Celeste Oliva (Hannah Jarvis) is happy to return to Central Square Theater where she was previously seen as the Pilot in last year’s production of Grounded, a one woman show by George Brant. Other regional credits include It’s A Wonderful Life, a Radio Play (Merrimack Repertory Theater), Becky’s New Car, Ch’inglish (Lyric Stage), Reconsidering Hanna(h) (Boston Playwrights Theater), and Shear Madness (Charles Playhouse). Look for her in the upcoming films Bleed for This and November Criminals.

George Brant’s plays include Grounded, Elephant’s Graveyard, The Mourners’ Bench, Salvage, Three Voyages of the Lobotomobile, Grizzly Mama, Any Other Name, Defiant, Dark Room, Miracle: A Tragedy, Good on Paper, Ashes, NOK, The Lonesome Hoboes, One Hand Clapping, The Royal Historian of Oz, Lovely Letters, Three Men in a Boat, Borglum! The Mount Rushmore Musical, Tights on a Wire and Night of the Mime. 

A Core Writer at the Playwrights’ Center, his work has been produced internationally by such companies as Trinity Repertory Company, Cleveland Play House, City Theatre, Gate Theatre of London, Page 73, Studio Theatre, Unicorn Theatre, Traverse Theatre, Borderlands Theater, 
SF Playhouse, American Blues Theatre, Dobama Theatre, Red Stitch, Theatre 4, Premiere Stages, Trustus Theatre, Elemental Theatre Collective, Balagan Theatre, the Drama League, the Disney Channel, Factory Theatre, Debutantes and Vagabonds, StreetSigns Theatre Company, and zeppo theater company, among others.

His plays have been generously developed by the Kennedy Center, Asolo Rep, McCarter Theatre Center, New Harmony Project, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, WordBRIDGE Playwright’s Lab, Theatre @ Boston Court, Playwright and Director Center of Moscow, Florida Studio Theatre, New Jersey Rep, Contemporary Drama Festival of Hungary, the Hangar Theatre, Equity Library Theatre, and Ground UP Productions, among others.

His scripts have been awarded the David Mark Cohen National Playwriting Award from the Kennedy Center, the Smith Prize, the Keene Prize for Literature, an NNPN Rolling World Premiere, a Fringe First Award, an Off-West End Theatre Award, a Creative Workforce Fellowship, an Austin Critic’s Circle Best New Play Award and two Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards.  He has received writing fellowships from the James A. Michener Center for Writers, the McCarter Theatre Sallie B. Goodman Artist’s Retreat, the MacDowell Colony, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Fundacion Valparaiso and the Blue Mountain Center as well as commissions from Trinity Repertory Company, Dobama Theatre and Theatre 4.

George received his MFA in Writing from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin and is a member of the Dramatists Guild.  He is published by Samuel French, Oberon Books and Smith & Kraus.

Lauren Gunderson is a playwright, screenwriter and short story author from Atlanta, GA. She received her BA in English/Creative Writing at Emory University, and her  MFA in Dramatic Writing at NYU Tisch, where she was also a Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship.

She was awarded the prestigious Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award for her play, I and You (also a Susan Smith Blackburn Blackburn finalist). That play was an NNPN Rolling World Premiere that started at Marin Theatre Company and heads to 3 cities in 2014. Bauer, commissioned by San Francisco Playhouse, will premiere there and in NYC at 59E59 in 2014. Her play Silent Sky (Jane Chambers Award finalist) premiered at South Coast Rep in 2011 and was further developed and rewritten for TheatreWorks, which opened to raves calling it “sheer magic”. Her 2011 3-city rolling world premiere of Exit, Pursued By A Bear, was featured in American Theatre Magazine and The Week, and has reached 20 communities across the US winning “Best Comedy” accolades. Bear is now published by Playscripts, as is her comedy, Toil And Trouble, after premiering in Berkeley to raves.

Her first musical, The Amazing Adventures of Dr. Wonderful and Her Dog! commissioned by The Kennedy Center, opened last fall to rave reviews and continues its life in a state-wide tour in Florida this summer. Dr. Wonderful  is becoming a series of children’s books published by Amazon.  Emilie: La Marquise Du Chatelet Defends Her Tonight (published by Samuel French) was commissioned and premiered at South Coast Rep in 2009, and has run across the country and in England. By And By premiered at Shotgun Players in Berkeley. Fire Work was developed at The O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, and is a 2011 winner for Aurora Theatre’s Global Age Project, and will premiere at Theatre First in 2014. She has developed plays with Second Stage, Red Bull, and Primary Stages in NYC; New Rep in Boston; Playwrights Foundation, Crowded Fire, TheatreWorks, Aurora Theatre, and The Magic Theatre in San Francisco; Kitchen Dog Theatre in Dallas; Synchronicity, Actor Express and Horizon Theatre in Atlanta; JAW at Portland Center Stage in Portland; WORDBridge, Brave New Works, and others.

Her work has received national praise and awards including being a Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award finalist, a Susan Smith Blackburn finalist, a Jane Chambers Award finalist,  and winner of the Berrilla Kerr Award for American Theatre, Global Age Project, Young Playwright’s Award, Eric Bentley New Play Award and Essential Theatre Prize. She has been commissioned by South Coast Rep (3 times), Crowded Fire, The Alliance Theatre’s Collision Project, Marin Theatre Company, Actors Express Theatre, Dad’s Garage Theatre, Theatrical Outfit, City University of New York and Synchronicity Performance Group. Leap was published with Theatre Emory’s Playwriting Center (2004), and her first collection of plays, Deepen The Mystery: Science and the South Onstage, is published with iUniverse (2006). She has developed plays with Second Stage and Primary Stages in NYC, New Rep in Boston, Playwrights Foundation, Crowded Fire, Aurora Theatre, and The Magic Theatre in San Francisco, Kitchen Dog Theatre in Dallas, Actor Express and Horizon Theatre in Atlanta, JAW/West in Portland, WORDBridge, Brave New Works, and others. She received a Sloan Science Script Award (2008) for her screenplay Grand Unification. Leap was published with Theatre Emory’s Playwriting Center (2004), and her short story, “The Ascending Life”, won the Norembega Short Fiction Award and was published in the anthology, The Shape of Content; her science play Background was published in ISOTOPE: A Journal of Nature and Science Writing. Her string theory poem “Hook of a Number” was published in the anthology Riffing On Strings.

She has spoken nationally and internationally on the intersection of science and theatre and Arts Activism, and teaches playwriting in San Francisco. She is a Playwright in Resident at The Playwrights Foundation, a Dramatists Guild member, and was a member of Just Theatre’s New Play Lab. She writes for The Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal, tweets @LalaTellsAStory, and curates HowToPlaywright.com.

Judy Braha has been a director, teacher, actor and arts advocate in New England for over three decades. She has directed regionally at many theaters, including Actors Shakespeare Project, Boston Center for American Performance, Merrimack Repertory Theater, New Repertory Theater, Ensemble Studio Theater, Huntington Theater Company, Boston Playwrights Theater, and Nora Theater Company. As a founding member of The New Ehrlich Theater, Judy directed many award winning productions including Bent, The Fifth of July and House of Blue Leaves, paving the way for the theater renaissance in Boston’s South End. Currently head of the MFA Directing Program at Boston University’s School of Theater, her teaching and guest artist credits also include Brandeis University, Emerson College, Mount Holyoke College, MIT, Northeastern, Wheaton College, Trinity Rep. Conservatory, Suffolk University, and the Boston University Summer Theater Institute. Most recently, Ms. Braha directed Our Class and The Road to Mecca (BCAP); Othello (Actor’s Shakespeare Project); and Joyce Van Dyke’s new plays Deported/ a dream play and The Oil Thief  (Boston Playwright’s Theater). The Oil Thief won an Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding New Play in 2009. Ms. Braha has an MFA from Boston University, a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and continues to be a proud member of Stage Source where she sat on its Board of Directors for the first six years.