THE ABUNDANCE by Chelsea Sutton and The Church of Broken Things by Maggie Lou Rader will workshop from 8/20/26 – 8/29/26. For ten days students, faculty, and guest artists work with the invited professional playwright developing their play and culminating in public readings the first weekend of the semester. 

THE ABUNDANCE by Chelsea Sutton

It’s the 1990s in the suburbs of Riverside, California, and Wendy, a broke young mom, has just moved to town. Lonely and under financial stress, Wendy is drawn to Tara Lee, her neighbor and boisterous personality who introduces Wendy to an amazing business opportunity – as a consultant for burgeoning multi-level marketing (MLM) company, SimpleLife. As Wendy becomes more and more intertwined in the strange community of SimpleLife, the relief she finds in connecting with her neighbors slowly transforms into a waking nightmare. Wendy becomes more disconnected than ever, developing a complicated relationship to her VHS recruitment tape that teaches her sales techniques, tools to build her confidence, and how to recruit others to her team. Wendy’s reality warps in real time as she becomes more desperate to maintain her new social status and dig herself out of her worsening financial situation, losing her identity in the process. When her SimpleLife Tonic Bottle begins speaking and becomes her new best friend, Wendy thinks she has finally reached independence from the life she left behind – but the Tonic Bottle has other plans. As Wendy’s desperation and despair increase, Wendy must either claw her way to the top of the pyramid, or lose everything by leaving.

Chelsea Sutton is a writer and director based in Los Angeles. She’s a PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow, a Humanitas PlayLA award-winner, a 2015 O’Neill Conference Finalist, a 2018 Sewanee Writers Conference Playwright Fellow, and a graduate of the 2022 Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop. The second production of her macabre steampunk adaptation of Pinocchio, Wood Boy Dog Fish (created with Rogue Artists Ensemble) was nominated for five Ovation Awards and five Stage Raw Awards and appeared in the inaugural season at the Garry Marshall Theatre. Her play The Abundance, written in Moving Arts’ 2023 MADlab, was a semi-finalist for the O’Neill Conference and was recently developed at the 2024 Valdez Theatre Conference Play Lab and the 2024 Kayenta New Works Lab. Kaidan Project: Walls Grow Thin, a piece she co-wrote with Lisa Sanaye Dring, was nominated for 8 Ovation Awards including Best Production (winner of 5). She co-wrote the Emmy-nominated 2020 Welcome to the Blumhouse Live, an interactive film event for Blumhouse/Amazon and The Alienist: Angel of Darkness, an award-winning virtual event for TNT + Little Cinema Digital. Also a fiction writer, her first flash fiction chapbook Only Animals is now available through Wrong Publishing, and her debut novella is forthcoming in 2026 from Split/Lip Press. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UC Riverside. www.chelseasutton.com

The Church of Broken Things by Maggie Lou Rader

The Church of Broken Things follows the intertwined lives of three childhood friends—KK, Vick, and Faith —growing up in rural Oklahoma. Against a backdrop of poverty, broken families, and the suffocating influence of small town gossip, the girls navigate adolescence, survival, and the search for meaning in a world that repeatedly fails them. As they grow older, their relationships fracture and reform under the weight of secrets, trauma, and betrayal. Each character wrestles with her own form of brokenness: KK with her yearning for escape, Faith with her conflicted faith and desire, and Vick with the scars of abuse, abandonment, and secrets. The play shifts between dark humor and raw vulnerability, revealing how laughter and friendship become lifelines in a landscape of hardship. Darkly funny and deeply raw, The Church of Broken Things becomes a meditation on resilience, memory, and the messy, unpretty ways that broken people keep going. 

A produced playwright, member of the Dramatist’s Guild, and AEA Actor, Maggie Lou Rader (she/her/hers) tells epic stories of epic women. She's obtained degrees from William Jewell College in Kansas City and the Birmingham School of Acting in the UK and has called Cincinnati home for nearly 10 years. She has been the winner of the Notre Dame College New Play festival, a semi-finalist for the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, the Full Circle Theatre’s New Works Play Festival, Dayton Playhouse’s Future Fest, and UP Theater's Renewal Reading Series, a finalist for Henley Rose Playwright Competition for Women and Central Florida Community Arts TYA New Play and Musical Festival, and was selected for Miami University’s inaugural Digital Play Reading Series. She’s has had the privilege of having her work developed at DePaul University, the Theatre School, and the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company. Her plays have been produced at Know Theatre of Cincinnati, InBocca Performance, and The Marsh, MarshStream International Solo Fest, as well as staged readings with Theatre Pro Rata and Green Buffalo Productions. She’s also been published with Smith and Kraus as well as Madwomen in the Attic. She's been produced at Eclectic Full-Contact Theatre, 3rd Act Theatre, Stages Theatre in Houston and Know Theatre of Cincinnati and is represented by Mark Orsini at the Bret Adams Agency. As a performer, she has performed in over 75 productions with Know Theatre of Cincinnati, StageOne, The Human Race Theatre, Kentucky Shakespeare, Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Park, and Florida Studio Theatre and Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park where she's been a Resident Artist for the last two years. In Cincinnati, she lives happily on her homestead with husband Justin, and four fur babies. www.maggielourader.com/playwright

THE SPARKLE WARS Playwright: Brendan Bourque-Sheil

Brendan Bourque-Sheil's plays include DOGROSE PATROL (O'Neill Finalist, written with Madison Smith), SUNRISE COVEN (Stages Theatre, Know Theatre of Cincinnati, Penny Seats Theatre), BETWEEN TWO CAVES (Landing Theatre, Garden of Voices), and THE BOOK OF MAGGIE (Finalist, Reva Shiner Comedy Award, Stages Theatre, Death and Pretzels Theatre Company). He has participated in the Stillwright Retreat and won the Writer's Colony's Real People Fellowship. For Alley Theatre's Department of Education and Community Engagement he's been a principal writer of 12 devised theatre plays for teens. He worked as Playwright in Residence and Literary Associate for The Landing Theatre where he hosted and produced The Landing Theatre New Works Podcast. For ten years, he has worked as a teaching artist for Alley Theatre, and a consultant in Creative Writing for the Kinder High School of Performing and Visual Arts. He also tells personal narrative stories for a live audience at shows including Grown-Up Storytime, City Cast Houston and World Channel's "Stories From the Stage." He enjoys learning American Sign Language and long walks in graveyards.

Sarai's Knife Playwright: John Minigan

John Minigan is a recent Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellow in Dramatic Writing. Tall Tales from Blackburn Tavern, commissioned by Gloucester Stage Company, premiered there in 2023. (re)Dressing Miss Havisham, a commission from Hey Jont Productions, is in development after preliminary readings at the Dramatists Guild. The Clara Cipher, commissioned by Concert Theatre Works, is in development for a 2026 premiere.

In the Scorpion's Nest (formerly Queen of Sad Mischance) won the 2022 Judith Royer Award from The Kennedy Center/ATHE, the 2022 Wigglesworth Award from Florida's Lab Theater, Gold Prize in the Clauder Competition for New England plays, and was an ONeill finalist. In 2024, it was given a series of industry readings at Manhattan Theatre Club and is in pre-production for a 2025 premiere in NYC. John's Elliot Norton Award-nominated and BroadwayWorld.com Best Play-winning solo adaptation of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow premiered in Boston in 2022 and has been produced in multiple venues around the country since.

Noir Hamlet was an EDGE Media Best of Boston Theater 2018 selection, a Boston Globe Critics' Pick, an 2019 Elliot Norton nominee, and was produced at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe. He has developed new work with the Utah Shakespearean Festival, Great Plains Theatre Conference, Orlando Shakespeare Theater, Portland Stage Company, and elsewhere. John lives near Boston with his wife, the dance scholar, teacher, and choreographer Lynn E. Frederiksen. He is affiliate faculty at Emerson College and serves as Dramatists Guild Ambassador for the Boston region.