Masha Obolensky was a playwriting fellow with Boston’s Huntington Theatre in 2011 and 2012. She was a recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council grant in 2011 and received the Pen New England Discovery Award in 2010. She was nominated for a Brother Thomas Fellowship and was a semi-finalist for the 2014 Shakespeare’s Sister Fellowship. Other awards include the Kennedy Center Michael Kanin Award (2010, Girls Play), a WordBridge fellowship (2010, The Girl Problem), the Jane Chambers Student Playwriting Award (2006), and the Robert Pinsky Global Playwriting Fellowship (2010). Her play Not Enough Air was produced by Chicago’s Timeline Theatre and was nominated for 5 Joseph Jefferson Equity Awards including Best New Play and Best Production. Not Enough Air was also produced by the Nora Theatre in Cambridge (directed by Melia Bensussen) and was listed in the Boston Globe’s “10 Best of 2010”. Her most recent play Marvelous Fruit was a PlayPenn Conference finalist, a Eugene O’Neill Theatre Festival semi-finalist, and a Source Festival D.C. finalist. Masha is currently co-writing a play called Heart and Mind with Melia Bensussen, which started its development in the Huntington Theatre’s 2015 Summer Workshop for New Plays. Her plays have also been produced by the Boston Theatre Marathon, the Samuel French OOB Play Festival, Arts Emerson, HERE Arts Center, Access Theatre, and Source Festival D.C. Masha has an MFA in Playwriting from Boston University.

Elizabeth Rocha (Properties Co-Designer) studied at Rhode Island School of Design and Boston’s Museum school before receiving her bachelor’s degree from Harvard’s Extension School. She was working as an illustrator when she accidentally stumbled into theater, where she has been working primarily as a costume designer ever since.  She has designed for Perseverance Theater, the Theater at Monmouth, Theatre on Fire, the Institute at the A.R.T., Harvard College, Stoneham’s Young Company, the Contemporary Theater of Boston and the Prometheus Dance Company. She has done production work for Costume Works and the Boston Ballet and worked in props at the Boston Conservatory for three years.

As of November 2017.

Judy Gailen has designed sets (and sometimes costumes) for theater and opera throughout the US, including Asolo Rep, La Jolla Playhouse, Long Wharf Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse, Trinity Rep, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Geva Theatre, Merrimack Rep, Beau Jest Moving Theater, Music Academy of the West, Opera Theatre of Philadelphia, and Anchorage Opera, as well as off and off-off Broadway, Emerson, Bates, and Dartmouth Colleges, and Bowdoin College, where she is currently a Lecturer in design. She also designed and directed The Stooge: A Troubled Clown for Troubled Times and other works written and performed by Michael Lane Trautman. A graduate of The Yale Drama School, she was awarded a Maine Arts Commission Fellowship for artistic excellence.

Erik Nikander is a New England-based theatre artist who specializes in writing, dramaturgy, and criticism. A recent graduate from Fitchburg State University and Spring 2016 Nora Theatre Company intern, he’s glad to have the opportunity to contribute to Central Square Theater on a professional level. In addition, Erik works as a freelance script reader and dramaturg for New York Rep, where he is helping to develop the original rock musical A Wall Apart. Erik also wrote the program notes for this season’s productions of Good and Thurgood at the New Repertory Theatre in Watertown, and his theatre criticism can be read in The Arts Fuse.