Ken Urban is a playwright, screenwriter and musician. His stage plays include DANGER AND OPPORTUNITY (Drama Desk Winner, East Village Basement), A GUIDE FOR THE HOMESICK (Off-Broadway at the DR2, Huntington Theatre Company, Trafalgar Studios in the West End), THE REMAINS (Studio Theatre), SENSE OF AN ENDING (59E59 Theatres, London’s Theatre503), NIBBLER (The Amoralists and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater), THE CORRESPONDENT (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater), THE AWAKE (59E59 Theatres, Chicago’s First Floor Theater), and THE HAPPY SAD (The Public Theatre/Summer Play Festival). His audio play VAPOR TRAIL was selected for the 2022 Tribeca Festival’s Audio Storytelling series and released as part of Playwrights Horizons’ Sound Stage that fall. He is a four-time recipient of the prestigious MacDowell Fellowship. Awards include Venturous Theater Fund Finishing Commission, EST/Alfred P. Sloan Science & Technology Project Commission, The Blue Ink Award, Weissberger Playwriting Award, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, Independent Reviewers of New England’s Award for Best New Script, Headlands Artist Residency, Millay Arts Residency, Dramatist Guild Fellowship, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellowship and the A IS FOR Playwriting Award for plays about reproductive justice. He is an alumni of New Dramatists and an affiliated writer at the Playwrights’ Center. Ken wrote the screenplay for the feature-film adaptation of THE HAPPY SAD, directed by Rodney Evans. His plays are published by Dramatists Play Service/Broadway Licensing. He leads the band Occurrence and they have released six albums on Archie & Fox Records, a label that Ken runs with sound designer and musician Daniel Kluger. His first TV pilot THE ART OF LISTENING was optioned by ITV and Madison Wells Media. Ken is the Senior Lecturer of Theater Arts and Director of Dramatic Writing at MIT. He has taught writing at Harvard University, Princeton University, Tufts University and Davidson College. He lives in New York City with his partner Johnny.

Jared Mezzocchi (director) is a two-time Obie Award-winning theater artist, working as a director, multimedia designer, playwright, and actor. Based out of New York, Mezzocchi’s work has appeared at notable theaters nationwide, including Geffen Playhouse, Vineyard Theater, The Kennedy Center, Playwrights Horizons, TheatreWorks Hartford, Arena Stage, Woolly Mammoth (company member), and many more. In 2016, he received the Lucille Lortel and Henry Hewes Award for his work in Qui Nguyen’s Vietgone at the Manhattan Theatre club. In 2020, the New York Times spotlighted his multimedia innovations alongside the pandemic work of four other theater artists, including Andrew Lloyd Webber and Paula Vogel. His work on Sarah Gancher’s digital production of Russian Troll Farm was also celebrated as a New York Times critic pick, and praised for being one of the first digitally native successes for virtual theater. In 2023, this digital production of Russian Troll Farm won Mezzocchi his second Obie.

Most recently, Mezzocchi directed The Wind and The Rain: a Story about Sunny’s Bar at En Garde Arts and Vineyard Theater which was performed on a barge in NYC and called “Highbrow Brilliant” by New York Magazine. In Spring 2024, Mezzocchi directed Sandra at TheaterWorks Hartford. This Fall 2025, Jared will be directing Nothing Can Take You from the Hand of God at Playwrights Horizons, co-written by Jen Tullock and Frank Winters, performed by Jen Tullock.

Mezzocchi is a two-time MacDowell Artist Fellow, a 2012 Princess Grace Award winner, and recently celebrated his retirement at The University of Maryland, where he taught in the MFA Design program for the projection and multimedia track, a curriculum he created in 2012 that graduated 17 MFA students in Multimedia Design.

Over the pandemic, Mezzocchi founded Virtual Design Collective (VIDCO), which has aided in the development of over 50 new digital works over the 18 months of quarantine. This year, he is finishing his book, A Multimedia Designer’s Method to Theatrical Storytelling, which will be published through Routledge. Mezzocchi has a BA in theater and film from Fairfield University, and an MFA in performance and interactive media arts from Brooklyn College.

Paula Plum continues to be one of Boston’s leading actresses.

Over the past three decades, her most notable performance have been as Cleopatra, Lady Macbeth, Beatrice, Touchstone and Phedre at the Actors’ Shakespeare Project; in Miss Witherspoon, The Heiress and Death of a Salesman at the Lyric Stage ; Body Awareness, History Boys and New Century at SpeakEasy Stage; Lysistrata, Ivanov, Mother Courage, and The Marriage of Bette and Boo at the American Repertory Theatre.

Ms. Plum starred in two world premieres by John Kuntz: Sing Me To Sleep (Boston Center for the Arts) and Miss Price, which she coproduced (Boston Playwrights’ Theatre).

Movie credits include Irrational Man, Next Stop Wonderland, Mermaids, Malice, and The March Sisters at Christmas. Television credits include voicing characters on Squigglevision (ABC), The Dick and Paula Celebrity Special (FX), Hey Money(Oxygen) and Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist (Comedy Central).

Paula Plum is the recipient of the prestigious Fox Actor Fellowship for Distinguished Achievement, awarded to five actors nationwide to study and develop new work. Her original plays include: Memorial, Wigged OUT!, and What Lips My Lips Have Kissed. Her solo show, Plum Pudding, garnered her critical praise and the 2003 IRNE award for Best Solo Performance. Her article “Handling the Hot Moments, How Actors Negotiate Intimacy On Stage” was published in American Theatre Magazine.

Paula was honored by the Boston Theatre Critics Association with the Elliot Norton Award for Sustained Excellence (past recipients include Sir Ian McKellen and Julie Harris) and for Best Actress twice (Lost in Yonkers and Miss Witherspoon).

Ms. Plum was trained at The London Academy of Music and Dramatic arts and is a Cum Laude graduate of Boston University’s School for the Arts, where she was also honored as Distinguished Alumna in 2003.

Grew up in Queens, New York, just a few subway stops from Greenwich Village, and the heart of Gay America. At twenty-four, he founded the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, where he wrote, directed and performed in almost every production for the next two decades, often with Everett Quinton, his life partner and muse, by his side. Renowned for drag, high comedy, melodrama, satire, precise literary references, gender politics, sexual frolic, and a multitude of acting styles, the Ridiculous Theater guaranteed a kind of biting humor that could both sting and tickle. His many plays included Turds in Hell, Der Ring Gott Farblonjet, a riff on Wagner’s Ring Cycle, Bluebeard, and The Mystery of Irma Vep, his most popular play, and a performer’s tour-de-force. Ludlam continued working until almost the day he died of PCP pneumonia, just three months after his AIDS diagnosis. He was 44.