Christopher Hampton’s plays include Total Eclipse, The Philanthropist, Savages, Treats, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Tales from Hollywood, The Talking Cure and Embers. His musicals book and lyrics) include Sunset Boulevard and Rebecca, which opens on Broadway in November. He has translated plays by Ibsen, Molière, Ödön von Horváth, Chekhov (his version of Uncle Vanya opens in the West End in November) and Yasmina Reza. Screenplays include Dangerous Liaisons, Mary Reilly, The Quiet American, Atonement, A Dangerous Method, Carrington and Imagining Argentina, the last two of which he also directed. Awards include two Tonys, an Olivier, an Academy Award and the Special Jury Prize at Cannes.

Rajiv Joseph’s Broadway play, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo was a 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist for drama, and also awarded a grant for Outstanding New American Play by the National Endowment for the Arts. Joseph’s New York productions include Gruesome Playground Injuries, Second Stage Theatre, 2011; Animals Out of Paper, Second Stage Theatre, summer 2008; The Leopard and the Fox (adaptation), Alter Ego, fall 2007; Huck & Holden, Cherry Lane Theatre, 2006; All This Intimacy, Second Stage Theatre, 2006. World premieres of new plays this year, include The North Pool at Theatre Works in Palo Alto; The Lake Effect at Crossroads Theatre in New Jersey; and The Medusa Body at the Alley Theatre. He received his BA in Creative Writing from Miami University and his MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. He served for three years in the Peace Corps in Senegal.

Jessica Ernst has been collaborating with Joyce Van Dyke to develop The Women Who Mapped The Stars through four workshops over two years, and is looking forward to bringing the world premiere to the Central Square Theater stage. Her directing credits include Daughter of Venus (Artists’ Theatre of Boston), The Love of the Nightingale (Open Theatre Project), The Weaver of Raveloe (Oberon, world premiere), and Hedda Gabler (The Longwood Players), as well as various short plays and staged readings. In the past, she has worked as an assistant director and artistic intern with several Boston area companies, including the Huntington Theatre Company, New Repertory Theatre, and Actors’ Shakespeare Project. With The Poets’ Theatre, she produced, curated, and directed The Ghostlight Series from 2015-2016 – a monthly performance series exploring poetry in performance, new plays, and more. Jessica is a graduate of Gettysburg College, where her work included classics, contemporary work, and new plays and adaptations. This summer, she will be directing Henry IV with Praxis Stage, performing in multiple parks in Cambridge and Brookline.

April 2018.

Patrick Gabridge is an MIT graduate and the son of a microbiologist—he grew up around biology labs in the 70s and 80s. He is the producing artistic director and founder of Plays in Place and has created site-specific plays in partnership with many museums and historic sites, including Mount Auburn Cemetery, Boston’s Old State House, the National Parks of Boston, Historic Northampton, and Old North Church, among others. He is an award-winning playwright and has written more than two dozen historical plays, along with many contemporary plays that have received productions from theatres and schools around the world (17 countries so far). He’s also a novelist, screenwriter, and writer of audio plays. In addition to Cambridge, look for additional site-specific plays this summer and fall in Newport, Deerfield, Northampton, and at the Old New-Gate Prison & Copper Mine in Connecticut.