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Andrea Ambam (she/her, Moderator) is a Brooklyn-based actress and playwright whose roots sprout from Cameroon. As a politically engaged storyteller who believes in the art’s potential for movement building and transformative justice, Andrea best intersects spaces where community, performance, and truth-telling pulsate. Currently, she is a Brooklyn Arts Exchange Artist-In-Residence developing a one-woman show and serves as a Lead Facilitator for Broadway Advocacy Coalition's Reiminaging Equitable Productions workshop, addressing racial equity within broadway, off-broadway, and touring theatre companies. She has developed her practice as an Inaugural Artivism Fellow with Broadway Advocacy Coalition, an Artist-in-Residence for Anna Deavere Smith, an EmergeNYC Fellow at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, and as a competitive public speaker/performer where she has been awarded 10 national championships including "Top Speaker in the Nation" three times and gone on to debate conservative pundits on live TV. As a performer, writer, and facilitator, she’s worked with Classical Theatre of Harlem/Playbill, gal-dem, Abrons Arts Center, NYU Prison Education Program, Artists’ Literacies Institute, Centre for Social Innovation, and others. She is in the core acting ensemble of the NYU Verbatim Performance Lab. Andrea has a master’s degree in Art & Public Policy from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

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Jane Wagner has won numerous awards, including two Peabodys, four Emmys, and a Writer’s Guild Award for her work in television, as well as the seldom-given New York Drama Critics’ Circle Special Award for her Broadway success, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. Wagner made her writing debut with the acclaimed CBS teleplay entitled J.T. (1969) and her book of the same title. In 1971, Wagner began working with Lily Tomlin on an Edith Ann album, Edith Ann: And That’s the Truth (1972).Wagner’s later credits include two more Grammy-nominated albums, Modern Scream (1975) and On Stage (1978), which she also produced, eight Lily Tomlin television specials (1973 – 82), three Edith Ann animated specials (1994– 96), and Edith Ann’s book, My Life, So Far (1994). In 1977, Wagner wrote and directed Appearing Nitely for Broadway and also wrote the screenplay for The Incredible Shrinking Woman. In 1985, Wagner brought The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe to Broadway where it became an acclaimed play of the Broadway season. The hardcover edition of The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe became the first play in 20 years to appear on The New York Times Best-Seller list. In 2019, Lincoln Center honored Wagner and Tomlin with a retrospective of their careers, “Two Free Women.” In 2020,Wagner was honored with the prestigious Lambda Literary Visionary Award for her innovative work.

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Lynn Nottage’s recent credits include the opera adaptationof “MJ” (Broadway), “Intimate Apparel, an Opera” (Lincoln Center Theater),“Floyd’s” (Guthrie), “The Secret Life of Bees” (Atlantic). Other plays include“Mlima’s Tale,” “Sweat” (Pulitzer Prize, Obie, Evening Standard Award, SusanSmith Blackburn Prize), “By the Way, Meet Vera Stark” (Lilly Award), “Ruined”(Pulitzer Prize, Obie, Lortel, NY Drama Critics’ Circle, AUDELCO, Drama Deskand OCC awards) and “Intimate Apparel” (American Theatre Critics and NYDCCawards). TV: Writer/Producer: “She's Gotta Have It” (Netflix). PEN/Laura PelsMaster Playwright Award, Doris Duke Artist Award, Merit and Literature Awardfrom the Academy of Arts and Letters, MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship, aGuggenheim Grant, Lucille Lortel Fellowship, Associate Professor at Columbiaand Member of the Dramatist Guild.

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Anna Deavere Smith is an actress, playwright, teacher andauthor. She is credited with having created the new form of theatre. Smith’swork combines the journalistic technique of interviewing her subjects with theart of interpreting their words through performance. President Obama awardedSmith the National Humanities Medal in 2013. Additional honors include theprestigious MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship, the Medal for Spoken Languagefrom the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the George Polk Career Award inJournalism, two Tony nominations and several honorary degrees. She wasrunner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Smith has created over fifteenone-person shows based on hundreds of interviews. Her most recent play, Notesfrom the Field, looks at the vulnerability of youth, inequality and thecriminal justice system. The New York Times named it among The Best Theater of2016 and Time magazine named it one of the Top 10 Plays of that year. In 2018,HBO premiered the film version of Notes from the Field. Smith’s play Twilight:Los Angeles, 1992 was recently named one of the best plays of the lasttwenty-five years by The New York Times. She has appeared in television showssuch as “Inventing Anna,” “The West Wing” and “Nurse Jackie.” Films include TheAmerican President, Philadelphia and Rachel Getting Married.She is a University Professor at Tisch School of the Arts at NYU.

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Anna Deavere Smith is an actress, playwright, teacher andauthor. She is credited with having created the new form of theatre. Smith’swork combines the journalistic technique of interviewing her subjects with theart of interpreting their words through performance. President Obama awardedSmith the National Humanities Medal in 2013. Additional honors include theprestigious MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship, the Medal for Spoken Languagefrom the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the George Polk Career Award inJournalism, two Tony nominations and several honorary degrees. She wasrunner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Smith has created over fifteenone-person shows based on hundreds of interviews. Her most recent play, Notesfrom the Field, looks at the vulnerability of youth, inequality and thecriminal justice system. The New York Times named it among The Best Theater of2016 and Time magazine named it one of the Top 10 Plays of that year. In 2018,HBO premiered the film version of Notes from the Field. Smith’s play Twilight:Los Angeles, 1992 was recently named one of the best plays of the lasttwenty-five years by The New York Times. She has appeared in television showssuch as “Inventing Anna,” “The West Wing” and “Nurse Jackie.” Films include TheAmerican President, Philadelphia and Rachel Getting Married.She is a University Professor at Tisch School of the Arts at NYU.

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Joey Soloway is an artist, activist and filmmaker. Theycreated the Emmy– and Golden Globe– winning series “Transparent” and cultfeminist series “I Love Dick,” both from Amazon Studios. Joey is currentlyworking on “The South Commons Experiment,” a limited documentary series aboutgrowing up in a ‘racial utopia.’ They are also exploring the life of the motherof Abraham with a brand-new podcast and a documentary series. Joey is aco-founder of TimesUp and co-creator of 5050 by 2020 and The DisruptorsFellowship, bringing trans, undocumented and disabled artists of color intoHollywood. They launched theatre productions The Real Live Brady Bunch, TheMiss Vagina Pageant, Hollywood Hellhouse and The Gnarlie HoseShow. They co-founded community organizations including East Side Jews andTemple Nefesh. They identify as trans and nonbinary and use they/them pronouns.

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Faith Soloway wrote for all four seasons of thegroundbreaking television show “Transparent,” and composed the songs for its“Musicale Finale.” Their roots are in the musical comedy world. Faith was amusical director with The Second City from 1985-1990 and is a founding memberof The Annoyance Theater where they composed and directed many shows, includingCo-ed Prison Sluts, one of the longest running original musicals inChicago, and The Real Live Brady Bunch which they created with theirsibling, Joey. Faith is currently working on multiple projects with ToppleProductions and serves as Artistic Director for Rehearsal For Life in Boston,MA.s.

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MJ Kaufman is a NYC / Lenapehoking-based playwright andtelevision writer from Portland, OR. Their work has been seen at The PublicTheater, WP Theater, Huntington Theatre, New York Theater Workshop, the NewMuseum, NAATCO, Clubbed Thumb, Playwrights Realm, Colt Coeur, Yale School ofDrama, Lark Play Development Center and InterAct Theater, among others. Theirwork has also been performed in Moscow (Russian language) and in Australia. MJreceived the 2017 Helen Merrill Emerging Writers Award, the 2013 ASCAP ColePorter Prize in Playwriting, the 2013 Global Age Project Prize and the 2010Jane Chambers Prize in Feminist Theatre. MJ has held residencies at theMacDowell Colony and SPACE on Ryder Farm and is currently a resident playwrightat New Dramatists. MJ has been a member of The Public Theater’s EmergingWriters’ Group, WP Theater Lab, a core playwright at InterAct Theatre and aplaywriting fellow at the Huntington Theater.

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Larissa FastHorse is a Los Angeles-based playwright and2020-2025 MacArthur Fellow. Her satirical comedy, The Thanksgiving Play(Playwrights Horizons/Geffen Playhouse), was one of the top ten most producedplays in America during the 2019 — 2020 season. She is the first NativeAmerican playwright in the history of American theatre on that list. In Spring2023, The Thanksgiving Play will have its debut on Broadway produced by SecondStage, making FastHorse the first female Native American playwright everproduced on Broadway. Larissa FastHorse is currently developing new plays withseveral theatres including Second Stage Theater, Center Theatre Group, ThePublic Theater, Guthrie Theater, Seattle Repertory Theatre and Yale RepertoryTheatre. Selected additional produced plays include What Would Crazy HorseDo? (KCRep); Landless and Cow Pie Bingo (AlterTheater), AverageFamily (Children’s Theater Company of Minneapolis); Teaching DiscoSquaredancing to Our Elders: a Class Presentation (Native Voices at theAutry); Vanishing Point (Eagle Project) and Cherokee Family Reunion(Mountainside Theater).

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MEET THE TAPER PLAYWRIGHTS

A one-of-a-kind conversation between the incredible lineup of all woman-identifying, transgender, or non-binary playwrights featured in the upcoming season at the Mark Taper Forum, moderated by Andrea Ambam, host of Level Forward's "More to Talk About" podcast.

Andrea
Ambam
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JANE
WAGNER
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LYNN
NOTTAGE
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ANNA
DEAVERE SMITH
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JOEY
SOLOWAY
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FAITH
SOLOWAY
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MJ
KAUFMAN
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Larissa
FastHorse
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Experience the historic and groundbreaking 2022/23 Season at the Mark Taper Forum.