Laura Maria Censabella (Playwright) is happy to be back at Central Square Theater where her IRNE Award winning Best New Play (Small Stage Category) Paradise made its world premiere as part of CST’s Catalyst Collaborative@MIT program. Paradise has been produced by numerous theatres since then, most notably in Los Angeles at the Odyssey Theatre with Viola Davis and Julius Tennon as producers. She then wrote the screenplay for Vicangelo Films and JuVee Productions and an audio version of the play opened L.A. Theatre Works’ 2021/2022 season (available on Audible). Ms. Censabella is the recipient of the $10,000 Saroyan/Paul Human Rights Playwriting Prize for her play Carla Cooks The War, three grants in Playwriting and Screenwriting from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and two Daytime Emmy Awards. Other plays and musicals have been developed or produced at the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Philadelphia Festival Theatre for New Plays, WP Theater, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Portland Stage, the New Harmony Project, Gulfshore Playhouse, Lyric Stage Company of Boston, The Playwright’s Laboratory in London, Northlight Theatre, The Working Theatre, Luna Stage, Passage Theatre, Mendocino Theatre Company and Urban Stages, among others. She directs the Ensemble Studio Theatre Playwrights Unit and teaches at the New School for Drama where she received the Distinguished University Wide Teaching Award. A graduate of Yale College with a B.A. in Philosophy, she is a proud member of Honor Roll! an action and advocacy group of women+ playwrights over 40. Ms. Censabella was a writer-in-residence at Hedgebrook in 2023.

Benny Sato Ambush is a professional SDC stage director, former Producer/Artistic Director of professional theaters, educator, consultant and published commentator.

Prior artistic leadership experience include: Producing Director – Oakland (CA) Ensemble Theatre, Associate Artistic Director – San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater, Acting Artistic Director – Providence, RI’s Rites and Reason Theatre Company, Co-Artistic Director – San Francisco Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Director-In-Residence – Manalapan, Florida’s Florida Stage and Producing Artistic Director – Richmond, VA’s TheatreVirginia. He directed at all these theaters. He was Associate Artistic Director of Anna Deavere Smith’s Institute on the Arts & Civic Dialogue at Harvard University – summer 2000.

Other regional directing credits: Old Globe Theatre; Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Portland; South Coast Rep; Alabama Shakespeare Festival; Merrimack Repertory Theatre, Arizona Theatre Company; Magic Theatre; Geva Theatre; Playwrights Horizon; Ford’s Theatre; Philadelphia Festival Theatre for New Plays; Lincoln Center Theater Institute; Heart of America Shakespeare Festival; Indiana’s New Harmony Project; Actors Guild of Lexington; Alaska Theatre of Youth; International Theatre Festival of Chicago; Sacramento Theatre Company; National Black Theatre Festival; Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre; all five of the San Francisco Bay Area McDonalds Gospel Fests; New York University’s Graduate Acting Program; North Carolina School of the Arts; Cornell University; Florida Atlantic University; Minneapolis Playwright Center’s PlayLab, North Carolina Black Repertory Company, Lyric Stage Company of Boston, Gloucester Stage Company, The New Rep, TheatreSquared, and NPR Radio.

He has narrated the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival twice, and has toured the former Soviet Union and Kenya via the United States Information Agency.

He was Director of the Institute for Teledramatic Arts and Technology – California State University, Monterey Bay’s unique, storytelling-based, multidisciplinary program that integrated production-oriented study in theater production, filmmaking, video/television production, radio production, and new media production.

He has taught at the North Carolina School of the Arts; American Conservatory Theater Conservatory; California State University, Monterey Bay; Colorado College; Kenyatta University – Nairobi, Kenya; Contra Costa College; Brown University; University of California, San Diego; University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, Florida Atlantic University and Emerson College.

He has served on numerous regional and national boards – including Theatre Communications Group (TCG), has been a panelist and site evaluator for the National Ensowment for the Arts as well as numerous state arts councils and is active nationally in the advocacy of cultural equity, non-traditional casting and pluralism in the American theater. He is a Board Member of the National Theatre Conference and a Steering Committee Member of The Craftsmen of Dionysus: A Society of Acting Teachers.

Mr. Ambush directed the 2005 production of America’s oldest and longest running outdoor drama The Lost Colony in the Outer Banks of North Carolina – its 68th annual edition.

Anthony C. Yu, a scholar of religion and literature was best known for his landmark translation of the Chinese epic The Journey to the West.

Yu, the Carl Darling Buck Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Humanities and the Divinity School, introduced a comparative approach to the study of religion and literature that drew on both Eastern and Western traditions. Over his distinguished career, he made contributions on figures as wide-ranging as Aeschylus, Dante, Milton and William Faulkner. His work engages Chinese religions as well as classic texts of Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism.

Yu was an elected member of the American Academy of the Arts & Sciences, the American Council of Learned Societies and Academia Sinica. Among other appointments he was a board member of the Modern Language Association, and he received Guggenheim, ACLS, Mellon and other prestigious fellowships to support his research.

Mary Zimmerman is the recipient of a 1998 MacArthur Fellowship, the 2002 Tony Award for Best Director of a Play and numerous Jeff Awards (including Best Production and Best Direction). She is an Artistic Associate of Goodman Theatre, a member of Lookingglass Theatre Company and a professor of performance studies at Northwestern University. Ms. Zimmerman has adapted and directed Metamorphoses, which appeared on Broadway and at Lookingglass Theatre Company, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the Mark Taper Forum and Second Stage Theatre; The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci at the Goodman, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Seattle Repertory Theatre and Second Stage Theatre; Journey to the West at the Goodman, the Huntington Theatre Company and Berkeley Repertory Theatre; The Odyssey at Lookingglass Theatre Company, the Goodman, McCarter Theatre and Seattle Repertory Theatre; Mirror of the Invisible World and Silk, both at the Goodman; Arabian Nights at Lookingglass Theatre Company, Manhattan Theatre Club, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Berkeley Repertory Theatre and Kansas City Repertory Theatre; Argonautika at Lookingglass Theatre Company, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the Shakespeare Theatre Company and McCarter Theatre; The Secret in the Wings at Lookingglass Theatre Company, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, McCarter Theatre and Seattle Repertory Theatre; Eleven Rooms of Proust at Lookingglass Theatre Company and About Face Theatre (co-produced by the Goodman); a new opera with Philip Glass, Galileo Galilei, at the Goodman, The Barbican in London and Brooklyn Academy of Music; Candide at the Goodman, the Shakespeare Theatre Company and the Huntington Theatre Company; The Jungle Book at the Goodman and Huntington Theatre Company and The White Snake at the Goodman, McCarter Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Wuzhen Theatre Festival in China. In addition, Ms. Zimmerman has directed Shakespeare’s Pericles and All’s Well That Ends Well at the Goodman and Henry VIII and Measure for Measure at New York Theater Festival’s Shakespeare in the Park. She made her Metropolitan Opera directorial debut in 2007 with Lucia di Lammermoor, which she also directed at La Scala in Milan in 2014. Subsequent Met productions include Armida and La Sonnambula.

Cori Thomas is a playwright and actress who lives in New York City. Her plays include: When January Feels Like Summer (World Premiere City Theatre Co., Pittsburgh, Ensemble Studio Theatre/Page73/Women’s Project Theater 2014NY Premiere/ Upcoming Productions: 2016 Mosaic Theatre DC, 2016 Underground Railway Theater MA,);The Ballad of Ella May(The Working Theater 2016); Pa’s Hat (Pillsbury House Theatre, MN 2010); Flight 109, My Secret Language of Wishes (Various theaters and University productions including Mixed Blood, MN 2011); Citizens Market; The Princess, The Breast, and, The Lizard; The Unusual Love Life of Bedbugs and Other Creatures; Waking Up (Ensemble Studio Theatre 2013); His Daddy( Going To The River & Castillo 2009); our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

Cori’s plays have been developed and produced at Sundance Institute, Goodman Theatre, City Theatre Company. (Pittsburgh), Ensemble Studio Theatre,  The Women’s Project Theater, Page 73 Productions,, Playwrights Horizons, Lark Play Development Center, The Working Theater, Going To The River, Pillsbury House Theatre, Mixed Blood Theatre, Penumbra Theatre, Passage Theatre, The Playwrights Realm, New Federal Theatre, New Georges, The Black Rep (St. Louis), The New Black Fest, and Queens Theatre in the Park.

 She has been commissioned by South Coast Rep Theatre, Inaugural Catalyst MIT/Central Square Commissions; The Working Theatre, The Sloan Foundation, NYSCA, EST, Pillsbury House Theatre.

Residencies, and Honors:(Class of 2022) Resident Playwright at New Dramatists, 2009 MacDowell Fellow, Edgerton New Play Award, Sundance Theatre Lab Fellow, 2011 American Theatre Critics Association Osborn Award for Best New Play (When January Feels Like Summer) ; 2005 Theodore Ward Prize (My Secret Language of Wishes), 2003 2nd Place Theodore Ward Prize (“our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor….”).

Representation: Leah Hamos at The Gersh Agency Lhamos@gersh.com