Meet some of the Cut Edge Playwrights and Actors!
Playwrights
Serena Norr is a writer, playwright, and founder of Let’s Make a Play, a playwriting program for kids and adults. Her plays have been performed at the Omaha Fringe Festival, White Plains Performing Arts Center, the New Deal Creative Arts Center, Westchester Collaborative Theater, The Players Theater with the Rogue Theater Festival andthe NYC Short Play Festival, the Tank, the Flea, the University of Alabama as well as various productions over Zoom. She is a recent second-rounder at the Austin Film Festival for her full-length play, “Agency for the Lost.” For more information, visit http://www.serenanorr.com/ Social: https://www.instagram.com/serenanorrcreative/
Nathaniel Blake Johnson is a New York based writer who hails from Phoenix and Dallas. He received his undergraduate degree from Morehouse College in Atlanta for English and an MFA in playwriting from The Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University. He continually strives to push the black narrative for those voices – ancestral, modern, and forthcoming.
Sarah Feingold (she/her) is a Brooklyn-based playwright, professor, jeweler, startup attorney (formerly Etsy and Vroom), investor, board member, speaker, and mom. She won The New York Law Journal’s 2018 General Counsel Impact Award and created America’s Ugliest Necklace. Sarah’s worlds collide in her hilarious new show, Dirty Legal Secrets – www.dirtylegal.com
James Bosley has had his plays produced in theaters across this land and abroad, including MCC Theatre; The National Theater of Belgium at Ghent, The Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Emerging Artists Theater, and Up Theater Company in Northern Manhattan where he is a founding member. The screenplay for the film FUN, which he adapted from his stage play, was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. His newest play, Chiquita, has been accepted for production in the 2023 Downtown Urban Arts Festival. bosley7@gmail.com
Paul Hufker is a NYC-NJ based playwright, who’s been lucky enough to work with some incredible people, like world-renowned visual artist Pedro Reyes and international fashion designer Carla Fernandez. His plays have been produced in NYC, and throughout the US as well as in Toronto, and his work with Pedro was seen all over the world!
Lisa Morovic Kimball was born in New York City and raised in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. The daughter of immigrants, her plays reflect the struggles of the marginalized working class. Her participation in numerous writer’s groups led to her plays being produced by The New Jersey Reparatory Theater, Axial Theater, Love Creek Productions, The Know Theater, Candy Shoppe Theater, Rhinebeck Performing Arts Center, Half Moon Theater, Midtown International Theater and a workshop at The Last Frontier Theater Conference in Alaska. Publications include Smith and Kraus and The Rip Rap Literary Journal.
Al Lefcowitz is Professor Emeritus, USNA and both founder and retired Artistic Director of The Writer’s Center (Bethesda, MD.) He co-wrote The Creative Writer’s Handbook (5th Edition 2010) as well as over 100 articles. Since his retirement he has retired to NYC and written over 50 plays of various lengths, most of which have either been produced or staged read.
Libby Heily is a playwright and author based in New York. She is a two-time semi-finalist for the Eugene O’Neill Playwriting Conference and a former participant of the Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive. Her play, Midnight Showing, was shortlisted for the 2022 Yale Drama Series Prize. Website; New Play Exchange; Twitter; Instagram
Sophia Valera Heinecke (she/her) is an award-winning writer for the screen and stage as well as a dramaturg, archivist, and creative consultant. Drawn to work in theater, she believes it involves a deep consideration of human bodies and their emotional/intellectual output as the central material for live performance. https://www.sophiavaleraheinecke.com/ Instagram: @sosparklingwater
Lauren D’Errico is a librettist and playwright. Her work has been seen and developed in New York (Experiments In Opera, BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop, First Kiss Theatre, The Bechdel Group, The Tank, Nora’s Playhouse), Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh Opera, Bricolage Production Company), North Carolina (Charlotte New Music Festival), and online (Athena Film Festival, Strange Trace, La Jolla Playhouse, Blindspot Collective, Playdate Theatre, DeFrente Productions). She writes about failed communication, the psychology of fitness, anxiety, and inanimate objects that can talk. BA: SUNY Purchase College (2016). MFA: Carnegie Mellon University (2019). lauren-derrico.com
David Hanson recently moved to New York City from Kansas City where he remains one of the leading voices in immersive theater. His installations include Bird in the Hand realized in the historic Swope Park for the International Art Festival, Open Spaces. His first play Clearance Sale at the Five and Dime was a finalist for the L. Arnold Weisberger National Play Award and premiered at Alice’s Four Floor in New York City. His traditional plays have appeared across the country including Virginia, Oklahoma, Kansas City, and Palm Springs, California in the last year. He is a graduate of Trinity University, the University of Southern California, and the BMI Librettist workshop in New York. www.projectplaywright.com
Ben M. Jones (He/Him/His) is a New York City based theatre and film maker. His plays have had been produced by and/or had reading from: The Tank, National Queer Theater, The New Cosmopolitans, Sandcastle Theater Company, The Village Playwrights, and The New Short Play Festival. Plays include: All The Sex I Want, The Asexual Romance Fantasy Play, Ace In The Hole, and Individual. He is also the author of the travel/photo book, #BenAndHannahGoToEurope. TheBenMJones.com
Tom Block (Founder, Cut Edge Collective) is a playwright, author of six books, 25+ year exhibiting visual artist and Founding Producer of New York City’s International Human Rights Art Festival (ihraf.org). His latest book, “Mysticism in the Theater: What’s Needed Right Now,” was published by Routledge (London/NYC) in 2022. His plays have been developed and produced more than 30 times at venues around New York City and Washington DC. tomblock.com
Actors
Rachel Halper is a born and raised New Yorker. Winner of the Eva Gore Booth Award for Best Female Performance at The Dublin International Gay Theatre Festival in Julia Pascal’s St. Joan. Select NY credits include: Conjectures Of A Guilty Bystander, The Brother’s Kahn, 912 Oz, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Danton’s Death, A Boy’s Life, Springs Awakening. Instagram @rockinrockyhalper Facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/rachel.halper.7
Chase Kneuven is an actor, writer, and all-around chill dude that lives and works in the city. He spends his time playing TTRPGs, drawing monsters, and having a cold one with the lads whenever he gets the chance. If he were granted a last meal, it would be 20 hot wings fried and crisped to perfection—ranch and Bleu Cheese to dip.
Shawn Cortel is a member of SAG-AFTRA, AEA, AGMA, and has worked as a principle performer on: CBS, NBC, ABC, STARZ, truTV, indie films, commercials, Off-Off-Broadway, and music videos. www.shawncortel.com
Te’ena Klein is an Israeli born, NYC based actress. Trained at the Lee Strasberg Institute, she’s working in indie film and theatre throughout the city, and is currently in Best Friends, opening at the Rattlestick at the end of March.
Grace Chang is a NYC based actress who studies under Polina Klimovitskaya and John Strasberg in the realistic school of acting.
Clinton Powell is an Equity actor. Training: Alfred University (BA in Theatre and English). Clinton studied Viewpoints with Synaesthetic Theatre: The Trial of K (Kafka) and Icon (Narcissus). Previous favorites: Fools and Kings Project’s Richard the Third (Clarence), South Dakota Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale (Antigonus/3rd Gentleman) and Medicine Show Theatre’s Don Juan In Hell (The Statue). Clinton has played Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet twice, with Barefoot Shakespeare Company and York College. Clinton has worked with Cut Edge Collective on Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Stranger).
Erika Spondike (she/her) is a newly budding performer and produced playwright who is passionate about new works. Recent Hartt School grad. Previous credits include The Gunfighter Meets His Match (Goodspeed Musicals), Roller Stakes(The Players Theater), and various Theme Parks with RWS Entertainment Group. Check out her socials @erikaspondike www.erikaspondike.com
David Baker studied acting at the Barrow School. Most recently he played Harry in Tom Block’s ‘Molly and Harry’ at the Tank Theater (NYC) and the Archbishop of Canterbury in Robert Bolt’s ‘The Man for all Seasons’ with the Westfield Community Players (New Jersey). He has performed improv for the last five years with the group ‘Whatever, Dad.’ By day he teaches Shakespeare at Rutgers University.