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

Joe Swenson is probably one of the busiest people in internet theatre. A playwright/producer/author and owner/president (including film producer/writer/director) at Broken Arts Entertainment.

Broken Arts Entertainment | Joe's website | Facebook | New Play Exchange |

This month our guest is Jesus Granados, a high school coordinator, and english teacher at Complejo Educativo Santa Lucía in Santiago de Puriscal in the canton of San José in Costa Rica. Jesus is also an actor, director, and experienced theatre professional.

Dave Osmundsen is autistic playwright / dramaturg / actor whose article “Finding Autistic Theatre Artists Is a Challenge (If You Make It a Challenge)” appeared in Howlround this past February. It's a terrific article and I wholly recommend reading it because it will definitely broaden your knowledge base around autism. In the article Dave addresses several questions of how the theatre world could include, accommodate, and better understand autistic theatre artists while also allowing those accommodations to enhance and strengthen not just the needs of autistic theatre artists but the needs of everyone involved in the theatre company.

Facebook | New Play Exchange