Jena Tesse Fox is the smallest member of the EMG Playwriting Group. By day, she writes for a travel magazine. By night, she reviews theater and cabaret for BroadwayWorld.com and Cabaret Scenes magazine (which has earned her a voting membership in the Drama Desk Awards). Somewhere in between day and night, she enjoys playwriting, and was the first student to graduate from Wells College with a full-length play as her thesis.
Elana Gartner has written, among other scripts, Because of Beth (third prize in the 2007-2008 Pen and Brush Playwriting contest. Finalist for the Open Book 2007 Playwriting Competition), Pilar's Brother (Finalist: 2010 MetLife Nuestras Voces Playwriting Competition), Cortex Kin (Finalist: Double (XX) Fest 2.0. Semi-finalist: 2010 Drury University One-Act Playwriting Competition), Tag on Toe (Finalist: Little Fish Theatre's Hella Fresh Fish 3.0 Short Play Festival) and Spinning (Winner of the 2008 Fabrefaction Theater Company Playwriting Competition). Ms. Gartner founded the EMG Playwriting Workshop which has fostered a supportive community for playwrights since 2004 and is a board member for the International Centre for Women Playwrights. Ms. Gartner helped to edit a second edition of "You Can Write A Play!" by Milton E. Polsky. She has worked with Second Stage, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Williamstown Theater Festival, Cherry Lane Theater and Connecticut Repertory Theater. Ms. Gartner is a graduate of Oberlin College with a degree in Creative Writing and has been a member of the Dramatists Guild since 1999. Website
Lorraine Goodman is best known as a professional performer, appearing on Broadway in The Mystery of Edwin Drood; Les Misérables; and Terrence McNally’s Master Class, where she performed the role of Sharon - originally played by Tony-award winner Audra McDonald - with all three Broadway Marias. This experience led to the creation of her first novel, entitled Diva Wars, currently seeking publication. Other writing credits include: a new translation of Die Fledermaus, and the radio program, "At the Opera House" for the Intouch Radio Network for the Blind, which combines lively narration of beloved operas with musical highlights. Her one-page play, "The Urn" was recently featured in John Chatterton’s "Zero to Sixty One-Page Play Festival." Her column on NYShowBiz Pets is featured on Examiner.com. Ms. Goodman has also directed several professional productions of operas, plays and new, old and adapted musicals. This spring she directed 2 new plays for the Strong Kids Campaign at the YMCA (one of which won Best Play) and scenes from Anastasia at the Hodes Black Box Theater. Website
Mark Loewenstern is an award-winning writer of plays, teleplays, web films, and musicals for children. His scripts include: Carnality, a Heideman Award finalist, produced by Actors Theatre of Louisville and published in “30 Ten Minute Plays for Two Actors”; A Doctor’s Visit, winner of the Samuel French One-Act Festival and published in Off-Off Broadway Festival Plays, Series #27; The Nastiest Drink in the World, winner of the Anna Zornio Prize for Best Children’s Play; and Holiday Rumble, an animated web video which has received over 290,000 views on www.atom.com. Mark studied theater at the University of Pennsylvania and Kings College London.
Duncan Pflaster has won awards for his plays The Empress of Sex, Prince Trevor Amongst the Elephants, The Thyme of the Season, The Starship Astrov, Sweeter Dreams, Eternity: Time Without End, and The Tragedy of Dandelion. Other plays include The Wastes of Time, Suckers, Admit Impediments, Sleeping in Tomorrow, and Ore, or Or, as well as a panoply of one-acts. Prince Trevor Amongst the Elephants, The Thyme of the Season, The Starship Astrov are published online at Indie Theater Now. He also writes sketch comedy with the video troupe Laughing Swingset, whose work can be seen on YouTube and Funny or Die. He is also an award-winning actor (2009 MITF Award, Outstanding Supporting Actor, I Hate Love) and theatre reviewer (2nd Place in Stage and Cinema's 2010 Theater Review Contest). Website
Jane Prendergast's short plays, Siblings, The Diers, The Coven and Popul Vuh have been produced by numerous theatre companies and her full-length play, The Goldberg Ground was included in NYU's hotINK Festival with Tony-award winning Richard Easton in the role of Bach. She has had staged readings of her full-lengths, Act of Peace, Sitting on the Frog and Memories are Made of This. She has also written Echoes, 1938; Music; and What's Your Sign?. Her playwriting mentors include Lezley Steele, Austin Flint and Eduardo Machado. She has produced and directed Hamlet and Trojan Women in the park performance, as well as her own pageant, El Popol Vuh. In real life, she is a musician, choral singer and director and maintains a private teaching studio.
Marisol Tirelli Rivera, a native Californian, graduated from Pepperdine University in Malibu with a BA degree in Theatre Arts. Immediately after graduation, she was admitted into the Actors Studio Drama School in NYC after singing "Mein Herr" from Cabaret for James Lipton, Ellen Burstyn, Martin Landau, and Ann Margaret. Eventually, she finished her MA degree in Educational Theatre at NYU in 2008, where she wrote and developed plays and musicals in workshops within the Provincetown Playhouse and Tisch's Graduate School of Musical Theatre Writing. She has had staged readings of her plays Orpheus and the Nymph and The Women of Picasso with Small Pond Entertainment. In 2010, she wrote Galileo the Musical, for the West Village Musical Theatre Festival, which had a second run the next year for the Planet Connections Festivity and was nominated for Outstanding Book/Music/Lyrics. Her latest work, Fashion the Musical, written in 2011 for the West Village Musical Theatre Festival won Best Overall Musical, and is currently being developed for full length in hopes of Broadway. Marisol is the founder of the TESOL Drama and the annual TESOL International Film and Art Exhibit in NYC, and is currently a doctoral student at Teachers College- Columbia University. Her dissertation’s working title is: "Re-Envisioning The Role Of The Book-Writer/Librettist As A Central Force In The Collaboration of Arts Disciplines Within The Creation Of Musical Theatre." Website
Ken Scudder is co-founder and head writer of the award-winning sketch comedy troupe The Mistake. He has performed as an actor and stand-up comic in New York and Los Angeles, including in a number of plays which left him saying “I can write better @#$#@$ than this.” So, he is. Ken is currently working on pieces that examine communication between old lovers and comedy partners, identity in the age of the internet, and the dehumanization inherent in advertising, as well as a play cycle based on the songs of John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band album.
Jena Tesse Fox is the smallest member of the EMG Playwriting Group. By day, she writes for a travel magazine. By night, she reviews theater and cabaret for BroadwayWorld.com and Cabaret Scenes magazine (which has earned her a voting membership in the Drama Desk Awards). Somewhere in between day and night, she enjoys playwriting, and was the first student to graduate from Wells College with a full-length play as her thesis.
Elana Gartner has written, among other scripts, Because of Beth (third prize in the 2007-2008 Pen and Brush Playwriting contest. Finalist for the Open Book 2007 Playwriting Competition), Pilar's Brother (Finalist: 2010 MetLife Nuestras Voces Playwriting Competition), Cortex Kin (Finalist: Double (XX) Fest 2.0. Semi-finalist: 2010 Drury University One-Act Playwriting Competition), Tag on Toe (Finalist: Little Fish Theatre's Hella Fresh Fish 3.0 Short Play Festival) and Spinning (Winner of the 2008 Fabrefaction Theater Company Playwriting Competition). Ms. Gartner founded the EMG Playwriting Workshop which has fostered a supportive community for playwrights since 2004 and is a board member for the International Centre for Women Playwrights. Ms. Gartner helped to edit a second edition of "You Can Write A Play!" by Milton E. Polsky. She has worked with Second Stage, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Williamstown Theater Festival, Cherry Lane Theater and Connecticut Repertory Theater. Ms. Gartner is a graduate of Oberlin College with a degree in Creative Writing and has been a member of the Dramatists Guild since 1999. 
Lorraine Goodman is best known as a professional performer, appearing on Broadway in The Mystery of Edwin Drood; Les Misérables; and Terrence McNally’s Master Class, where she performed the role of Sharon - originally played by Tony-award winner Audra McDonald - with all three Broadway Marias. This experience led to the creation of her first novel, entitled Diva Wars, currently seeking publication. Other writing credits include: a new translation of Die Fledermaus, and the radio program, "At the Opera House" for the Intouch Radio Network for the Blind, which combines lively narration of beloved operas with musical highlights. Her one-page play, "The Urn" was recently featured in John Chatterton’s "Zero to Sixty One-Page Play Festival." Her column on NYShowBiz Pets is featured on Examiner.com. Ms. Goodman has also directed several professional productions of operas, plays and new, old and adapted musicals. This spring she directed 2 new plays for the Strong Kids Campaign at the YMCA (one of which won Best Play) and scenes from Anastasia at the Hodes Black Box Theater. 
Mark Loewenstern is an award-winning writer of plays, teleplays, web films, and musicals for children. His scripts include: Carnality, a Heideman Award finalist, produced by Actors Theatre of Louisville and published in “30 Ten Minute Plays for Two Actors”; A Doctor’s Visit, winner of the Samuel French One-Act Festival and published in Off-Off Broadway Festival Plays, Series #27; The Nastiest Drink in the World, winner of the Anna Zornio Prize for Best Children’s Play; and Holiday Rumble, an animated web video which has received over 290,000 views on www.atom.com. Mark studied theater at the University of Pennsylvania and Kings College London. 
Duncan Pflaster has won awards for his plays The Empress of Sex, Prince Trevor Amongst the Elephants, The Thyme of the Season, The Starship Astrov, Sweeter Dreams, Eternity: Time Without End, and The Tragedy of Dandelion. Other plays include The Wastes of Time, Suckers, Admit Impediments, Sleeping in Tomorrow, and Ore, or Or, as well as a panoply of one-acts. Prince Trevor Amongst the Elephants, The Thyme of the Season, The Starship Astrov are published online at 
Jane Prendergast's short plays, Siblings, The Diers, The Coven and Popul Vuh have been produced by numerous theatre companies and her full-length play, The Goldberg Ground was included in NYU's hotINK Festival with Tony-award winning Richard Easton in the role of Bach. She has had staged readings of her full-lengths, Act of Peace, Sitting on the Frog and Memories are Made of This. She has also written Echoes, 1938; Music; and What's Your Sign?. Her playwriting mentors include Lezley Steele, Austin Flint and Eduardo Machado. She has produced and directed Hamlet and Trojan Women in the park performance, as well as her own pageant, El Popol Vuh. In real life, she is a musician, choral singer and director and maintains a private teaching studio. 
Marisol Tirelli Rivera, a native Californian, graduated from Pepperdine University in Malibu with a BA degree in Theatre Arts. Immediately after graduation, she was admitted into the Actors Studio Drama School in NYC after singing "Mein Herr" from Cabaret for James Lipton, Ellen Burstyn, Martin Landau, and Ann Margaret. Eventually, she finished her MA degree in Educational Theatre at NYU in 2008, where she wrote and developed plays and musicals in workshops within the Provincetown Playhouse and Tisch's Graduate School of Musical Theatre Writing. She has had staged readings of her plays Orpheus and the Nymph and The Women of Picasso with Small Pond Entertainment. In 2010, she wrote Galileo the Musical, for the West Village Musical Theatre Festival, which had a second run the next year for the Planet Connections Festivity and was nominated for Outstanding Book/Music/Lyrics. Her latest work, Fashion the Musical, written in 2011 for the West Village Musical Theatre Festival won Best Overall Musical, and is currently being developed for full length in hopes of Broadway. Marisol is the founder of the TESOL Drama and the annual TESOL International Film and Art Exhibit in NYC, and is currently a doctoral student at Teachers College- Columbia University. Her dissertation’s working title is: "Re-Envisioning The Role Of The Book-Writer/Librettist As A Central Force In The Collaboration of Arts Disciplines Within The Creation Of Musical Theatre." 
Ken Scudder is co-founder and head writer of the award-winning sketch comedy troupe