KATHLEEN TOLAN is a Brooklyn-based playwright. Her most recent play, Memory House, premiered at Actors Theatre of Louisville and Playwrights Horizons in New York City, was subsequently produced in Chicago at Victory Gardens Theater under the direction of Sandy Shinner, and went on to receive productions around the country. Her earlier plays include The Wax (Playwrights Horizons), A Girl’s Life (Trinity Repertory Company),Approximating Mother (Women’s Project), Kate’s Diary (The Public Theater and Playwrights Horizons) and A Weekend Near Madison (Actors Theatre of Louisville, Astor Place Theatre, and other regional theaters and in Europe). She is currently working on a new play, Istanbul Notes, for Seattle Repertory Theatre. She has received numerous commissions and awards including the Thornton Wilder Fellowship, the McKnight National Residency and Commission, the Charles H. Revson Fellowship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, several MacDowell Colony and Hedgebrook residencies, and two Sundance Institute residencies. Ms. Tolan is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Writers Guild of America, Ensemble Studio Theatre and PEN American Center. Ms. Tolan currently teaches playwriting at Purchase College, State University of New York, where she is the coordinator of the Dramatic Writing Program.

Premieres include: Edward Albee's The Goat or Who is Sylvia? (Broadway) and The Play About the Baby (Century), Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and the first staged presentation of Perestroika (Eureka), Homebody/Kabul (London), The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (Broadway) and Resurrection Blues by Arthur Miller (Guthrie), Neal Bell'sTherese Raquin (CSC), In The Blood by Suzan-Lori Parks (Public), Albom/Hatcher's Tuesdays with Morrie (Minetta Lane), Neil Simon's Rose & Walsh, Israel Horowitz' My Old Lady (Promenade), Kathleen Tolan's Memory House (Playwrights Horizons) and Ariel Dorfman's Purgatorio (SRT). Recent work: Moira Buffini's Gabriel and Peter Parnell's Trumpery (Atlantic), Allison and Margaret Engels' Molly Ivins (PTC), Kevin Kling's How? How? Why? Why? Why? (Cincinnati). Revivals include: Driving Miss Daisy (Broadway), Dead of a Salesman (Gate-Dublin), Hamlet (TFNY), A Few Good Men (West End), All My Sons  (Huntington), Much Ado About Nothing (NYSF), Larry Kramer'sThe Normal Heart (Public), Mud and Drowning (Signature), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,Summer and Smoke  (Guthrie), Twelfth Night and Lady from Dubuque (SRT), Farmyard (NYTW). David has helmed three Fund for New American Plays world premieres: Another Part of the Houseafter Lorca, by Migdalia Cruz, the trilogy New Music by novelist Reynolds Price at the Cleveland Play House, and Angels in America: Millennium Approaches by Tony Kushner. For seven years, Esbjornson was the artistic director of the Classic Stage Company (which received the Lucille Lortel Award for Body of Work). He directed many of the company's productions including Thérèse Raquin (Obie Award, best direction), The Entertainer with Brian Murray and Jean Stapleton (Drama League nomination Best revival), Iphigenia and Other Daughters by Ellen McLaughlin (Drama Desk nomination for direction), Endgame by Samuel Beckett (Drama Desk nomination best revival), andEntertaining Mr. Sloane by Joe Orton (Lucille Lortel Award, best revival). He has collaborated with many other writers including John Belluso, Anthony Clarvoe, Maria Irene Fornes, Beth Henley, Kevin Kling, Romulus Linney, Patrick Marber, and José Rivera. Esbjornson holds an MFA from NYU and has been in residence at the O'Neill Festival, Iowa Playwrights Festival, received a Quinn Martin Honorary Chair at University of California, San Diego, and a Distinguished Alumni Award from Gustavus Adolphus College. David has served as Artistic Director of NYC Classic Stage Company and Seattle Repertory Theatre. (As of December 2010)