Introducing the 2026 Short Play Lab Members!
Please help support the 2026 Short Play Festival.
This Short Play LAB is completely free of charge to the writers, and they receive the UNIQUE opportunity to have their plays produced at the end of the writing process!
There is no other program like it - anywhere!
Haile cole
Haile COLE is a Texas native and Connecticut-based scholar and creative. She has a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin with a concentration in African Diaspora Studies and a portfolio in Women’s and Gender Studies. Haile loves storytelling and believes that art is inherently liberative. She is a published author and has served on the faculty at several academic institutions including her current appointment at Central Connecticut State University. Before joining NPTC Short Play Lab, Haile self-produced and debuted her first play entitled Belly: An American Love Story. Inspired by Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem for colored girls and based on ethnographic research, Belly travels across time to tell the stories of Black women’s experiences of reproduction and birth past, present and future. Haile also served as the inaugural Anthropologist-in-Residence for The Anthropologists theater company in NYC, supporting the early development of their play Axes, Herbs, and Satchels.
Darline Corchado
Darline Corchado is a Puerto Rican librarian, poet, and playwright—made in the Bronx, fermented in Florida, and now chilling in Queens. Before submitting plays to theatres, she wrote in the margins: on train rides, at film festivals, and between gigs while working behind the scenes on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, In the Heights, Maestro, and Tick, Tick... Boom!
She studied Creative Writing and Psychology at Florida State University, studied Irish literature in Galway, and earned a Master’s in Library Science with a focus on Youth Services.
She was a finalist for the People’s Theatre Playwright Cohort 2025. Her short play Now Auditioning: Mom & Dad was read at the inaugural Newburgh Fringe Festival and will appear at Chain Theatre’s One-Act Festival in February 2026.
Tyler exum
Tyler Exum is a proud native New Yorker whose work centers the Black queer femme experience and the Black political imagination. The questions currently driving her practice are: what does an embodied archive look like, and how is the ancestral archive carried in the body? Tyler began playwriting through MCC Theater’s Youth Company Playwriting program. Her work has been selected and produced by SapphFest NYC, the premiere sapphic play festival dedicated to celebrating sapphic stories and storytellers. She is also a current participant in WRITE CLUB’s PUNCHING BAG series, a cohort dedicated to developing new work by NYC-based playwrights, where she is developing her full-length play Black Commie Bitch. At the heart of her work is a commitment to building an embodied theatrical archive that honors, and amplifies the voices of Black femmes in New York City.
Bella Panciocco
Bella Panciocco is an emerging playwright from the Washington DC area. She received her BFA from George Mason University and her MSc in Playwriting from the University of Edinburgh. Her play The Road to the End had its college premiere at George Mason in April 2023. The Road to the End had its DC Premiere at DC Capital Fringe where she received a Best of Fringe and Best Drama award. The Road to the End is now published with Next Stage Press. Her play Type One-Derful was a finalist for Breaking & Entering Theatre Collectives Rooftop Readings Series. She has had other works featured at Workhouse Theatre Company, Valencia College, 4616 Theatre Company, and George Mason University.
Hannah irene rubenstein
Hannah Irene Rubenstein (she/her) is a playwright, poet, and essayist. Hannah’s plays include We Drift In and Out (New York Theater Festival, 2025) and Wonder/Land (Movement Lab, 2024). Her writing has been published in the Broadway News, Bicoastal Review, Smoky Blue Literary & Arts Magazine, Michigan Public, Juilliard Journal, Meliora, and Laurel Moon. She has worked with organizations including the MAP Fund, Juilliard School (Drama Division), Public Theater, Theatre for a New Audience, New York Neo-Futurists, and Michigan Public. She is a graduate of Barnard College, where she received the Helene Searcy Puls Prize in Poetry and authored a thesis on the performance history of The Merchant of Venice, which grappled with the play’s antisemitic legacy and the potential for live performance to re-shape our understanding of identity and social change. Hannah was born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan. hannahirubenstein.com.
Katelin Wilcox
Katelin Wilcox is an actor, playwright, and parent-artist based in NYC. Her play An Empty Room was a Getchell New Play Award Finalist, long-listed for Seattle Public Theater’s Distillery program, and a Parity Development Award third-rounder. Her short play Hot Air was a Top 12 Finalist in the Sam French Festival, and is published and licensed by Stage Partners. Her original one-woman show The Pawnbroker was produced at FringeNYC and the Fringe Encore Series, United Solo Festival, and The CRY HAVOC Company. Other work as a playwright has been produced at Blank Page Theatre, Left Edge Theatre, FRIGID NY, Off-Broad Street Short Play Festival, and Southeast Missouri State University, among others. Katelin was a Semi-Finalist for the WP Lab Program. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, Associate Artistic Director at CRY HAVOC, and a proud member of Actors Equity and the Dramatists Guild. www.katelinwilcox.com
Director-Dramaturgs
Jenny GREEMAN
JENNY GREEMAN is an artist and educator and a long-time Resident Director with the Women’s Work Short Play LAB. She was formerly the Administrator of Youth & Community Development at NPTC and a resident director for the World Voices and Apprenticeship programs. Jenny helmed the World Premiere production of Screenplay by Scott Brooks, which was awarded “Outstanding Production of a Play” at the 2010 Midtown International Theatre Festival and subsequently moved to an Off Broadway run at 59E59. For the 2008 MITF, Jenny and her writing partner, Elliot Lanes, won “Best Staged Reading” for their original children’s piece, The Raggedy Ann and Andy Musical. Jenny was the Resident Director for Dark Lady Players, where her credits include Shakespeare’s Three Marys, Hamlet’s Apocalypse, and Shakespeare’s Gospel Parodies: A Medieval Mystery Tour. She is currently the Director of Programming at Pathways to Leadership and earned her Masters of Public Administration at Baruch/CUNY.
Felicia lobo
Felicia Lobo is a Brooklyn-based director, performer, and educator. Her recent directing work includes Wood Demon by Scout Backus at East Village Basement, GAS by Charles Cissel at Theatre Row, & Pop Punk High by Ben Lapidus and Anderson Cook at Le Poisson Rouge. She has developed new work with playwrights at Dramatists Guild Foundation, Pipeline Theatre, The Brick, Judson Church and The Flea. Outside of the theatre, she fronts the Brooklyn punk band QWAM. Felicia holds a BFA in Drama from NYU Tisch (Atlantic Acting School) and a Master's in Educational Theatre from CCNY. www.felicialobo.com
Dani ortiz
DANI ORTIZ graduated from SUNY Purchase with a BA in Theater Performance and Arts Management. She currently works at a community-based organization supporting after school programs throughout NYC. Dani began her association with the Short Play LAB as a directing Apprentice for two years, then became a Resident Director-Dramaturg in 2020. She has directed Bad Koreans, Foul Line, Cassie Goes to Congress and Between Iron Doors in past festivals. Dani is thrilled to support the Short Play Lab and the community of playwrights NPTC has cultivated.
Christina Shea-wright
Christina Shea-Wright is a director, acting coach, actor and writer who has been working professionally in different areas of the entertainment industry for over two decades. Directing credits include POTUS, The Revolutionists, Time Stands Still, the world premiere of The Business of Nightmares, and 23 and Me and Them, etc. Acting credits include The Wolves, Law and Order:SVU, New Amsterdam, The Flight Attendant, Bull, etc. Christina has also built a successful coaching business working one-on-one with actors of all ages on character development and script analysis. Additionally, she has a vast background as a casting director and talent agent. cwcoachingnyc.com
Janani Sreenivasan
Janani Sreenivasan (she/her) is a director, writer, composer, and filmmaker raised in Corvallis, Oregon with roots in Tamil Nadu, India. Her work is shaped by her background in classical music and her love of comedy, myth, and movement. Recent full-length productions include Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night’s Dream featuring Odissi choreographer Jeevika Bhat as the Purple Flower, and The Importance of Being Earnest (all at Under St. Marks Theater). She has also directed and helped develop short plays for the The Tank’s Rule of 7x7 and the Chain Theatre’s One-Act Festival, where in summer 2025 she wrote and performed her noir comedy I’m a Detective. Her short play Get Leo, about her desire for Leonardo DiCaprio to portray her onstage, was staged and published by The Bechdel Group. Film festivals: L.A. Comedy Festival and Iron Mule Short Comedy Festival. IG: @jennyvasan Website: jananisreenivasan.art