Writers Group

Seayoung Yim
Seayoung Yim is a Seattle-based playwright. Her play, Do It For Umma, won both the People’s Choice Award for Outstanding New Play at the Gregory   Awards and Seattle’s Gypsy Rose Lee Award for Excellence in Local Playwriting in 2016.  Her work has been featured at Annex Theatre, Theatre Off Jackson, Mirror Stage, Theatre Battery, Live Girls! Theater, Pony World, SIS Productions, Pork Filled Productions, Seattle Public Theatre’s Education Program, and 14/48 Projects.​She is a member of the SIS Writers Group, a collective of Asian American playwrights. In July 2018, her newest play, Persimmon Nights, will be directed by Sara Porkalob and produced at Cafe Nordo. In addition to theater, Seayoung has been involved with various social and racial justice organizations in Washington State.

Meme Garcia
Meme García is a recent graduate of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, where she received an MA in Classical Acting. She is a Fulbright Scholar and holds degrees in theatre and women and gender studies from Seattle University. Originally from El Salvador, she is committed to reshaping the way society understands and interprets classical texts and stories, as well as creating theatre which subverts cultural norms while raising major questions about gender, race, and class inequality.To Meme, Shakespeare is not about giving power to the white patriarchy, but rather about uttering words which simultaneously connect us to the human experience and have stood the test of time. She premiered her first play, House of Sueños: A Chubby Latin Hamlet, this fall at 18th and Union. She is a founding member of Wyrd Sisters Productions and a new ensemble member of The Seagull Project.​She has previously worked with Wooden O, Seattle Repertory Theatre, eSe Teatro, Strawberry Workshop Theatre, Book-It Repertory Theatre, Intiman, Seattle Shakespeare Company, upstart crow collective, The Merc Theatre, the Actor’s Shakespeare Project in Boston and Freehold Theatre.

Brandon Simmons
Brandon J. Simmons is an actor, writer, producer and director for theater. He co-founded the award-winning Seagull Project, and has appeared in The Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard, and The Seagull, both in Seattle and on tour to Tashkent, Uzbekistan.Brandon is the author of two full-length plays, Is She Dead Yet? (a white comedy) (Gregory Award, Outstanding New Play 2016), and The Tale of Jemima Canard, in addition to shorter scripts for Washington Ensemble Theatre, Book-It Rep, Sandbox Radio, and 14/48: The World’s Quickest Theater Festival. As an actor he has appeared with/at: On the Boards, New City Theater, Satori Group, Artbarn, Forward Flux, Seattle Public Theater, Washington Ensemble Theatre, Seattle Children’s Theatre, Book-It Repertory Theatre, Printer’s Devil, theater simple, and numerous appearances with Seattle Shakespeare Company.​Brandon has directed long and short plays with Annex Theatre, the Flux Salon, Seattle Public Theatre Youth Stage, The Great Soul of Russia, and 14/48. In 2018 he will direct the Seattle premiere of An Octoroon by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, and Anansi and the Halfling, a brand new play by Madison Jade Jones.

Danielle Mohlman
Danielle Mohlman is a nationally produced feminist playwright based in Seattle. Her plays have been produced by Rorschach Theatre, Forum Theatre, dog & pony dc, Hubbard Hall, the One Minute Play Festival, the Atlas Intersections Festival, Pinky Swear Productions, Dreamwell Theatre, and Field Trip Theatre. Her plays have been developed at the Cherry Lane Theatre, the Kennedy Center, Arena Stage, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities named Danielle a finalist for the Larry Neal Writers’ Award for Dramatic Writing in both 2012 (for Stopgap) and 2014 (for Nexus) and she was the recipient of the DCCAH Artist Fellowship from 2014 to 2015. Her play Nexus is among the 2015 Honorable Mentions on The Kilroys list. In 2016, Danielle studied with Naomi Iizuka and Ken Weitzman at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. In 2017, Dust was a semifinalist for the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center’s National Playwrights Conference. Also in 2017, her election play Halcyon received a reading at the Cherry Lane Theatre and her NASA play Voyagers was workshopped at the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York. Danielle is an alumnus of Emerson College and Playwrights’ Arena at Arena Stage, part of the New Play Institute. www.daniellemohlman.com

Andrea Kovich
Andrea is a Seattle-based freelance dramaturg and proud member of LMDA.  Particularly passionate about social justice issues—including equity, diversity, and inclusion—she is especially interested in the representation of the disability community in theatre.After an artistic internship with Book-It Repertory Theatre, she moved to San Diego and earned a Masters of Arts in Theatre Arts (with an emphasis in Dramaturgy) from San Diego State University.  Other internships include working with San Diego Repertory Theatre and La Jolla Playhouse.​Recent projects include serving as Dramaturg Intern with Taproot Theatre Company on the new musical, Persuasion, and Dramaturg on Book-It Repertory Theatre’s new musical, Howl’s Moving Castle.  She’s currently collaborating with Sound Theatre Company and curating a reading series focusing on playwrights with disabilities, to be presented in July 2018.

Mario Gomez
Mario Gomez is a dramaturg, stage and production manager, and designer based in the Seattle area.As a Dramaturg, Mario has had the privilege of working with several theatre companies in the Western Washington area, including ACT – A Contemporary Theatre, Theatre 22, Annex Theatre, Many Hats Theatre, and Unexpected Productions. He has also worked in different capacities with SIS Productions, Latino Theatre Projects, and Seattle Public Theatre among many others.Internationally, Mario has had the incredible fortune of collaborating with theatre artists from over 35 countries spanning all continents. He has worked and taught in North and South America, Europe, and Australia.
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“Theater can be a powerful agent for personal and social change that allows us to listen and empathize with others. Today, as we live through a tumultuous and polarizing time, it is imperative that we enable artists to share the stories that need to be told today,” Mario notes. Mario is honored to support this mission by providing dramaturgical support to playwrights and other theatre artists.
Mario is incredibly excited and honored to be part of this first cohort of the Umbrella Project Writers Group.

Rachel Wolfe
Rachel M. E. Wolfe, Ph.D. is a theatre scholar and dramaturg with a particular interest in the uses of history and adaptation in plays.As a dramaturg, she has worked with Book-It Repertory Theatre in Seattle, the Riki Kane Larimer Company in New York, and the UCSB Launch Pad new play development program in Santa Barbara, as well as several academic departments within universities. A theatre historian by training, her work both on and off the stage focuses on how plays reflect and shape the societies they speak to. In new play development, she is always on the lookout for reused and repeated narrative codes, ready to ask the questions “why are we using this now, and what does it mean to our time?”​An English-Spanish bilingual with reading knowledge of French, Italian, and ancient Greek, her secondary interest is in the uses of foreign languages and translation in playwrighting. She holds both an M.A. and Ph.D. in Theatre Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and her scholarly work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals and at conferences around the country. She is currently employed as an adjunct professor at the University of Puget Sound, where she teaches theatre history. Specifics of her theatre work and scholarship may be viewed on her professional website at www.rachelmewolfe.com.

Iphigenia Rising
Iphigenia Rising is a dramaturg and a professional naked lady. As a graduate of Cornish College of the Arts (B.F.A. 2013) she is an artist who holds many different titles: dramaturg, model, dancer, and burlesque performer–to name a few.​Iphigenia believes that well thought out work is sexy and that sexy work should be well thought out. She was a participant on ATHE’s 2014 Dramaturgy Debut Panel and is a member of the Literary Mangers and Dramaturgs of the Americas.​In 2017, she launched her own business, Naked Dramaturgy, and works with artists of all stripes in a dramaturgical capacity. She’ll blow your mind.