#199: Creative Pathways

Ugo and Cat are two of the longest serving members of the San Francisco-based online theatre group Drama With Friends. Originally conceived for those to who theatre was inaccessible due to physical and/or financial challenges, DWF produces monthly performances of (on average) 5-6 10-minute plays from playwrights around the world and with actors from all across the United States. What's it like producing for Zoom? The troupe's challenges are numerous and the solutions ingenious! 

It's the spooky month! And we honor the creepies with Rich Pauli's comedically spooky play "Til Death." What happens when the parting of the ways brings complaints from not just the afterlife, but the present life? Edna will need to come up with a solution that settles both issues! We chat with Rich about getting started in playwriting, the romance of first plays, ghost stories, and writing for Hallmark Cards. Don't miss it!...and Happy Halloween!!

Robert is an award-winning playwright, actor, voice actor, and artist as well as the producer, head writer, host, improviser, and designer of the comedy ensemble, Balderdash Academy.  He is also the owner and lead writer of the interactive mystery-comedy company Sleuths Mystery Entertainment. Facebook / New Play Exchange / Balderdash Academy Sleuths Mystery Entertainment   

American playwright, essayist, cultural critic, and arts advocate who serves as executive director of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation as well as the Project Director of the New Play Exchange for the National New Play Network

Playwright, Director, Teacher, Mom, Ally. Her zoom podcast “States of Play” which serves as a place for playrights to hear their work out loud—sometimes for the first time--is now in its fifth year and still going strong. She's a lifelong theatre professional and strong advocate for local community theatres and especially theatre for younger audiences. Website | States of Play |  Facebook X |  New Play Exchange |  Halifax Theatre for Young People

Alexandra Meda is a nationally recognized cultural strategist, artistic director, and transformation architect working at the intersection of ensemble-based praxis, systemic change, and collective restoration. With a foundation in devised theater, stage direction, and an expansive practice that spans strategy, facilitation, and immersive experience design, she guides institutions through moments of reckoning, realignment, and radical reimagining.

Kate Busselle is the founder of Heartland Intimacy Design & Training, an intimacy training company which offers academic, accessible, and affordable intimacy training entirely online. She is also Assistant Professor of Movement and Stage Combat at the University of Oklahoma. It's a it like making stage intimacy and illustrating combat safe for all performers? Let's find out! Kate's Website / Heartland Intimacy / Facebook  Instagram / Instagram - Heartland Intimacy

We welcome back a longtime friend and colleague and one of the hardest working theatre professionals, Rachel Feeny-Williams. Rachel's a playwright of no mean ability and a startling fecundity, the mastermind behind one of the first mid-covid zoom theatre gatherings, the Literary and Discourse Society, and now single-handedly produces Theatrical Shenanigans, a podcast that produces short audio plays and panel discussions which is now in its millionth year with how many episodes...? RFW Website / Theatrical Shenanigans / Facebook Instagram / YouTube / New Play Exchange  

Eve Kerrigan and Ana Bess Moyer Bell are part of a team comprised of artists, social workers, language translators, and organizers from Creative Pathways, a program that teaches English as a second language to refugees and newly arrived Americans using theatre. They employ the tools of nonfiction and documentary theatre specifically to help English learners develop their voices literally and figuratively. Genesis Center / Eve's website / Ana - LinkedIn  Eve - Facebook

Ep. 198, February 2026. John Minigan is an award-winning playwright and a former high school teacher whose work Breaking the Shakespeare Code was recently presented by Gather by the Ghostlight at the Aiken Community Theatre in Aiken, South Carolina, and Le Chat Noir in Augusta, Georgia. One of his other works, Out of the Scorpions Nest will have just received a reading at The Barley Sheaf Players Annual Benefit Show: The Refinery in Lionville PA. www.johnminigan.com / Facebook / Instagram / Bluesky New Play Exchange