What Sondheim Musical Influenced You Most?

Sep 01, 2022

Clockwise from left: Debbie Blonsky, S.M. Shephard-Massat, Eric Pfeffinger, Elizabeth Coplan, Rona Siddiqui, Sandy Sahar, Gooen, t. tara turk-haynes

Merrily We Roll Along, Debbie Bolsky

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Debbie Bolsky

is a Santa Monica playwright/screenwriter and sometimes producer who has written fourteen works that feature strong and layered roles for women and explore themes of death, baseball, and politics. Two of her plays were produced in Los Angeles.

t.tara turk-haynes

is a writer whose work has been featured in various stages and screens including Lower Depth Ensemble, Rogue Machine, Company of Angeles, the Hip Hop Theater Festival, the Actor’s Studio, Ensemble Studio Theater, the Schomburg, and the Kennedy Center. She is a graduate of Lang College and Sarah Lawrence, receiving the Lipkin Playwriting Award. She has just finished a novel and a TV pilot on the Harlem Renaissance. She is a founding member of the producing playwrights’ collective The Temblors and was a member of the 2021 Geffen Writer’s Room.

Eric Pfeffinger

’s plays have been produced by the Humana Festival, the Denver Center, the Geva, and elsewhere. He just had his first collaborative musical experience working on the book for May We All.

Sandy Sahar Gooen

is a multi-hyphenate and an MFA Candidate at BoCo. He joined the Guild after the 2016 premiere of It Takes a Village at Barnard/Columbia. Other Selected Writing Credits: Celebrating Sondheim, Pass/Fail, friEnDs, and Twink Piece.

S.M. Shephard-Massat

holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts where she was the Dean’s Fellow from 2007 to 2009, and an MA in Museum Studies from Johns Hopkins University. She has won numerous awards for her playwriting, including a Helen Hayes Award and an American Theater Critic’s Roger L. Stevens Award from the Kennedy Center, been published, produced, and featured in both American Theatre magazine and The New York Times. She is the founder of TERTULIA, a new Black playwright’s initiative located in Atlanta, GA.

Elizabeth Coplan

developed the groundbreaking play cycle Grief Dialogues. Her playwriting credits include the award-winning Hospice: A Love Story and Untold. Over My Dead Body is currently in off-Broadway development. She is also the director of the film Juntos Nos Ayudamos/Better Together and screenwriter/producer of Honoring Choices.

Rona Siddiqui

is a NYC-based composer/lyricist. Musicals: Salaam Medina: Tales of a Halfghan, One Good Day, Hip Hop Cinderella. Awards: Jonathan Larson Grant, Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award, ASCAP Harold Adamson Lyric Award, Mary Rodgers/Lorenz Hart Award. Music Direction: A Strange Loop.

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S.M. Shephard-Massat,

Elizabeth Coplan,

Rona Siddiqui