Creative Development Grants are a new initiative by Primary Stages, offering meaningful support to playwrights whose development process was interrupted by COVID-19. The pandemic not only halted performances, but scores of work in process, leaving playwrights and their work without a space to grow. By supporting artists that we believe are voices of change in the industry, we hope to bridge the crisis that we were in and the new future of American theater that we wish to help build. For this pilot program, Primary Stages selected an inclusive cohort of five playwrights whose stories are essential to moving the industry forward, who experiment with the form and celebrate all that theater can do. The playwrights will meet monthly with the Primary Stages Artistic Team over the course of a year to develop a new project of their choosing and on their terms, receiving a stipend for their time.
Grant recipients include Zora Howard, Matthew Paul Olmos, Jordan Seavey, Charly Evon Simpson, and Susan Soon He Stanton.
ZORA HOWARD is a Harlem-bred writer and performer. Plays include Stew (2021 Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama, 2020 Drama League nominee for Outstanding Play; Page 73 Productions), The Master's Tools (Williamstown Theatre Festival), AtGN, Bust, and Hang Time. Her work has been developed with SPACE at Ryder Farm, Ojai Playwrights Conference, and Cape Cod Theatre Project, among others. In 2020, her feature film Premature (2020 Film Independent John Cassavetes Award nominee), which she co-wrote with director Rashaad Ernesto Green, opened in theaters following its world premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. She is the 2020-2021 Van Lier New Voices Fellow at the Lark.
MATTHEW PAUL OLMOS is a three-time Sundance Institute Fellowship/Residency recipient, Actors’ Theatre of Louisville Humana Festival Commissioned Playwright, New Dramatists Resident Playwright, Center Theatre Group LA Playwright Workshop Writer, Geffen Playhouse Writers Room Playwright, Oregon Shakespeare Festival Black Swan Lab Playwright, Humanitas Play LA Workshop Playwright, Princess Grace Awardee in Playwriting, National Latino Playwriting Awardee, Ojai Playwrights Conference Foundry Project playwright, Repertorio Español Miranda Family Nuestra Voces Playwriting Awardee, Cherry Lane Mentor Project playwright as chosen by Taylor Mac, and La MaMa e.t.c.’s Ellen Stewart Emerging Playwright Awardee as selected by Sam Shepard. He spent two years as a Mabou Mines/SUITE Resident Artist being mentored by Ruth Maleczech and is a former New York Theatre Workshop's Emerging Artist Fellow, Baryshnikov Arts Center Artist in Residence, Dramatists Guild Fellow, Primary Stages Dorothy Strelsin New American Writer, two-time INTAR H.P.R.L Playwright, Echo Theater Company Resident Playwright, and an Ensemble Studio Theater lifetime member. He is a proud Kilroy’s nominator. His work is produced internationally and nationally, published by Samuel French and No Passport Press, and is taught in university. www.matthewpaulolmos.com
JORDAN SEAVEY ’s plays include The Seven Year Disappear; Homos, or Everyone in America (NewYork Magazine and The Advocate’s 10 Best Plays of 2016; OBIE Award for performance, Michael Urie); Wight; November 4th 2008; The Funny Pain; The Truth Will Out; Children At Play; 6969; and This Is a Newspaper. Since 2003, he’s created more than fifteen new devised- theater works with the company CollaborationTown and resident director Lee Sunday Evans, including Riddle of the Trilobites (New Victory Theater), Candy (a commission from LCT3 / Lincoln Center), Family Play (1979 to Present) (The Advocate’s 10 Best Plays of 2014), and The Momentum (2012 GLAAD National Media Award nomination). He’s an alum of The Public Theater’s Emerging Writer’s Group, the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, and the Primary Stages Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group, and is a ‘Usual Suspect’ at New York Theatre Workshop.
CHARLY EVON SIMPSON is a playwright and TV writer based in Brooklyn. Her plays include Behind the Sheet, Jump, form of a girl unknown, it’s not a trip it’s a journey, and more. Her work has been seen and/or developed with Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Lark, P73, The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, Cleveland Play House, PlayMakers Repertory Company, Chautauqua Theater Company, Salt Lake Acting Company, and others. She is a recipient of the Vineyard Theatre’s Paula Vogel Playwriting Award and the Dramatists Guild’s Lanford Wilson Award. She is a core writer at The Playwrights’ Center and is a former member of WP Theater’s 2018-2020 Lab, SPACE on Ryder Farm’s The Working Farm, Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writers’ Group, and Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Youngblood. She currently has theatre commissions with MTC/Sloan, Elizabeth George Commission/South Coast Rep, and PlayMakers Repertory Company. In TV, she’s worked with Showtime and she currently has an overall deal at HBO. Charly has a BA from Brown University, a Master’s in Women’s Studies from University of Oxford, New College, and her MFA in Playwriting from Hunter College.
SUSAN SOON HE STANTON is a playwright, screenwriter, and TV writer from Aiea, Hawaii. Plays include we, the invisibles (Actors Theatre of Louisville Humana Festival), Today Is My Birthday (Page 73), Takarazuka!!! (Clubbed Thumb and East West Players), Solstice Party! (Live Source), Cygnus (Women’s Project Pipeline), Moana Jr. (book) for Disney Theatrical Group, Navigator (Honolulu Theatre for Youth), and more. She is a Sundance Theater Lab Resident Playwright and was awarded the Leah Ryan FEWW, the Venturous Playwrights Fellowship at the Lark, and is a member of New Dramatists and Ma-Yi’s Writers Lab, and an alumna of the Primary Stages Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group, the Public’s Emerging Writer’s Group, and SoHo Rep’s Writer/Director Lab. Commissions include Yale Repertory, American Conservatory Theater/Crowded Fire, South Coast Repertory, and Ensemble Studio Theatre, among others. She has received a Feature Film Development Grant from the Sloan Foundation. Her film Dress won the audience award at the Hawaii International Film Festival. She writes for HBO’s “Succession.” BFA: NYU Tisch’s Dramatic Writing, MFA: Yale School of Drama. www.susansoonhestanton.com