ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT 

Karen Zacarías’ award-winning plays include the sold-out/extended comedy The Book Club Play, the sold-out world premiere drama Just Like Us (adapted from the book by Helen Thorpe) at the Denver Center, the Steinberg Citation-winning play Legacy of Light, the Francesca Primus Award-winning play Mariela in the Desert,  the Helen Hayes Award-winning play  The Sins of Sor Juana, and the adaptation of Julia Alvarez’s How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. Karen also has a piece in the Arena Stage premiere of Our War.  Her TYA musicals with composer Debbie Wicks la Puma include Jane of the Jungle, Einstein Is a Dummy, Looking for Roberto Clemente, Cinderella Eats Rice and Beans, Ferdinand the Bull, and Frida Libre. Her musical Chasing George Washington premiered at The Kennedy Center for Performing Arts and went on a national tour. Her script was then adapted into a book by Scholastic with a foreword by First Lady Michelle Obama. www.karenzacarías.com

ABOUT THE director

Juliana Frey-Méndez (she/her/ella) is a proud Iowa-born Cuban American director, deviser, and choreographer dedicated to resurrecting forgotten histories that ignite the imagination. After studying Theatre for Social Change at Cornell University, she completed her MFA in Theatre Directing at University of California, San Diego and went on to experiment with hybrid performance as the inaugural Artist in Residence at Duke University’s Department of Theatre Studies. As a freelance director, she has collaborated with first-time and veteran playwrights on new work in bars, historic homes, universities, naval training camps, and at theaters around the country. Selected credits include Far From Canterbury (Winner of Best Musical: FringeNYC); La Hija del Pirata (The Flagship Brewery); Calafia at Liberty (La Jolla Playhouse’s WOW Festival); digital live production of Letters from Cuba (UCSD); along with Fefu and Her Friends and the American Premiere of Jordi Mand’s Brontë: The World Without (both at Riverside Theatre). Inspired by the legacy of playwright and teacher María Irene Fornés, she works with Latine playwrights on workshops and world premieres to expand the canon and very bounds of contemporary theater-making. She is a proud member of The Fornés Institute and the Stage Directors & Choreographers Society and an active participant in The Latinx Theatre Commons, where she sits on the Steering Committee. This fall, she joins the faculty at Oberlin College & Conservatory as an Assistant Professor of Theater. She is thrilled to be an inaugural awardee of the Joan Yellen Horvitz Fellowship. www.julianafreymendez.com