2024 Playwrights

Noah Haidle

Playwright, Birthday Candles

Noah Haidle is a playwright and screenwriter whose work has been produced on Broadway, Off-Broadway and worldwide. His play Birthday Candles was workshopped as a part of the New Play Workshop series in 2017 and went on to be produced on Broadway at American Airlines Theater. His Off-Broadway plays include Mr. Marmalade, Saturn Returns, Smokefall, and Kitty Kitty Kitty. Vigils, Persephone, and Princess Marjorie were performed regionally. Internationally, 10 of his plays have been solely produced in Germany, one of which, The Homemaker, won the German Theater Critics Prize for Best Foreign Play in 2015. He also served as the playwright-in-residence at the National Theater of Mannheim, Germany, a position first held by Friedrich Schiller in 1785. Additional writing credits include “Stand Up Guys“ (film), starring Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin, and “Kidding” (TV), starring Jim Carrey. 

He is the recipient of three Lincoln Center Le Compte Du Nuoy Awards, a Helen Merrill Award, the Claire Tow Award, and an NEA/TCG theatre residency grant.  Mr. Haidle has taught playwrighting at Princeton University, The Kennedy Center, and in Kenya and Uganda as part of The Sundance Theatre Institute. He earned his bachelor’s degree in arts from Princeton University and an Artist Diploma from The Juilliard School, where he was a Lila Acheson Wallace playwright-in-residence. 

Hilary Bettis


Playwright, falcon girls

Off-Broadway: 72 miles to go… (Roundabout); Alligator (The Sol Project & New Georges). Regional: falcon girls (Yale Rep Fall 2024, The Alley); 72 miles to go… (The Alley, Interact Theatre Company); Queen of Basel (Miami New Drama, Studio Theatre, Kitchen Dog Theater, Theaterworks, The Alley); The Ghosts of Lote Bravo (NNPN Rolling World Premiere). TV: “The Americans” (FX), “The Dropout” (Hulu), “Rodeo Queens” (Amazon), “Lucia” (Apple). Awards: WGA Award 2018; WGA Award nominations 2017 & 2022; Emmy nomination 2022; PGA Award 2022; Sundance Episodic Lab fellow; Blackburn finalist; New America finalist; American Blues Theater’s Blue Ink Award finalist; Leah Ryan Prize finalist; amongst many other. Education: The Juilliard School. 

Kate Hamill

Kate Hamill 

2023 Commissioned Playwright
Playwright, The Light and The Dark

Kate Hamill is a playwright and actor, often originating roles in her own plays. Plays she has written include Pride & Prejudice at Primary Stages and Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, (originated role of Lizzy; nominee, Off-Broadway Alliance Award); Sense & Sensibility at Bedlam (originated role of Marianne; winner, Off-Broadway Alliance Award; nominee, Drama League Award); Vanity Fair at the Pearl (originated Becky; nominee, Off-Broadway Alliance Award); Mansfield Park at Northlight, Little Women at Primary Stages and the Jungle, Dracula at Classic Stage Company (originated role of Renfield); Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson, Apt. #2B at KCRep, Emma at the Guthrie, The Little Fellow (Or: the Queen of Tarts Tells All) at Cygnet Theatre, and The Scarlet Letter at Two River Theater.  

Additional acting credits include Cyrano at Amphibian Stage (DFW Critic’s Award, Outstanding Performance by an Actress), Talley’s Folly at Syracuse Stage (Best Performance by an Actress, BroadwayWorld), The Seagull at Bedlam, The General From America at HVSF, Noises Off and The Play That Goes Wrong at Syracuse Stage (SALT Award, Best Actress).  

Other playwriting credits include Scrooge for Senate; The Piper (O’Neill Finalist, PlayPenn Fellow), In the Mines (Sundance Finalist) and The Odyssey. Her plays have been produced off-Broadway at A.R.T., DCPA, the Guthrie, Seattle Rep, The Alley, Folger, OSF, Trinity Rep, Pittsburgh Public, Dorset Theatre Festival, Shakespeare Theatre of DC, Dallas Theater Center, Kansas City Rep, Long Wharf, A.C.T., Actors Theater of Louisville, Syracuse Stage, The Old Globe and many others. Kate has been one of the most-produced playwrights nationwide every season since 2017. She was the 2017 Wall Street Journal Playwright of the Year and received the 2023 Einhorn Award.

C.A. Johnson

2023 Commissioned Playwright
Playwright, NPW: Tell Me You’re Dying

C.A. Johnson is a Brooklyn-based playwright originally from Metairie, Louisiana. Her plays include All The Natalie Portmans (MCC Theater), Thirst (2017 Kilroys List, CATF), The Climb (Cherry Lane Mentor Project, InterAct Theatre Company), An American Feast (NYU Playwrights Horizons Theater School), I Know I Know I Know, Somebody’s Body, and Tell Me You’re Dying. Most recently she was named a resident playwright with New Dramatists. She was previously the Tow Playwright in Residence at MCC Theater, the 2018 P73 Playwriting Fellow, The Lark’s 2016-17 Van Lier Fellow, a Dramatists Guild Fellow, a MacDowell Fellow, a member of The Working Farm at SPACE on Ryder Farm, a Core Writer at The Playwrights Center, and a 2018 Sundance Theatre Lab Fellow among other accolades. Her work has been commissioned by Manhattan Theatre Club, Seattle Rep, Page 73, and Chautauqua Theater Company. C.A. also has an active career in film and television, with several projects in development, including at ABC Signature and Searchlight Pictures. She has written for several television series, including projects helmed by Drew Goddard, Marielle Heller, and Jon Robin Baitz. BA: Smith College MFA: NYU 

C.A. Johnson

Lynn Nottage

Playwright, Fabulation 

Lynn Nottage is a playwright, screenwriter, and the first woman in history to win two Pulitzer Prizes for drama. Her plays have been produced widely in the United States and throughout the world. Recent work includes the book for MJ the Musical (Broadway), the libretto for the Intimate Apparel opera (LCT), and Clyde’s (Broadway, Second Stage Theater, Goodman Theater), and co-curating the performance installation The Watering Hole (Signature Theater).  

Past work includes Sweat; Ruined; the book for The Secret Life of Bees; Mlima’s Tale; By the Way, Meet Vera Stark; Intimate Apparel; Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine; Crumbs from the Table of Joy; Las Meninas; Mud, River, Stone; Por’knockers; and POOF! She has also developed This Is Reading, a performance installation in Reading, Pennsylvania. Ms. Nottage is a member of the Theater Hall of Fame and received a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship (among other awards). She is an Associate Professor at Columbia University School of the Arts and is a member of the Dramatists Guild. 

Sharyn Rothstein

2024 Commissioned Playwright

Sharyn Rothstein is an award-winning playwright. Her plays and musicals have been produced around the country and internationally. Her adaptation of the beloved film “Hester Street” premiered at Washington D.C.’s Theater J in the Spring of 2024 (featuring music by Joel Waggoner), followed by the premiere of her book-banning drama Bad Books at Round House Theatre in 2025. Her play By the Water, about a Staten Island family dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy was first produced by Manhattan Theater Club and Ars Nova. It was the recipient of the American Theater Critics Association Francesca Primus Prize. Her family comedy, All the Days, was produced at the McCarter Theater Center and directed by Emily Mann. Her technology drama, Right to Be Forgotten, premiered at Arena Stage, directed by Seema Sueko, and was produced in Chicago at the Raven Theater in 2023. Her audio drama, “Deep Fake,” was released on Audible in 2022.

Sharyn has been a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Youngblood, Ars Nova’s Playgroup, the WP Theatre Lab and the New American Writer’s Group at Primary Stages. She is a Hermitage Artist Retreat Fellow and a four-time Edgerton Foundation New Play Award winner. She has received new play commissions from the Williamstown Theatre Festival, Manhattan Theater Club and Ensemble Studio Theatre, among others. Her plays have been published by DPS, Samuel French, Playscripts and others.

Sharyn is an accomplished television writer and producer. She is currently a writer and co-executive producer on “Orphan Black: Echoes,” the spin-off of the sci-fi hit “Orphan Black” which is soon to be on AMC. She was a writer/producer for the USA legal drama “Suits” for many years and has developed shows for Apple, AMC and Bravo. Sharyn holds an MFA in dramatic writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and a master’s degree in Public Health from Hunter College. She teaches television writing at NYU.

Sharyn Rothstein, CTC 2024 Commissioned Playwright

Anna Ziegler

Playwright, Celebrating Sixty-Five Years of the Ladies Journal of Cambridge, Massachusetts!  

CTC: Variations on a Theme, An Incident. West End: Photograph 51. Off-Broadway: The Wanderers (Roundabout), Actually (MTC), The Last Match (Roundabout), Boy (Keen Company/EST), A Delicate Ship (Playwrights Realm), Photograph 51 (EST), Dov and Ali (Playwrights Realm), BFF (W.E.T.). Regional productions include The Janeiad (Alley Theater, upcoming), Actually (Geffen Playhouse, Williamstown Theater Festival), The Wanderers and The Last Match (The Old Globe), The Great Moment and Photograph 51 (Seattle Rep), Another Way Home (formerly An Incident), Actually, Photograph 51 and The Wanderers (Theater J). Also: Writers Theater, Cincinnati Playhouse, Magic Theatre, South Coast Rep. Awards: London’s WhatsOnStage award for Best New Play; L.A. Ovation Award for Playwriting of an Original Play; San Diego Critic’s Circle Award for Outstanding New Play. BA. Yale, MFA NYU/Tisch.