Lark Play Development Center

Meet The 2007-2008 Featured Writers...


Chantal Bilodeau	Gianina Carbunariu	Lisa D'Amour	Anton Dudley


Katori Hall	Tina Howe	Carson Kreitzer	Catherine Leger


Kenneth Lin	James Price	Jeanne Sakata	Betty Shamieh


Charlie Sohne	Saviana Stãnescu	Peca Stefan	Sinan Unel


Jeroen van den Berg	Karen Zacarías

	Chantal Bilodeau (translator, AMERICAN CAR) a playwright and translator originally from Montreal, Canada. Her plays include Pleasure & Pain (Magic Theatre; Foro La Gruta and Teatro La Capilla, Mexico City), The Motherline (Ohio University; University of Miami), Tagged (Ohio University; Alleyway Theatre), as well as several shorts that have been presented by Brass Tacks Theatre, City Theatre Company, The Met Theater, Philadelphia Dramatists, Raw Impressions, and Women’s Project & Productions. She has been a fellow in the Women’s Project Playwrights’ Lab, the Lark Playwrights Workshop and at the Dramatists Guild and has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, Stichting LIRA Fonds (The Netherlands), the Quebec Government House, Étant Donnés: The French-American Fund for the Performing Arts and Association Beaumarchais (France). Her translations include plays by Quebec playwright Catherine Léger (commissioned by the Lark), French-African playwright Koffi Kwahulé (commissioned by The Lark), Congolese playwright Pierre Mumbere Mujomba (commissioned by Villa Aurora), and Jean Cocteau (commissioned by Théâtre Soleil Levant in Switzerland).
	Gianina Carbunariu (ROMANIAN EXCHANGE) A director and playwright. In 2004, she graduates the University of Theatrical and Cinematographical Arts from Bucharest, as a director. After the master in playwrighting, from 2006 she is student in Phd at the same University in Bucharest. Since 2001, Gianina is a member of dramAcum group, together with other 4 young directors: Ana M ărgineanu, Andreea Vălean, Radu Apostol, Alex Berceanu. DramAcum is an independent project that aims to develop, support and stage new Romanian and foreign drama. One of the most important ideas of dramAcum is the work of the director and the playwright in developping the play together, sometimes from an idea until the last rehearsals of the performance. In 2004, dramAcum project recieved the Prize for Best Theatre project of the year from the International Association of Theatre Critics in Romania. „Kebab” is the play that Gianina developped during the International Playwrights Residency in Royal Court Theatre in London in 2004. The English premiere of „Kebab” is produced by Royal Court Theatre and will have the opening night during Dublin International Festival on 29th of September 2007. The play was also produced by Kammerspiele Theatre in Munich (2007), Schaubuehne Theatre in Berlin (2007) and Theatre Studio d”Alforville in Paris (2007). „Stop the Tempo”, written in 2004 was also produced in France, Ireland and Germany. As a director she staged „Sado Maso Blues Bar” by Maria Manolescu (dramAcum winning play in 2007), „Terrorism” by Presniakov Brothers, „Luck Helps Those who Dare” by F.X Kreutz, „My Name is Isbjorg” By Havar Sigurjonsson, „Ostinato” by Cristi Juncu (dramAcum winning play in 2003). She also staged her own plays „Kebab” (the Romanian version is called „mady-baby.edu”) and „Stop the Tempo” and participated with the two performances to different international festivals in Europe: Biennale from Wiesbaden, New Drama from Moscow, New Drama from Bratislava, Festival Premieres de Strasbourg, Kontakt Festival in Torun etc.
	Lisa D'Amour (THE NIGHT SKY) is a playwright and multidisciplinary artist who often creates site-specific work with her close collaborator, Katie Pearl.?? Recent projects include, Bird Eye Blue Print, created for a vacant office space in the World Financial Center in Lower Manhattan (commissioned by Brookfield properties for the Word of Mouth Festival, 2007), STANLEY (2006), a solo performance she created for her brother Todd to perform (HERE Arts Center, 2006),? Tale of a West Texas Marsupial Girl , a children's musical commissioned by Children's Theater Company, The Cataract , a play directed by Katie Pearl at the Women's Project, LandMARK: 24 Hours @ the Stone Arch Bridge , a 24-hour collaborative performance on the Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis; and Nita & Zita , which received a 2003 OBIE Award and toured in 2005 to the Contemporary Arts Center (New Orleans) the Walker Arts Center (Minnneapolis) and HERE Arts Center (NYC). Lisa has received fellowships from the Jerome and Mc Knight Foundations, and grants from NYSCA, the Multi Arts Production Fund and the Minnesota State Arts Board to create her work. She is the recipient of a 2005/6 Playwrights' Residency from Theater Communications Group to write Hide Town, which premiered at Infernal Bridegroom Productions (Houston) in 2006. Lisa received her M.F.A. in playwriting from UT Austin.? She is a core member of the Playwrights' Center, a former resident artist at HERE and a recent alumna of New Dramatists.
	Anton Dudley (CITY OF, TINA GIRLSTAR) Off-Broadway: Getting Home (Second Stage Theatre Uptown); Slag Heap (Cherry Lane Theatre); Honor and the River (SPF’04); Davy & Stu (Ensemble Studio Theatre Marathon). Other NY: BOB, This Ball of Mud & Fire, Honor and the River (New York Stage & Film); Pleaching the Coffin Sisters (EST); Flight of Kings (Baryshnikov Arts Center); The Lake’s End (Adirondack Theatre Festival, HotINK Festival); January 1, 2000 (Lincoln Center Theater@HERE), SpeakEasy (Fire Dept@Joe's Pub); Antarctica (Vital Theatre); Davy & Stu (Directors Company, Bread & Water Theatre); edWARd2 (FringeNYC). Regional: Honor and the River (Luna Stage NJ); Slag Heap (Theatre Pro Rata MN); Pleaching the Coffin Sisters (Momentum Productions TX, New Works/New Haven CT); Prelude Festival (Kennedy Center); Spamlet (Cherry Red Productions DC). Publications: PLAY A Journal of Plays (Vol. II), Monologues for Men by Men,Vols. I+II (Heinemann Press), New American Short Plays 2005 (Backstage Books) edited by Craig Lucas. Fellowships: Manhattan Theatre Club; Dramatists Guild; Cherry Lane Mentor Project; New York Theatre Workshop; First Look Theatre Company; NYU/BAC. Short Film: Davy & Stu (No Pressure Productions, released by Strand Releasing on Boys Life 6, Official Selection of 52 International Film Festivals on 5 continents). An Assistant Professor at Adelphi University, Anton is a three-time alumnus of Arthur Kopit's Playwrights Workshop at the Lark Play Development Center, a member of NYTW's Usual Suspects, and is currently under commission from Keen Company and Playscripts, Inc.
	Katori Hall (Playwrights' Workshop) An award-winning playwright, Katori Hall has been published as a book reviewer, journalist, and essayist in publications such as The Boston Globe, Essence, and Newsweek. She is a 2007 winner of the Fellowship of Southern Writers Bryan Family Award in Drama, 2006 recipient of the New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship in Playwriting and Screenwriting, 2005 winner of the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award, and a 2006 participant of the Royal Court Theatre NYC Residency. In October 2007, her play Hoodoo Love will be have its world premiere at the Cherry Lane Theatre, where it was developed under Lynn Nottage as part of the theatre’s 2006 Mentor Project. Hoodoo Love received three 2006 AUDELCO nominations (Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, August Wilson Playwright Award), the play winning for Best Supporting Actress. Her second play, Hurt Village, was featured in the 2007 Classical Theatre of Harlem Future Classics Reading Series and work shopped at the BRIC Lab. She is currently writing commissions for Fluid Motion Theater & Film and the Irish Repertory Theatre. Screenwriting credits include a co-adaptation of Mud, River, Stone. Hall is a proud member of the Women’s Project Playwrights’ Lab in New York City. Other plays include: Remembrance (Women’s Project/World Financial Center site-specific work), Saturday Night, Sunday Morning (Mama Mosaic/Producer’s Club), Freedom Train (KCACTF 10 minute play national finalist), the one-act Awake (Minor Latham Playhouse, NYC), Bougie Dreams (Columbia University), and Diaspora, a one-woman show fused with music and poetry that she performed in Cape Town, South Africa. Two works, a short play called On the Chitlin’ Circuit and a one-woman show entitled Oreogirl: The Miscegenation of Miss Emma Brown, were given intern readings at the 2005 Eugene O’Neill Playwright’s Conference where she was a Kennedy Center Playwriting Fellow. Also an actor, her credits include Law & Order: SVU, The President’s Puppets (The Public), Growing Up a Slave (American Place Theatre), Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (American Place Theatre), the world premiere of Amerika (Theatre de la Juene Lune/American Repertory Theatre), Spring Awakening (Moscow Art Theatre School), Sweet Mercy (Epic Rep./Primary Stages), A Place in Helen’s Heart (New York Theatre Workshop), Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death (Classical Theatre of Harlem), Schooled (WOW Café Theatre) and Black Girl (Sande Shurin Theatre). Hall will be matriculating into Juilliard’s Lila Acheson Wallace Playwriting Program in the fall of 2007. Hall graduated undergrad from Columbia University in 2003 with a major in African-American Studies and Creative Writing. She was awarded top departmental honors from the university’s Institute for Research in African-American Studies (IRAAS). In 2005, she graduated from the American Repertory Theatre Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University with a Master of Fine Arts in Acting. She is currently living and working in New York City.
	Tina Howe (Playwrights' Workshop) Best known plays include “Birth and After Birth”, “Museum”, “The Art of Dining”, “Painting Churches”, “Coastal Disturbances”, “Approaching Zanzibar”, “Pride’s Crossing” and new translations of Eugène Ionesco’s “The Bald Soprano” and “The Lesson” as well as a host of shorter plays. These works premiered at the New York Shakespeare Festival, the Kennedy Center, Second Stage, The Old Globe Theatre, Lincoln Center Theater, The Actors Theatre of Louisville and the Atlantic Theater Company. Among her many awards are an Obie for Distinguished playwriting, a Tony nomination for best Play, an Outer Circle Critics Award, a Rockefeller Grant, two N.E.A. Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, the Sidney Kingsley Award, the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, two honorary degrees and the William Inge Award for Distinguished Achievement in the American Theatre. A two time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Miss Howe has been a Visiting Professor at Hunter College since 1990 and has also taught master classes at NYU, UCLA, Columbia and Carnegie Mellon. Her works can be read in numerous anthologies as well as in Coastal Disturbances: Four Plays by Tina Howe, and Approaching Zanzibar and Other Plays, published by Theatre Communications Group and most recently her translations of Ionesco's "The Bald Soprano" and "The Lesson", published by Grove Press. Miss Howe is proud to have served on the council of the Dramatists Guild since 1990.
	Carson Kreitzer (PONY Fellow) Carson's The Love Song of J. Robert Oppenheimer won the Lois and Richard Rosenthal New Play Prize, the American Theatre Critics’ Steinberg Citation, the Barrie Stavis Award, and is published in Smith and Kraus’ “New Playwrights: Best Plays of 2004” and by Dramatic Publishing. SELF DEFENSE or death of some salesmen has been produced in Providence, Minneapolis, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and is published by Playscripts and in Smith and Kraus’ “Women Playwrights: Best Plays of 2002.” Other work includes Flesh and the Desert, 1:23, The Slow Drag (New York and London), Valerie Shoots Andy, Heroin/e(Keep Us Quiet), Freakshow, Slither, Dead Wait, and Take My Breath Away, featured in BAM's 1997 Next Wave Festival. Ms. Kreitzer has received grants from NYFA, NYSCA, the NEA, TCG, two Jerome Fellowships and a McKnight Advancement Grant, as well as a BA from Yale University and an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers, UT Austin. She is a resident playwright at New Dramatists, an associated artist with Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, and the Fire Department, and a member of The Workhaus Collective, The Playwrights’ Center and the Dramatists Guild. She is currently under commission from The Guthrie Theater, Chicago’s Next Theatre, and the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park.
	Catherine Leger (AMERICAN CAR) is from the Outaouais region in Quebec, Canada. Her plays include Voiture américaine (National Theatre School of Canada), Le Trésor du Mécanicien (Théâtre de l’Orange), and La Petite Mort (Théâtre La Catapulte). For television, she has written for the series for young audience Toc Toc Toc (Radio-Canada, fall 2007) and has adapted two episodes of La Job (québécois version of the British series The Office). She is a recipient, in 2006, of the Prime à la création du Fonds Gratien Gélinas for her play Voiture américaine and in 1996, she won the Dramatic Writing Contest of Théâtre la Catapulte with La Petite Mort. She has a diploma in Dramatic Writing from the National Theatre School of Canada and lives in Montreal.
	Kenneth Lin (Playwrights' Workshop) His plays said Saїd, Agency, Po Boy Tango, Dovetail, Intelligence-Slave* and The Lynching of a White Man in Rural, CA have been produced, developed and/or commissioned by the Alliance Theatre, South Coast Rep, the Williamstown Theatre Festival, the Wilma Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, P73 Productions, NY Stage & Film and Arena Stage. He is the winner of the Princess Grace Award, the L. Arnold Weissberger Award and the Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition. Lin is an alumnus of Cornell University, the U.S. Fulbright Scholarship Program and the Yale School of Drama, where he was awarded the Eugene O'Neill Memorial Scholarship, the Truman Capote Prize and the ASCAP Cole Porter Prize for Excellence in Playwriting.
	Jim Price (Playwrights' Workshop) has worked for the past twenty years as a professional actor and musician, including on Broadway in The Civil War and Ring of Fire, internationally with Les Miserables, and off-Broadway as an original cast member of the critically acclaimed Batboy:the Musical(cast album) and bare:a pop opera(upcoming cast album). He was a contributing composer to the musical Fishwrap! which was produced at the Adirondack Theatre Festival in 2002, and his play Collision Course has had informal readings at the Actor’s Studio(P/D workshop) and at Williamstown. In 2004, he produced and wrote all the songs for award-winning actress Kaitlin Hopkins’ debut CD, Make Me Sweat, available at cdbaby.com. James, who is a trained classical guitarist, has a degree in economics from the University of Michigan and later studied for two years at the American Conservatory Theatre in the advanced training program. Current projects include a new play, Colony Collapse, about the disappearing honey bees, and a collaboration on a new musical with playwright James Hindman(Pete ‘n Keely) called Cold Feet. He is a member of the Actor’s Studio Playwright’s and Director’s Workshop and the Dramatists Guild.
	Jeanne Sakata (DAWN'S LIGHT) is honored to make her playwriting debut with DAWN’S LIGHT: THE JOURNEY OF GORDON HIRABAYASHI, which recently had its world premiere at Los Angeles’ East West Players, directed by Jessica Kubzansky and featuring Ryun Yu. Originally commissioned by the Center Theatre Group’s 2003 Asian Theatre Workshop, DAWN’S LIGHT was subsequently developed in the Mark Taper Forum Writers’ Workshop, and in readings last year with LA’s Antaeus Company and with the 2007 Asian American Theatre Festival. The play will also be featured soon at a reading at the Silk Road Theatre Project in Chicago. Jeanne is currently at work on her next play, THIRTEEN. As an actress, Jeanne has been honored with the LA Ovation Award for Best Lead Actress for her portrayal of the male Beijing opera star Master Hua in Chay Yew’s RED at East West Players. Last year, she performed as Maria Callas in EWP’s production of MASTER CLASS, in NAATCO’s revival of Chay Yew’s adaptation of THE HOUSE OF BERNARDA ALBA, and in Kenneth Lin’s PO’ BOY TANGO at South Coast Rep’s Pacific Playwrights Festival. Regionally, she has performed with the Public Theatre, Lincoln Center Theatre Director’s Lab, the Kennedy Center, Mark Taper Forum, La Jolla Playhouse, American Conservatory Theatre, Berkeley Rep, Intiman Theatre, A Contemporary Theatre, Syracuse Stage, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Arizona Theatre Company and Pan Asian Rep. Screen credits include guest starring/recurring roles on DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES, ER, THREAT MATRIX, LINE OF FIRE, PRESIDIO MED, the MOW’s THE READING ROOM, and HIROSHIMA, and the feature film XXX2: STATE OF THE UNION.
	Betty Shamieh (AGAIN AND AGAINST) An Arab-American playwright. In 2007, her play THE BLACK EYED had its New York premiere at New York Theatre Workshop and its Greek premiere at the Theatre Fournos in Athens. Her play ROAR was produced at the New Group in 2004. She performed in her play CHOCOLATE IN HEAT – GROWING UP ARAB IN AMERICA in three off-off-Broadway run. Her play TERRITORIES will premiere at the Magic Theatre in January 2008. Shamieh was awarded a Playwriting Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies during the 2005-2006 academic year. She was selected as the 2004-05 Clifton Visiting Artist at Harvard University and has served on the playwriting advisory board for the New York Foundation for the Arts from 2005 to the present. She was recently awarded a NYSCA grant in order to develop a new play at the Lark.
	Charlie Sohne (lyrics, TINA GIRLSTAR) A recent graduate of Oberlin College, Charlie Sohne joins the Lark family for the first time as a lyricist on Tina GirlStar (book by Anton Dudley, Lyrics by Gihieh Lee). Beyond his work on Tina GirlStar, Charlie has written/directed for both stage and film, completing three feature length films, one short and two stage musicals. His work includes "ReelPolitik: The Musical" which tells the story of the 1980 campaign insisting that Ronald Reagan didn't know he was running for president and was instead being tricked into thinking he was acting in a movie the entire time and "Woody Allen, The Apocalypse and Three Other Ways To Get A Woman in Bed", a teen-sex comedy meets apocalyptic thriller. Charlie is thrilled to have the opportunity to work with an organization filled with people as talented, dedicated and supportive as they are at the Lark.
	Saviana Stãnescu (ROMANIAN EXCHANGE) was born in Bucharest, Romania. Her plays have been presented in the United States, Great Britain, France, Austria, Hungary, Macedonia, Montenegro, Switzerland and Romania. She has published six books of poetry and drama including "Google me!" (poetry), "Black Milk" (four plays) and "The Inflatable Apocalypse” (Best Romanian Play of the Year UNITER Award in 2000). Her New York productions include "Waxing West" and "YokastaS' at La MaMa Theatre, "Suspendida" at the Ontological Theatre, "Balkan Blues" at the NYC Fringe Festival and the site-specific project "I want what you have" at the World Financial Center. Her short play “Aurolac Blues,” performed at HERE Arts Center, was published in the anthology “Plays and Playwrights 2006.” Two of her monologues have been published in the Playwrights’ Center’s “Monologues for Women” and “Final Countdown" was translated and published in France. She was a TCG fellow with the Lark Play Development Center, where her plays “Waxing West” (2007 Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Full-length Script) and “Lenin’s Shoe” had barebones productions. She is currently a NYSCA playwright-in-residence with Women’s Project and writer-in-residence for East Coast Artists. Saviana holds an MA in Performance Studies and an MFA in Dramatic Writing (John Golden Award for excellence in playwriting) from New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, where she now teaches in the Drama Department.
	Peca Stefan (ROMANIAN EXCHANGE) Won the dramAcum prize (the Romanian award for best new playwright) in 2002. He is considered to be one of the most innovative and powerful voices in Romanian drama. His education includes New York University and he was one of the Royal Court International Playwriting Residents in 2005. He has productions of 7 of his plays in Bucharest; Romania. His plays have been presented in New York (The Lark, NYU, FringeNYC), London (as part of the Royal Court International Residency and Cafe Theatre Europe), Dublin (Dublin Fringe Festival), Berlin (Schaubuehne), Wiesbaden (New Plays From Europe Biennale), Graz, Leeds (Janus project), France (Paris, Lyon, Grenoble, Avignon, Nancy, Lille), Sankt Petersburg (RAINBOW Festival), Blagoevgrad (Bulgaria), Vienna, Prague, Amsterdam, Tallin (Estonia) and in many national festivals in Romania. His play ROMANIA 21 won the Innovation Prize at the Heidelberg Stuckemarkt 2007 and is expected to receive productions in London (the Arcola Theatre) and in Romania. This fall he was playwright in residence at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven. Peca is the founding member of the BLA Theatre Company and has started the Scrie o piesa program for high school playwriting. He is currently the executive producer of the one hour drama TV series California and of the sitcom "Timpuri Noi" (New Times) (both Media PRO Studios, Romania).
	Sinan Unel's (CRY OF THE REED) play PERA PALAS was developed and produced by The Lark in 1998. Other production venues include The Long Wharf Theater, Boston Playwrights¹ Theatre, The Gate Theatre (London), Provincetown Theatre Company, Provincetown Theatreworks, Landes-theater (Germany), Theater Kosmos (Austria), Theatre at Boston Court (Pasadena, CA). Sinan has been awarded The John Gassner Memorial Award, The Daryl Roth Creative Spirit Award, The Panowski New Play Contest (finalist), a Massachusetts Cultural Council New Plays Grant and was a fellow with the Huntington Theatre Company from 2003 to 2005. His script Race Point was the winner of the 2001 New Century Writer Award for best screenplay. THE CRY OF THE REED will open at The Huntington Theater Company in Boston in April.
	Jeroen van den Berg (INJURY TIME) is a playwright-director who teaches at the Directors Course of the Amsterdam Drama Academy. He was awarded the Drama Encouraging Price of the City of Amsterdam for his debut Bosch International in 1993, and the Dutch/Flemish Drama Award 2003 (Taalunie Toneelprijs) for his play Blowing. Blowing has been produced by several Dutch and German companies. The play VielFalt (2006) he directed was selected for the Dutch Theatre Festival TF1 2006-2007. At the moment he’s directing Het Huiskameronweer, produced by Orkater. In april 2008 his new play Bombay is presented by Huis aan de Amstel. October 10th is the first evening of his play DesiLucy about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. For Het Zuidelijk Toneel, one of the main Dutch theatre companies, he’s working on a text based on Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne. His work has been presented in The Netherlands by Het Oranjehotel, the company he co-founded in 1993, as well as by other companies like Theater van het Oosten (Arnhem) and FACT (Rotterdam) Additionally, he directed and adapted repertory such as The Seagull (Chechov), The Misantrope (Molière), The Birthday Party (Pinter), Private Lives (Coward) and Ivanov (Tsjechov). He participated in The Lark Play Development Center’s Playwrights' Workshop 2006-2007 in New York. His play Polaroid has been presented in New York as a Lark Theatre Studio Retreat. Translated plays: Polaroid (English, German, Bulgarian); Blowing (English, German, French, Rumanian, Hungarian); Schopenhauer’s Wife (Tsjech);Blessuretijd (English u.c., German u.c.). www.jeroenvandenberg.com.
	Karen Zacarías (HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS) Her plays have been produced throughout the US, and in Canada, Europe, and the Caribbean. This 2007-20008 season, Karen will have three world premieres in the Washington DC Area: THE BOOK CLUB PLAY at Round House Theater, CHASING GEORGE WASHINGTON at the Kennedy Center, and LOOKING FOR ROBERTO CLEMENTE at Imagination Stage. Her play MARIELA IN THE DESERT, commissioned by South Coast Repertory (SCR), had its World Premiere at the Goodman Theatre in 2005 and will also have its East and West Coast premieres this year.. MARIELA is the winner of the 2006 Francesca Primus Prize, the 2005 AT&T/TCG First Stages Award, the winner of the National Latino Playwriting Award, a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award, and nominated for the Kesselring. THE SINS OF SOR JUANA is the winner of the Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play at the 2000 Helen Hayes (Washington, DC) . Currently, Karen is working on commissions from Arena Stage (BEYOND VOLTAIRE), South Coast Rep (JANE OF THE JUNGLE), and Round House Theater (an adaptation of HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS). Karen is the founder and artistic director of Young Playwrights’ Theater, winner of 2005 Mayor’s Art Award for Outstanding Arts Education. YPT is a nationally recognized non-profit dedicated to fostering literacy and conflict resolution through playwriting in DC inner-city schools. Born in Mexico, Karen lives in Washington, DC with her husband, Rett , her children Nico, Kati and baby Maia.