The Reading Room Festival

Austin Dean Ashford (Playwright) has presented his work at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival in Washington DC, the United Solo Festival in New York City, the San Diego International Fringe Festival, and the Dunedin and New Zealand Fringe Festivals. He was nominated for a Latin Grammy Award and became a Hip-Hop Cultural Ambassador for the US Embassy. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Interdisciplinary Fine Arts at Texas Tech University. Received a dual MFA in Acting and Playwriting at the University of Arkansas.

Mary Chieffo (she/her) is a queer actor/producer known internationally as the Klingon Commander turned Chancellor L’Rell on the Paramount+ series Star Trek: Discovery, returning as her iconic character for the highly popular Star Trek Online. After playing numerous Shakespeare roles including the titular characters in King Lear and Macbeth, Chieffo received her BFA from Juilliard in 2015, along with the prestigious Elizabeth Smith Voice and Speech Prize and the Saint-Denis Prize for “Outstanding Achievement and Leadership in Drama.” Mary is a member of SAG-AFTRA and AEA. Recent acting credits include guest star roles on NCIS, Girls5eva, and leading roles in Bespoke Plays’ staged readings ofHeretics by Ellie Pyle in New York, Analogue by Christine Boylan, Lady Face and Systems by Madi Goff in Los Angeles.

Devin E. Haqq (Ambition’s Debt) is an Emmy nominated producer, a member of the Fiasco Theater Acting Company, an IFP alumni, and a Finalist for the HBOAccess 2020 Directing Fellowship. His feature film, Ambition’s Debt, won the 2017 Grand Jury Award for Best Narrative Feature at the prestigious American Black Film Festival (ABFF) and the 2018 Paul Robeson Award Honorable Mention at the Newark Black Film Festival. Recently, Devin produced the short film Cupids, directed by Zoey Martinson, which had its world premiere at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival as part of the 8:46 Films Initiative sponsored by Procter & Gamble (2022 NAACP Image Award Nominee). Cupids has since gone on to play at some of the top film festivals around the world, including Woodstock, Cambridge, Chicago International Film Festival (Gold Hugo Award Nominee), Riverrun, The American Pavilion at Cannes, and recently aired on CBS & BET networks. 

Sarah Mantell (Playwright) is the recipient of the 2023 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot. Their other plays include The Good Guys, Tiny, and Fight Call. They have worked with Playwrights Horizons, Boston Court Pasadena, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Playwrights Realm, Second Stage, Breaking the Binary Festival, and Artists Repertory Theatre. Sarah has been awarded residencies with MacDowell, Yaddo, Wildacres, Hedgebrook, Fresh Ground Pepper, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and SPACE on Ryder Farm, as well as a Toulmin grant, an Edgerton Foundation grant, and a Playwrights Realm Writing Fellowship.  

Jacob Ming-Trent (Playwright and Performer) Folger Theatre: A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Broadway: Hands on a Hardbody (original cast), Shrek the Musical (original cast). Off-Broadway: The Public Theater: The Merry Wives of Windsor, Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1, 2, and 3 (Lucille Lortel Award), Cymbeline, Twelfth Night, The Tempest. Red Bull: The Alchemist (Lucille Lortel Award nomination). Lincoln Center Theater: On the Levee; Theatre for a New Audience: The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream; The Acting Company: The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Film: Superfly, The Forty-Year Old Version; R#J; The Possession of Hannah Grace. Television: Watchmen; White Famous; Ray Donavan; Feed the Beast; Only Murders in the Building; New Amsterdam; God Friended Me.

• Member of Actors’ Equity Association

Carmen Pelaez (Playwright, Carolina) wrote her first solo play Rum & Coke, which she performed in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami, culminating in an award-winning Off-Broadway run in 2008. In 2012, she won the HBO NYLFF Short Film Competition with “The Acting Lesson” and followed up with the short, “A Queen Without His Crown.” Most recently, she directed the short film “Mango Season,” for which she received an Honorable Mention at the 2020 Miami International Film Festival. In 2020 she was commissioned by Oolite to create the short documentary, “Caridad y Gallo” as part of their Close Quarters Series. Carmen starred in Arroz Con Lech y Powerball by Mariana Serrano and Kathy Martini’s Sombras Nada Mas. Carmen has proudly worked on President Barack Obama’s Cuba Policy team and is on President Biden’s Cuba advisory team. She has also written for NBC Latino, Marie Claire, The Huffington Post, and The New York Times. She was recently featured in John Leguizamo Does America (Miami). Currently she’s developing two series, Tropical Beasts and Ventanita, as well as her first feature adaptation, The Cuban Vote. Most recently she was commissioned by The Huntington Theatre to adapt Antigone and by Miami New Drama to write Museum Play and Caridad. Carmen is a 2023 MacDowell Fellowship recipient and a 2023 Ellie Award recipient. She is a graduate of The American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

* Member of Actors’ Equity Association

Dr. Proctor (Playwright, Director) is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at Tulane University, Department of Theatre. He holds a BA in English (Webster University), an MFA in Acting (West Virginia University), and a Ph. D. in Theatre Research (University of Wisconsin Madison). He has played Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet (The Organic Theatre), Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (Arizona Repertory Theatre), Othello (The Greenbriar), Airline Highway and Father Come Home from the Wars (Southern Rep). He Directed Into the Woods (Summer Lyric Theatre), Derek Walcott’s Pantomime (Crescent City Stage), and Alice Childress’ Trouble in Mind (Tulane University). In September 2022 his essay Romeo and Juliet at an HBCU was published in the essay collection Romeo and Juliet, Adaptation, and the Arts: ‘Cut Him Out in Little Stars’ (The Arden Shakespeare). In January of 2023 his essay Reconsidering and Recasting was published in Contemporary Black Theatre and Performance: Acts of Rebellion, Activism, and Solidarity (Bloomsbury Press). His primary research examines the intersection of race, casting, and the peculiarities and specifics of Identity-Conscious casting practices, particularly in Shakespeare.