best Fiction Book of the Year (The Woodcutter, 47North), McDougall Previews Award for Best Fantasy Book of the Year (Queen Mab), and her series Maggie MacKay: Magical Tracker is optioned for television. Her book, The Woodcutter, is being left on the moon in a lunar time capsule in February 2023. Her plays have been produced internationally. Building Madness, won the Panowski Playwriting Award; Power won the Renegade Theatre Festival; and Kings of the World was voted an audience favorite in the 10x10x10 Festival. She graduated from Towson University and is a Maryland Distinguished Scholar in the Arts. She performed her original stand-up at clubs like The Comedy Store and The Icehouse and wrote sketch for a weekly show at the Acme. She trained in on-camera puppetry with Michael Earl (Mr. Snuffleupagus) and lost on Hollywood Squares. o.
Paul Lewis
Playwright, The Names
3x33 Festival 2023
Paul Lewis is honored and beyond excited to once again have the opportunity to collaborate with Theatre 33 after last summer’s beautifully-realized workshop and production of his musical Lost in the Hills. He is a Seattle-based composer and playwright whose work includes musical adaptations of two iconic children’s books, The Runaway Bunny and Caps for Sale, both of which premiered at Boston Children’s Theatre; The Crossing, A Musical, winner of a Seattle Times Footlights Award for Promising New Work (Theater Schmeater and Jewel Box Theatre); Jill Trent Science Sleuth (Cayuga Community College); Wish, A Musical (23 Miles South); The Bright Days of Our Youth (Bainbridge Performing Arts podcast); Oblivion (Driftwood); and The Hours of Life, A Musical (Theatre22). His new play, The Lion in the Snow Globe, was recently workshopped at The Sauk. Paul is a member of BMI and the Dramatists Guild of America.
* Photo Credit: Steve Stolee
Heldor Schäfer
Playwright, The Cuckoo Song
Summer pop-up reading, 2023
Heldor Schäfer Heldor grew up in Hamburg, Germany, but at age 20 emigrated to Canada, where he made his living as a journalist, editor, and publisher before turning to a career in the theatre. He has both adapted and translated other authors' works, including short stories and radio plays. Several of his own one-act stage plays have been performed in Canada, the USA, Europe, and the Middle East. Residing in Victoria, British Columbia, Heldor has worked professionally as a stage director and occasionally volunteers his time in sound design and operation, as well as acting for various amateur and semi-professional theatre companies. He is the founder and project coordinator of Island Playwrights, an organization that encourages and supports local authors creating new works for the stage.
Nora Douglass
Playwright, The Great Bub
Summer pop-up reading, 2023
Nora Douglass Nora holds an MFA in Playwriting from the University of Washington School of Drama, where her thesis play, Edmonds Stories, is the only student play ever included in the school’s Mainstage Season. Playwriting awards include first place in the Drury College One Act Play Competition, a Shenandoah International Playwrights Retreat Fellowship, and three Kennedy Center ACTF Awards, including the national David Library Award for the best play about the American Experience. Nora is thrilled to be back with her friends at Theatre 33. The Great Bub will be her fourth play included in its summer season. Edmonds Stories will also have a new fully mounted production in Colorado with the Theater Company of Lafayette this summer. Nora writes and teaches in western Washington.
Angela Gyurko
Playwright, A Tale of Two
Summer pop-up reading, 2023
Angela Gyurko (she/her) graduated from Columbia University in 1990 (this is relevant to the play), and like any good Tool of the Patriarchy (also relevant), her love of dance and choreography gave way to a more responsible career path, including corporate consulting and teaching college. In February 2019, she completed her MFA in creative writing from Goddard College. While she’d planned to write novels, plays kept waking her in the middle of the night, demanding that she write them. Her first full-length play, A Tale of Two (then a draft of 50 pages) was selected as part of the Seattle Playwright Salon’s 2020 season of staged readings and was the last play staged by SPS before the pandemic shut-down. Her second full-length play, Proper, was a semi-finalist at the Gary Marshall Theater’s Festival of New Works in 2021, and in 2022, it made the top twelve for the Dayton Playhouse’s FutureFest. Two of her one-act plays have been staged in Port Townsend and at Boston Conservatory.
