SERIES AT THE TANK

Mel Nieves is a native New Yorker. A graduate of The William Esper Studio and a member of The LAByrinth Theater Company and The Actors Studio Playwright-Director Unit.  His plays have been presented in New York, Chicago, Los Angels and San Diego. His one act play "Los Embrujados/The Haunted Ones" was published by Original Works Publishing. He is a two time semi-finalist 2017/2019 for The Princess Grace Playwrights Fellowship and a 2017 Semi-Finalist for The Eugene O'Neil Theatre Conference. He is currently a playwright-in-residence with LITCouncil.

On The Boulevard:
Recently deputized U.S. ICE agent, Stella Arroyo, a first generation Mexican-American is getting closer to the American dream that her immigrant parents wanted for her, but to fulfill their wishes she must expose a corrupt system and keep others from obtaining their own American dream.

Valerie Work is a Brooklyn-based playwright, screenwriter, librettist, lyricist and private tutor. Her plays, musical and short film combine genre elements with hyperrealism to explore themes including gender politics, urban anxieties, nerd culture and coming of age in the modern world. They have been developed/produced at/by The New Ohio, The Brick, The Tank, The Bushwick Starr, The Exponential Festival, CSC/Weasel Fest, 14th Street Y, New Georges, Dixon Place, Bowery Poetry Club, Sheen Center, Fresh Ground Pepper, Piper Theatre Productions, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Boston Center for the Arts, and more. Awards: Access Theater 2018-19 Artist-in-Residence and 2012 Berks County Community Foundation Performing Artists Grant. Finalist: Leah Ryan Award, Jerome Fellowship. Residencies: Ucross, Espy Foundation/Willapia Bay AiR, VCCA, ChaNorth. Valerie is a New Georges Affiliated Artist, was in the 2017 Exquisite Corpse Company Writers' Lab and was Editor of offoffonline from 2007-11. B.A.:Yale. MFA:Brooklyn College.  www.valeriework.com.

Untitled Show: 
In a dystopian, space-faring future, mega-corporations attempt to govern a sprawling human society while feuding over scarce resources and searching obsessively for extraterrestrial life.

Melisa Tien is a playwright, lyricist, librettist, and producer. She is the author of the plays BEST LIFE, THE BOYD SHOW, YELLOW CARD RED CARD, FAMILIUM VULGARE, and REFRAIN. She is co-author of the music-theater works SWELL and MARY. SWELL was part of the HERE Summer Sublet Series in July 2019. BEST LIFE will be produced at JACK in March 2020. MARY will have a reading at New Dramatists in April 2020. A New Dramatists resident playwright, Melisa has also been a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Playwriting/Screenwriting, a resident of the MacDowell Colony and the Millay Colony, and a member of the 2010-2012 Women’s Project Lab. She has presented work at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Great Plains Theatre Conference, the Women Playwrights International Conference, and the National Asian American Theatre Conference and Festival. She teaches experimental theatrical writing at Sarah Lawrence College. BA, UCLA; MFA, Columbia University. Website: www.melisatien.com

Untitled Show:
An introverted NASA engineer takes on a new role when her ailing father—public defender by day, superhero/crime-fighter by night—passes her the torch.

Marianna Staroselsky (MFA - Columbia University, ‘19, PhD - University of Chicago, ‘19) writes, teaches, and makes art about identity and the strangeness of being a person in modern society. Her full-length projects, produced and developed in New York City and Chicago include "Cry Baby Meets Audrey Hepburn,"(20% Theatre Company, Cornservatory, Tikkun Fellowship, 2016,) "How I Married Myself and Other Misadventures," (The New Colony, Athena Theatre Company, Columbia University School of the Arts, 2015-18,) “Simulacrum,” an opera libretto (Path New Music Theater, 3LD, 2018) and "100 Awkward Ways to Be a Person" (Columbia University School of the Arts, La MaMa, 2017-18, Rising Sun Performance Company, 2018.) “Ella in the Tundra," performed as part of the 2019 Columbia University Playwrights Festival, Signature Theatre Company NYC, May 2019.

Baba Yaga of Brighton Beach:
The Soviet Union failed and its rejects and escapees recreated a tiny whimsical piece on the southern shore of Brooklyn that approximates a cheap Soviet beach resort. One day an American family settles in Brighton Beach because it's the last affordable place in New York, crashing the time warp that has existed there since the '80's. Chaos and comedy ensues. 

Dejen Tesfagiorgis Dejen (Day-Jin) started and sold a music-streaming software company before finding comedy to cope with work addiction. In 2013 he started doing stand-up, and studying sketch comedy at The UCB Theater. With content featured on Disney+, Bleacher Report, Improv Everywhere and Cosmopolitan, he has also hosted events for Amazon, the Harlem Arts Festival, and performed his One-man show "Losing My Sanity with a Start-up" at various Universities across the US. He can be seen on Character's Welcome at UCB Hell's Kitchen the last Thursday of every month.  Since you made it this far, you can find his video pranks and sketches on his YouTube channel: bit.ly/funnyreel or instagram @dejen45

Lost in my Emojis:
An anxiety-ridden software developer for the dating app Quench, Dejen catfishes his way through NYC 1st dates and one night stands in order to write the perfect algorithm and define the new rules of dating in the mobile era.

KATELYNN KENNEY (she/her) is a biracial Filipinx American artist and Air Force kid, last from South Dakota. Her plays have been produced and developed by The Tank, Primary Stages’ Einhorn School of Performing Arts, the Skeleton Rep, Monstrous Little Theatre Company, FEAST at Under St. Marks, the Baltimore Asian Pasifika Arts Collective, Cohesion Theatre Company, Thin Space Productions, and the Claire Donaldson New Play Festival. Kenney was a semi-finalist for Ars Nova’s 2018 Play Group, a finalist for the 2018 Greenhouse Residency at SPACE on Ryder Farm, and her play, VOID, was a 2017 Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference semi-finalist. She studied at Primary Stages (Rockwell Scholar ‘17-’18) and received her B.A. from Augustana University. She is attending Brooklyn College, pursuing an MFA in playwriting (expected May 2021). www.katelynnkenney.com

​Goblin Girls:
Two young women—one human, the other half-goblin—leave the land of the Under, a world weaved into the fabric of the NYC subway, for the Overworld to find their guardian, Puck—a goblin who’s tracking a web of conspiracies that involve the climate crisis and endangered magical hotspots on Earth.