Past EMOS Judges
Wendy Arons (EMOS 2015 Host; 2018, 2022 Judge) is Professor of Drama at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, USA. Her research interests include German theatre, 18th- and 19th-century theatre history, feminist theatre, and performance and ecology. She is author of Performance and Femininity in Eighteenth-Century German Woman's Writing: The Impossible Act (Palgrave Macmillan 2006), and co-editor, with Theresa J. May, of Readings in Performance and Ecology (Palgrave Macmillan 2012). She has published articles in Theatre Survey, Theatre Topics, The German Quarterly, Communications from the International Brecht Society, 1650-1850, Text and Presentation, and Theatre Journal, as well as chapters in a number of anthologies. In 2012 Prof. Arons received a three-year NEH “Scholarly Editions and Translations” grant to support the first complete and annotated translation into English of G.E. Lessing’s "Hamburg Dramaturgy" (http://mcpress.media-commons.org/hamburg/). She has also translated plays from German into English, including Brecht’s The Good Person of Sezuan in collaboration with Tony Kushner. In addition, she is the author of an arts and culture blog called The Pittsburgh Tatler (http://www.wendyarons.wordpress.com).
Keith Barker (EMOS 2022 Judge) is a member of the Métis Nation of Ontario. He is a playwright, actor, and director from Northwestern Ontario, and the current Artistic Director at Native Earth Performing Arts in Toronto. He is a Dora Mavor Moore Award winner and won the Playwrights Guild’s Carol Bolt Award for best new play. Keith was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for English Drama in 2018 for his play, This Is How We Got Here. He received a Saskatchewan and Area Theatre Award for Excellence in Playwriting for his play, The Hours That Remain, as well as a Yukon Arts Award for Best Art for Social Change. His new short zoom play, in a little plastic bag, in a tiny little jar, on a mantel in the house will premiere as part of the Stratford Festival's Viral Transmissions Series found at stratfest@home. His audio play Every Minute of Every Day will premiere as part of Factory Theatre's You Can't Get There From Here podcast play series in April 2021.
Timothy Bond (EMOS 2004, 2009 Judge) is Artistic Director, Syracuse Stage and faculty at Syracuse University, NY. From 1996 to 2007, Bond has served as Associate Artistic Director at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) in Ashland, Oregon, where he directed The Piano Lesson, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Tongue of a Bird, Les Blancs, Blues for an Alabama Sky, Raisin in the Sun, Topdog/Underdog, and many others. He has also directed at the Arena in Washington DC; Milwaukee Repertory Theater; Arizona Theatre Company; Indiana Repertory Theatre; The Julliard School; The Empty Space Theatre and A Contemporary Theatre, Seattle; Honolulu Theatre for Youth; and over 20 productions at Seattle Group Theatre, where he served as Artistic Director and director of the Multicultural Playwrights' Festival. Tim also served as advisor and National Judge for the 2004 Earth Matters On Stage.
Alison Carey (EMOS 2018, 2022 Judge) most recently served as director for American Revolutions: the United States History Cycle, a multi-decade program of Oregon Shakespeare Company to commission and develop 37 new plays about moments of change in American history, including Sweat by Lynn Nottage; Indecent by Paula Vogel; All the Way by Robert Schenkkan; and new works by Culture Clash and the 1491s. Several plays commission by Carey have won Tony Awards. She wrote a contemporary adaptation of Merry Wives of Windsor at OSF, and served as dramaturg for Off the Rails and many other productions. Prior to her tenure at OSF, as co-founder of Cornerstone Theatre, Alison wrote or co-wrote over 25 of Cornerstone’s productions, and was nominated for Emmy, GLAAD and Ovation awards. A member of the Dramatists Guild, she has served on advisory or peer panels for organizations such as The Ford Foundation, Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Foundation, the Mark Taper Forum’s Other Voices Projects and Arts Midwest. She has guest lectured at universities and organizations around the country, including at Yale, Stanford and the BAM/CUNY Shakespeare Conference, and taught courses at the University of Southern California and CalState LA in playwriting and community-based theater.
Marie Clements (EMOS 2009 and 2012 Judge) is an award-winning performer, playwright, screenwriter, director, producer and founding artistic director of urban ink productions and fathom labs highway. Her plays, including The Edward Curtis Project, Burning Vision, Copper Thunderbird, Burning Vision, The Unnatural and Accidental Women, and Urban Tattoo, have been presented on some of the most prestigious stages for Canadian and international work including the Festival de Theatre des Ameriques (Urban Tattoo 2001, Burning Vision 2003) in Montreal, and The Magnetic North Festival (Burning Vision 2003 and Copper Thunderbird 2007) in Ottawa, and have garnered awards including 2004 Canada-Japan Award, short listed for the 2004 Governor General's Literary Award, Jessie Richardson Awards and a Jack Webster Journalism nomination. As writer and producer her full-length play Copper Thunderbird premiered as a co-production with The National Arts Centre in Ottawa, May 2007 and at The Magnetic North Festival 2007.
Downing Cless (EMOS 2015 Judge) is professor emeritus and former chair of the Department of Theatre and Film at Tufts University, and served as dramaturg for Underground Railway Theater's premier of Sila, by Chantal Bilodeau (2012 EMOS winner) at The Central Square Theater, Boston. He is author of Ecology and Environment in European Drama (Routledge, 2010). He has been active in EMOS since its founding, and is an active member of the Massachusetts chapter of 350.org. His essay "Ecodirecting Canonical Plays" was published in the collection Readings in Performance and Ecology, and his articles on theatre about the environment have appeared in TDR: The Drama Review, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, and The Journal of American Drama and Theatre. He has directed over sixty plays in university and professional theatres during his career: he brought to the Tufts stage many eco-themed productions including Oedipus & Antigone, The Madwoman of Chaillot, and Doctor Faustus. For the Underground Railway Theater he has co-directed three original plays, Sanctuary: The Spirit of Harriet Tubman; The Christopher Columbus Follies: An Eco-Cabaret; and InTOX!Cating: An Eco-Cabaret (which was the recipient of a grant and award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency).
José Cruz González (EMOS 2004, 2009, and 2012 Judge and Guest Artist) is professor of playwriting and directing at California State University Los Angeles, where he was awarded Outstanding Professor. His plays have been produced by numerous theatres including the Mark Taper Forum, Denver Theatre Center, Teatro Visíon, Metro Theatre, Actors’ Theatre of Louisville, Cornerstone, and Childsplay. He was awarded a 2004 TCG/Pew National Theatre Residency grant, and a 1997 NEA/TCG Theatre Residency Program for Playwrights. He has written for PAZ, the Emmy Award nominated television series produced by Discovery Kids for The Learning Channel. He created and ran South Coast Repertory’s Hispanic Playwrights Project 1986-1996. He is Associate Artist with Cornerstone Theater (CA), and Playwright in Residence with Childsplay (AZ). José Cruz González also served on the panel of National Judges for the 2004 Earth Matters On Stage, and was resident dramaturg for the Festival. A collection of his plays, Nine Plays by José Cruz González Magical Realism & Mature Themes in Theatre for Young Audiences was published by the University of Texas Press in 2009. Mr. González's directing credits include Native Voices at the Autry, South Coast Repertory, The Bilingual Foundation of the Arts, Los Angeles Theatre Center, Borderlands Theater, Coterie Theatre, A.S.K. Theatre Projects, and the Sundance Theatre Institute.
Georgina Escobar (EMOS 2022 Judge) is a NYC-based playwright from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico specializing in Latinx Futurity and wabi-sabi aesthetic as explored through Sci-Femme and Frontera Funk. She is a Kilroy's List, The Mix, and MacDowell Colony Fellow, a Djerassi Artists Resident, and the recipient of the Kennedy Center TYA National Award for Ash Tree. Her work has been exhibited throughout the USA and internationally (México, Denmark, Sweden). Her plays Stoneheart, Species: Human, and Sweep have been Finalists at the National Playwrights Conference at the O'Neill, the Clubbed Thumb Biennial Commission, and the Latinx National Theatre Award, respectively. Her work has been seen, produced and developed at INTAR, The Movement Theatre Company, Clubbed Thumb, Lincoln Center, New York Children's Theatre, Two Rivers, The Sol Project, Bushwick Starr, Exquisite Corpse Company, Dixon Place, and Primary Stages, among others. She serves on the Board of Marfa Live Arts, is on Founding and Advisory Committee for the Latinx Theatre Commons, and an active steering committee member for the Climate Commons for Theatre and Performance.
Larry Fried (EMOS 2015 Judge) is co-founder of EMOS, and was Artistic Director of the 2004 EMOS Festival at Humboldt State University. In Eugene he has acted and directed for the Lord Leebrick Theatre, and is publisher of the Natural Choice Directory of Willamette Valley, and founder/former publisher of the Natural Choice Directory of Puget Sound. He created and organized the regional conference "Theatre in an Ecological Age" in 1991, and is co-author of Greening Up Our Houses: A Guide to a More Ecologically Sound Theatre (Drama Books, 1994), the first book on sustainable theatre management. Formerly Co-Director of Theatre in the Wild, Larry was also a founding member of The Living Newsreal Theatre, Seattle; and Directing/Literary Intern with the Seattle Group Theatre, once one of the premier multi-cultural theatres in the country.
Robert Gander (EMOS 2015 Judge) received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater and his Masters of Fine Arts with an emphasis in Directing from the University of Montana in Missoula. For eight years Rob was a professor at Denison University, a highly selective liberal arts college located in Granville, Ohio. He joined the University of Nevada, Reno as an Associate Professor in the fall of 2007. He teaches courses in acting and directing and serves as a director for departmental productions. Trained in the realistic mode of performance associated with the Stanislavksi System and the American Method, in recent years, his scholarship and creative activity has focused on style and theatricality. Recent scholarship explores the collaborative process of devising new work with playwrights. Rob serves as the Artistic Director for Roundelay Theatre Company which has performed original work in both Chicago, and New York City. Most recently Rob worked on an original pronunciation production of Macbeth at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse with OP specialists Ben and David Crystal. He is a member of the Association of Theatre in Higher Education and regularly serves as a respondent for the American College Theatre Festival.
Diane Glancy poet and playwright, has written numerous works across a wide range of genres, including Brown Wolf Leaves the Res and Other Poems (1984); Claiming Breath (1992); Pushing the Bear: A Novel of the Trail of Tears (1996); War Cries, a collection of one- and two-act plays (1997); and The West Pole, a series of vignettes (1997); The Mask Maker: A Novel (2002); American Gypsy: Six Native American Plays (2002). Through her writing, Glancy seeks to recover and preserve her "displaced part-Indian, part-white, mixed-message heritage." She has won the Autry's Native Voices Award, the American Book Award, and the Native American Prose Award. Diane Glancy received her Master's degree from Central State University in Edmond, Oklahoma and her Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Iowa, Iowa City. She is currently Assistant Professor in the English Department at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she teaches courses in creative writing and Native Literature.
Michelle T. Hall (2004 EMOS Judge) has served as the Literary Manager and a production dramaturg for Arena Stage. She recently directed a staged reading of Tanya Barfield's The Quick and Jerome Hairston's Method Skin for the Arena Stage Downstairs Series. She is the former Resident Dramaturg at The Studio Theatre. Standout projects include dramaturgy for Proof directed by Wendy Goldberg, Camelot, An American Daughter, and South Pacific directed by Molly Smith, Uncle Vanya directed by Zelda Fichandler, You Can't Take It With You directed by Doug Wager, Indian Ink directed by Joy Zinoman, and the co-adaptation of a new stage version of The Desk Set, directed by J.R. Sullivan. Other credits include working as dramaturg and director for The Shakespeare Theatre Southeast Project, Theater of the First Amendment, The Studio Theatre Secondstage, Source Theater's Washington Theater Festival, The Playwright's Forum, ASIA Theater Company, Tsunami Theatre Company, Cherry Red Productions, and the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage. She is the co-founder and joint Artistic Producing Director of MuseFire Productions, a theater and film company.
Robert Koon (EMOS 2015 Judge) is a member of The Dramatists Guild of America and Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists. His play Odin's Horse was the Ecodrama Playwrights Festival winner at EMOS 2004. His plays Homecoming 2972 and St. Colm's Inch were produced by Chicago Dramatists; his other plays including Vintage Red and the Dust of the Road (Joseph Jefferson Award Citation for New Work, ACTA Steinberg Award nominee), Odin's Horse (Joseph Jefferson Award nominee, Ecodrama Playwrights Festival winner, NNPN Smith Prize finalist), and Menorca, have been produced across the United States at venues such as the 26th Street Theatre, Minor Stage (Seattle), the Ashland (Oregon) New Plays Festival, Playwrights Week at the Lark Theatre (New York), the Dayton Playhouse FutureFest, Stage Left Theatre's (Chicago) LeapFest, EMOS 2004, the Pittsburgh Ecodrama Festival, and Estrogen Fest in Chicago. He has also been a finalist for the Heideman Award from Actors Theatre of Louisville. Robert has been awarded creative residencies at the Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, Illinois, and the William Inge Center for the Arts in Independence, Kansas. He teaches regularly in the Playwrights Studio at Chicago Dramatists, and throughout the Chicago area.
Martha Lavay (EMOS 2009 Judge) was an ensemble member and the Artistic Director of Steppenwolf Theatre. Under her leadership, playwright Tracy Letts and several Steppenwolf Company members won Tony Awards for August: Osage County. Martha appeared at Steppenwolf in Love-Lies-Bleeding, Lost Land, I Never Sang for My Father, The House of Lily, Valparaiso, The Memory of Water, The Designated Mourner, Supple in Combat, Time of My Life, A Clockwork Orange, Talking Heads, SLAVS!, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, Ghost in the Machine, A Summer Remembered, Love Letters, Aunt Dan and Lemon, and Savages. Elsewhere in Chicago she performed at the Goodman, Victory Gardens, Northlight and Remains theaters, and in New York at the Women's Project and Productions. She served on grants panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Theatre Communications Group (TCG) and the City Arts panel of Chicago. Lavey held a doctorate in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and was a member of the National Advisory Council for the School of Communication at Northwestern and a board member of TCG. She was a recipient of the Sarah Siddons Award and an Alumni Merit Award from Northwestern University.
Ellen McLaughlin (2004 EMOS Judge) is an award winning playwright and actress. Her plays include Days and Nights Within, A Narrow Bed, Infinity's House, Iphigenia and Other Daughters, Tongue of a Bird, Helen, The Trojan Women and, her most recent work, The Persians, which was produced by The National Actors' Theater in NYC last summer. Producing theaters include New York Theater Workshop, Classic Stage Company, the Actors' Theatre of Louisville, the Intiman in Seattle, the Mark Taper Forum in L.A. , Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Almeida in London and the Public Theater. McLaughlin teaches playwriting in the Barnard English Department. She is the recipient of grants from the Fund for New American Plays and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is the winner of The Great American Play Contest, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the Writer's Award from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund. McLaughlin is also an actor, known best for originating the role of the Angel in Tony Kushner's Angels in America, a role she played in all of the U.S. productions through the Broadway run.
Yvette Nolan (EMOS 2022 Judge) is a playwright, director, dramaturg, actor, and educator. She has contributed substantively to the creation and performance of First Nations Theatre in Canada. She was born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan to an Algonquin mother and an Irish immigrant father in 1961. Raised in Winnipeg, she graduated from the University of Manitoba with a B.A. in 1997. She has worked with Agassiz Theatre, Popular Theatre Alliance of Manitoba, Theatre Projects Manitoba, Manitoba Association of Playwrights, the Manitoba Theatre Centre, Nakai Theatre in Whitehorse, and the Society of Yukon Artists of Native Ancestry. Here plays include, The Unplugging, Anna Mae’s Movement, and Blade. She has directed plays by Miche Genest, Drew Hayden Taylor, Philip Adams, The Ecstasy of Rita Joe at Western Canada Theatre Company April 2009, in a co-production with the National Arts Centre. She was President of PUC (now Playwrights Guild of Canada) from 1998 to 2001. From 2003 to 2010, she was Managing Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts in Toronto.
Olga Sanchez (2009 EMOS Judge) is the Miracle Mainstage Director for Teatro Milagro, Portland, OR. A graduate of Hunter College, CUNY, her directorial work has been seen in Portland, Seattle, NYC, Martha's Vineyard, Peru, Venezuela and Cuba. She served as Co-Artistic Director of the People's Playhouse in New York City, Artistic Director of Seattle Teatro Latino, is a member of the Seattle based Los Norteñwriters group, and a founder of La Casa de Artes, a Seattle-based non-profit organization dedicated to celebrating the beauty of Latino arts and cultural heritage. In 2005, she received a Portland Drama Critics' DRAMMY award for Excellence in Direction for Miracle's production of Lorca in a Green Dress by Nilo Cruz.
Robert Schenkkan (2004 EMOS Judge) is a Pulitzer-prize winning, Tony Award-winning, Writer's Guild Award-winning, two-time Emmy nominated writer of stage, television, and film. His The Kentucky Cycle had its world premiere at the Intiman Theatre in Seattle, (Liz Huddle, producer), and was the centerpiece of the Mark Taper Forum’s 25th Anniversary Season where it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1991. The Kentucky Cycle appeared at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and then opened on Broadway where it was nominated for a Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle awards. His All the Way premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival under the direction of Artistic Director, Bill Rauch, and won the inaugural Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History and the Steinberg/National American Theater Critics Award for Best New Play in 2012. The Great Society, Schenkkan’s sequel to All The Way, premiered in 2014 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, directed by Bill Rauch. Other credits: Lewis and Clark Reach the Euphrates had its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles; By the Rivers of Babylon first appeared at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival; The Marriage of Miss Hollywood and King Neptune had its world premiere at the University of Texas at Austin; Handler premiered at the Actors Express Theatre; Heaven on Earth premiered off-Broadway at the WPA Theatre and won the Julie Harris/Beverly Hills Theatre Guild Award, and was a participant in the Eugene O’Neill Playwright’s Conference; Final Passages premiered at the Studio Arena Theatre; Tachinoki (Critic’s Choice, LA Weekly) premiered at the Ensemble Studio Theatre in Los Angeles. His musicals include The Twelve (Book and Lyrics), producer Joe Granno, and A Night at the Alhambra Café (Book and Lyrics). Schenkkan’s film work includes: The Quiet American; for television he wrote the miniseries Crazy Horse (TNT), Spartacus (USA Network) and The Andromeda Strain. He is a two-time Emmy-nominated writer/producer for Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks and HBO’s epic miniseries, The Pacific, for which he also won a WGA Award. Schenkkan was recently elected to the Fellows of American Theater.
Caridad Svich (EMOS 2022 Judge) is a playwright, screenwriter, translator, editor, lyricist, essayist, educator and freelance arts journalist. Her first independent feature film (as co-screenwriter) Fugitive Dreams, based on her play, premiered at the 2020 Fantasia Film Festival, 2020 Austin Film Festival and the 2020 Tallinn Black Nights Festival, and 2021 Manchester Film Festival (UK). Three of her new plays were on the 2020 Kilroys List. She has received the 2012 OBIE for Lifetime Achievement, the 2011 American Theatre Critics Association Primus Prize for The House of the Spirits, based on Isabel Allende’s novel, and NNPN rolling world premieres for RED BIKE and Guapa. She has also been a Harvard/Radcliffe Institute Fellow, Tanne Foundation Fellow, NEA/TCG, Pew Fellow, and Visiting Research Fellow at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Her repertoire include Alchemy of Desire/Dead-Man’s Blues, The Book of Magdalene, 12 Ophelias, Iphigenia Crash Land Falls, and The Way of Water. A significant body of her work focuses on human and environmental rights and the ‘fragile shores’ upon which many of us live. She is founder of NoPassport theatre alliance and press and is associate editor at Contemporary Theatre Review for Routledge UK, and is on the board of Global Performance Studies. She is published by TCG, Methuen Drama, and Intellect UK, among others. Her most recent book is on Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Routledge 4th Wall Series). She is an alumna playwright of New Dramatists, member of Ensemble Studio Theatre, and an affiliated artist with The Lark, New Georges and Woodshed Collective. In 2018 she received the Ellen Stewart Award for Career Achievement in Professional Theatre from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education. Visit her at https://caridadsvich.com