2010 Playwrights

About The Playwrights

Laura Jacqmin received the 2008 Wasserstein Prize, a $25,000 award to recognize an emerging female playwright. Her play Ski Dubai was produced in Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s 5th Annual First Look Repertory of New Work; Look we are Breathing will be workshopped at the 2010 Sundance Theatre Lab on Governors Island, with director Mark Brokaw.  Her plays include Dental Society Midwinter Meeting (which will be produced in association with Chicago Dramatists, July 2010), Folk Song, and Do-Gooder (nominee, 2011 Cherry Lane Mentor Project), among others. Jacqmin’s work has been produced and developed by Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Ars Nova, Goodman Theatre, Second Stage Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Page 73 Productions, Victory Gardens Theater, Chicago Dramatists, The 24 Hour Plays Off-Broadway, the Contemporary American Theatre Festival, and more. From 2007 to 2008, she was a contributing writer for The Onion A.V. Club and A.V. Club Chicago. Jacqmin is currently working on a Sloan commission from Ensemble Studio Theatre. She lives and works in Chicago.

Yussef El Guindi’s most recent productions: Language Rooms at The Wilma Theater, The Review, a short Internet play performed with actors in Cairo and San Francisco, produced by Golden Thread; and Hostages, staged by the Miscreant Theater Company in New York. Other productions: Jihad Jones and the Kalashnikov Babes, produced at Golden Thread in San Francisco, at InterAct Theater in Philadelphia, and at Kitchen Dog Theater in Dallas, as part of the National New Play Network. Our Enemies: Lively Scenes of Love and Combat, produced by Silk Road Theatre Project in Chicago, where it was Jeff Nominated, and was among the six finalists for the 2009 American Theater Critics Associations Steinberg/ New Play Award. The American Theater Critics Association has also given it the 2009 M. Elizabeth Osborn Award. Other productions: Back of the Throat was winner of the 2004 Northwest Playwrights’ Competition held by Theater Schmeater. It won L.A. Weekly’s Excellence in Playwriting Award for 2006. It was also nominated for the 2006 American Theater Critics Associations Steinberg/ New Play Award, and was voted Best New Play of 2005 by the Seattle Times.  It was first staged by San Francisco’s Thick Description and Golden Thread Productions; then later presented in various theaters around the country including The Flea Theater in New York. Another play of his, Ten Acrobats in an Amazing Leap of Faith, staged by Silk Road Theatre Project, won the After Dark Award for Best New Play in Chicago in 2006.  His two-related one-acts, Acts of Desire, were staged by the Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles. Back of the Throat, and the two related one-acts, now titled, Such a Beautiful Voices is Sayeda’s and Karima’s City, have been published by Dramatists Play Service. The latter one-acts have also been included in The Best American Short Plays: 2004-2005, published by Applause Books. His play, Ten Acrobats in an Amazing Leap of Faith, is included in Salaam/Peace: An Anthology of Middle-Eastern-American Playwrights, published by TCG in 2009. Yussef holds an MFA from Carnegie-Mellon University and was playwright-in-residence at Duke University.