The Zip Code Plays Salon - Playwrights Panel
Zoom
On December 6, 2020, we hosted a live panel discussion with the Antaeus Playwrights Lab Members behind the first season of The Zip Code Plays: Los Angeles.
Learn about the following playwrights' creative process in developing these extraordinary new plays, highlighting how inspiration was drawn from the local landscape of LA.
- Khari Wyatt (90011: South Central Los Angeles - Speakeasy)
- Alex Goldberg (90272: Pacific Palisades - Annexing the Palisades)
- Nayna Agrawal (90403: Santa Monica - Plucker)
- Deb Hiett (90024: Westwood - ALL INFORMATION HEREIN IS CLASSIFIED)
- Steve Serpas (91352: Sun Valley - Salvage)
- Angela J. Davis (90012: DTLA - Clara and Serra and The Talking Bear)
Watch a recording of this fun and educational discussion here!
Other
Featured in Variety's "100 Writers to Watch" (2015), Nayna is a former NYC analyst, a former DC policy writer, a former SF international aid director, and a former touring dancer. Her plays have been staged and produced in numerous cities including: New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Chicago. She is the recipient of an East West playwright scholarship and a Moving Arts Theater playwright fellowship. In 2017, Nayna was a semi-finalist or finalist with the O'Neill Conference, PlayPenn, Screenwriters Colony and Harold Clurman playwright-in-residence program. In 2018, Nayna was a semi-finalist with the WB TV Writers’ Program, a Sesame Street Writers Room fellow, a Notable Writer with the New York Television Festival and a Kenyon Conference full-scholarship recipient. She recently penned her first TV episode for an upcoming Netflix animated series, a Disney Jr. animated series, and has been awarded a development deal with Sesame Street. Currently, she is a staff writer on ABC’s new show The Baker and The Beauty. Born in Florida, raised in Virginia, and originally from India, Nayna has studied five languages, visited 22 countries, and worked in four industries. She received her B.S. in Economics and English at the University of Virginia, and her M.F.A. at Northwestern University. She suffers from Asian Girl Guilt Syndrome, Law&Order SVU rerun marathon binges (from which she has developed restless leg syndrome), and a tendency to misspell the word "syndrome."
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Alex Goldberg is a Playwright, Screenwriter, Director. At ANTAEUS: Annexing the Palisades (Zip Code Plays Season #1), Mayor of the 85th Floor (LAB RESULTS). Full Length Plays: It Is Done (Original Works Publishing, four productions), America’s Brightest Star (Railroad Playhouse), Stock Home (Fringe NYC), and I’m in Love with Your Wife (winner, Playwriting of a New Script, Midtown Int’l Theater Festival). O’Neill semi-finalist (twice) and finalist. Film: Closure (winner two Best Feature awards and two Audience Choice Awards. Member: The Playwrights Lab at Antaeus, Dramatists Guild. He lives with his wife, actress Catia Ojeda, and their two sons, in Burbank. www.alexgoldberg.net
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Deb Hiett’s full-length plays include The Super Variety Match Bonus Round! (Rogue Machine Theater, Los Angeles); Miss Keller Has No Second Book (Gulfshore Playhouse, Naples, FL); The Escape Thingy and The Clearing in the Jacoby (both Finalists for the Reva Shiner Comedy Award). Her short play The Presentation was selected for the 2017 Samuel French Off-Off-Broadway Short Play Festival, and was a Finalist for 2017 Heideman Award.
Deb’s short film Open House won Los Angeles Film Festival/FunnyorDie’s “Make ‘Em LAFF” Showcase, Best Comedy Short at the Women in Comedy Festival Film Night, and Best Video Short at iOWest’s Funny Women LA Festival. Her short film A Bit of Counseling (co-written with Richard Kuhlman) won the Audience Awards at the Palm Springs International Film Festival and the L.A. Comedy Shorts Film Festival. She’s a proud member of Antaeus Playwrights Lab, Playwrights Union, and Dramatists Guild. Deb is also an actress, musician, and regular panelist on the NPR comedy/quiz show “Says You!” More at DebHiett.com
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Angela J. Davis is the author of The Spanish Prayer Book (The Road Theatre Company, 2019-20 season; L.A. Times Best Bet). Angela’s dramatic plays AGATHE (2020 New American Voices Award), Charlotte (Hidden River Arts Award), The Czar’s Daughters (Pittsburgh Original Works Series), and Mata H. (Frostburg Art Center New Play Series; Sky Blue Theatre (London) / British Theatre Challenge Short List) are each part of the 365 Women a Year International Playwriting Project. Her play Hong Kong Date Night was named best new comedic short by the Ojai Valley Artists Theatre Ensemble and an official selection for the 2020 New York-based OC Arts Ten Minute PlayFest. Recently named in the top 21 (from a field of over twelve hundred) for the Moss Hart and Kitty Carlisle Hart New Play Initiative, additional playwriting honors include: Eugene O’Neill semi-finalist (three times), New American Voices Award, HRC Showcase Official Selection (twice), ATHE Award for Excellence in Playwriting - 2nd place winner, Marsha A. Croyle Award for Achievement in Playwriting, FutureFest Official Selection, Julie Harris Playwright Award - Top 5, Playhouse Creatures/Rodriguez (NYC) Award - top 5. Recent work presented/forthcoming at The Landing Theatre, Chameleon Theatre Circle, HRC Showcase, The Road, The Blank Theatre, Itinerant Theatre Company, Theatre In the Raw (Vancouver), Tempest Productions, The Dayton Playhouse, and elsewhere. Angela’s poetry and prose pieces appear in numerous national publications, including a University of Iowa Press anthology. A Pushcart Prize nominee and one of sixteen writers selected as Literary Hosts for the 2018 PEN America LitFest, Angela holds degrees from Stanford and UCLA and is an adjunct professor at Southwestern Law School from which she received the 2018 Award for Excellence in Teaching. Member of Dramatists Guild of America, PEN America, and the Antaeus Theatre Company Playwrights Lab.
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Steve is a playwright and storyteller whose work has been developed by American Blues, Antaeus Theatre Company, The Blank Theatre Company, CAP 21, Chicago Dramatists, Eclipse Theatre Company Chicago, Ensemble Studio Theatre Los Angeles, June Lake Theatre Festival, Manhattan Rep, Moving Arts, Playwrights Horizons, Prop Theatre, The Road Theatre, Santa Monica Rep, Sacred Fools, Shattered Globe, Strawdog, and Victory Gardens.His recent work includes Next Wave in November 2019, presented at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Moving Arts’ Theatre at the Museum evening and When You’re Lost, presented at the 2019 June Lake Theatre Festival. Previous work includes the web series Before We Go to Sleep with Elizabeth Greer and Rob Nagle, directed by Darin Anthony (www.beforewegotosleep.com), official selection in the 2015 HollyWeb Festival, and EST-LA’s 2013 workshop production of The Last Look Back with Brent Spiner, directed by Gates McFadden. West coast credits include Xenogenesis, Garland Award for Best Play from Backstage West, presented at the Eclectic Theatre Company. He is a contributor to EST-LA’s spoken word series True Story and the spoken word competition Write Club Los Angeles. Other credits include Andrea Lane, presented at EST-LA’s 2012 WinterFest, and Dogtown, Eclipse Theatre (Jeff Award-Best Sound).
Affiliations include: Member, Playwrights Lab, Antaeus Theatre Company; Member-Alum, The Playwrights Union of Los Angeles; Resident Playwright Alum, Chicago Dramatists. A Baton Rouge native, Steve studied Dramatic Writing at NYU/Tisch’s Dramatic Writing Program and acting at The Theatre School/DePaul University. Publications include Waning Crescent Moon (Samuel French) and Xenogenesis (Chicago Plays).
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Khari Wyatt is the descendant of runaway slaves and inner-city America with its adversities, tragedies and triumphs; the son of high school sweethearts: a mother who is an artist and a father who courageously moved his young family from the rust-belt to our Nation's Capital to find a better life; the grandson of men who wore blue collars in auto plants and on railroad trains; the grandson of women who taught Sunday school and waitressed in greasy spoons. He is a writer.
His work has placed in various competitions including, Disney/ABC Writers Fellowship, Sony Pictures Entertainment Diversity Writers Program, AMC One-Hour Drama competition, Austin Film Festival Screenplay Competition, and Writer’s-for-Writer’s Diversity Fellowship among others. Some of the fellowships and grants he has received came from the MacDowell Colony, the Guy Hanks/Marvin Miller Screenwriting Program, and the Panavision New Filmmaker Equipment Grant.
He was recently selected to write and develop his play, Starchild, in the Circle X Theatre Company Evolving Playwrights Group. He was one of eleven writers of #While We Breathe: A Night of Creative Protest, a streaming theatrical event produced by Brian Moreland and Arvind Ethan David. Moving Arts, Chalk Repertory Theatre as well as the DC Black Theatre Festival have hosted his plays for readings and workshops. His play Some Type of Ecstasy was a semifinalist for the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference. His ten-minute play, Ingredients, was presented as part of the Moving Arts- Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Night at the Museum. He currently is a writer for Moving Arts’ web series, Isolation Inn being aired on YouTube in fall 2020.
Wyatt is an alumnus of Howard University, earned an MFA in Film from Columbia University in the City of New York, and also completed the Summer Legal Institute at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. He is member of Antaeus Theatre Company Playwrights Lab, Moving Arts and the Playwrights Union.
khariwyatt.com