Andrea Fleck Clardy publications include a children’s book, two books about upstate New York, a collection of newspaper columns, four calendars about remarkable American women, and a writer’s guide to feminist publishing. Her children’s play “Hide and Seek,” with music by Clark Gesner, premiered at the Hangar Theatre in Ithaca, NY. Her short plays have been performed at the Center for New Words in Cambridge, MA, the Firehouse Center for the Arts New Works Festival in Newburyport MA, and the American Globe Theatre/Onion Theatre Festival in Times Square. She is a member of the Dramatist Guild. Married to Jon Clardy, she has two remarkable adult sons and four grandchildren. She lives in Boston and is working on a full-length play about Clara Immerwahr Haber.

Safely Assumed
Meeting by chance, an elderly white woman who likes to shoplift and a young African-American man confuse and enlighten each other.

Layla Dowlatshahi's play, Joys of Lipstick was staged at The Producer’s Club and at Lark Theatre, New York. The Waiting Room had a staged reading at the Annenberg Studio Theatre, University of Pennsylvania and was included as coursework for a class entitled East Meets West on Stage and Screen at the University of Pennsylvania. The Elevator had a staged reading in Minneapolis and an excerpt of the play was published in MIZNA. She is a Playwright’s Center Many Voices Resident for 2007-2008, and was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts/Minnesota State Arts Board Grant and a Theatre Communications Grant for research and travel to Bosnia and Croatia to gather material for her new play, Foca. She has written three additional plays, a teleplay, a novel, and published two pulp fiction novels.

Seventh Inning Stretch
A lonely construction worker searches for meaning at a baseball game.

Joan Lipkin is the Producing Artistic Director of That Uppity Theatre Company in St. Louis, Missouri where she founded the nationally acclaimed DisAbility Project. A playwright, director, activist, educator, and social critic, her work has been featured on network television, National Public Radio, the BBC and the Associated Press. Her work has been published and produced throughout the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Australia. She is a recipient of numerous awards including the James F. Hornback Ethical Humanist of the Year, a Visionary, A Human Rights Campaign, Community Enhancement and Arts for Life Lifetime Achievement, among others. She was an Artist-in-Residence at Washington University for five years, on the faculty of the Community Arts Training Institute and currently serves on the national board for the Women and Theatre Program and the Kevin Kline Awards.

Her work is published in Upstaging Big Daddy: Directing Theater as if Race and Gender Matter (University of Michigan), Contemporary Feminist Theatres: To Each Her Own (Routledge), Amazon All Stars (Applause), Monologues By Women, For Women (Heinemann), More Monologues By Women, For Women (Heinemann), Sexuality in Performance (Faber & Faber), Nice Jewish Girls: Growing Up in America (Plume/Penguin), Mythic Women/Real Women: New Plays and Performance Pieces (Faber & Faber) 60 Seconds to Shine: 221 One-Minute Monologues for Men (Smith & Kraus), 60 Seconds to Shine: 221 One-Minute Monologues for Women (Smith & Kraus) and Radical Acts (Aunt Lute) among others publications. To read more about her company’s work, see www.uppityco.com

Crab Cakes
WIth the economy plummeting, a management executive seeks support from his wife in an unexpected way.

Deborah Magid career has encompassed most areas of theatrical experience: she has sung and acted on Broadway, with The Santa Fe Opera, and in venues worldwide; The Sommersault Company, which she founded in 1971, produces mostly chamber opera and musicals; and her direction credits span new works, musicals, operas, and comedies. Her first opera, "Costumbrismo, or Khandihba Wars," received its world premiere in February 2008 at Cleveland Public Theatre. She was named to the Cleveland Play House Playwrights' Unit in September 2008, and her musical play, "Being Earnest," will be read at Dramatists' Guild in April, 2009. A recently repatriated native Clevelander, she holds a Master of Music degree from the University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

The Wedding Night
Mae's grandson and Max's granddaughter just got married at the Plaza Hotel. Mae and Max have a quiet talk and make a surprising discovery.

A native of New Jersey, Sharon is currently living in Sioux City, Iowa.  She holds degrees from the University of Notre Dame and Rutgers University, where she finished an MFA in playwriting in 2006.  Sharon has taught playwriting and screenwriting at several schools including Rutgers, and is now on the faculty at the University of South Dakota where she teaches film studies and playwriting.  Her plays have been produced on the East Coast, in the Midwest, and, now, in Colorado.  A fourth-generation emergency responder, Sharon is currently finishing a novel based off her twelve years (and counting) as an Emergency Medical Technician.

Home Fire
The mother of a fallen soldier is forced to choose between attending a ceremony to honor her son or continuing to protest the war that got him killed.

Rosemary Foley (Leaving Her) has written over seventy plays. Her hilarious comedy, Ophelia’s Mother, originally produced at the Theatre Artists Workshop, won the Havemeyer Award (Greenwich, CT), was a finalist at the Samuel French Festival, and was seen at Seven Angels Theatre. Rosemary’s I’m Sorry, I’m Sorry won first prize at the International Festival of New Works (Cincinnati). She was a finalist for the Heideman Award at the Actors Theatre of Louisville. And Works by Women chose her as one of the ten best women playwrights. Her first play, Punch with Judy, was co-produced off-off-Broadway by Jean Erdman and Joseph Campbell.

Leaving Her
A golfer husband says, "I'm leaving now." But he is walking out on their marriage. Her response is the one-act comedy.