New Playwrights/Established Companies: The Path to Production

Over the last year we have seen new playwrights be produced by larger theatre companies:

Phanésia Pharel’s Dead Girl’s Quinceñera is making a triple collective world premiere (Barrington, Goodman Theatre, and Hartford Stage).

Zach Barr’s The Pilon produced by Red Theatre, won the ATCA New Play award.

Netta Walker’s Hayward is debuting at Steppenwolf Theatre, presented by The Gift Theatre.

Join us as we talk about the steps of taking their pieces to production, asking how long the plays were developed, what pushed the play to production, how did you pitch/represent your play to new audience members, and what is the history of your plays development?

Who are the playwrights?

Phanésia Pharel

Phanésia Pharel is a Haitian-American playwright and screenwriter from a dragon fruit farm in Miami. She is the daughter of an immigrant teacher and farmer.

Her play DEAD GIRL’S QUINCEÑERA is making a triple collective world premiere. It will then run at the Goodman September 26th-November 1st and conclude its world premiere at Hartford Stage in spring 2027. It recently closed our Barrington run.

She recently made her Off-Broadway debut at the WP Theater with her play The Waterfall, which was co-produced by Thrown Stone.

She is the Playwriting Fellow (2025–2027) at Emory University, where she serves as a visiting professor and will have a new play produced by the university’s repertory company.

Her plays have been developed at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference, New Harmony Project, Playwrights’ Center, New York Stage and Film, SolFest, Shattered Globe, and Echo Theater Company.

She has received commissions from the Atlantic Theater Company, Lucille Lortel Theatre (Alcove), La Jolla Playhouse, Miranda Family Fund, Hero Theatre, City Theatre Miami, and the Latinx Playwrights Circle.

Phanésia is a member of the Obie Award-winning EST/Youngblood group and The Wish Collective. As a screenwriter, she is an alumna of Lena Waithe’s Hillman Grad Screenwriting Lab.

She holds a B.A. in Urban Studies from Barnard College of Columbia University and an MFA in Playwriting from the University of California San Diego.

Zach Barr

Zach Barr (they/them) is a nonbinary multidisciplinary theatre artist. Their plays include THE PILON (2026 Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award Winner), ENDURING JEST (2026 O’Neill Conference Semi-Finalist), NEW OLEANNA (2024 LiveArts Waterworks Finalist), and QUINLYN CAN PAINT. They’ve completed residencies with Three Brothers Theatre and Filament Theatre, are a two-time semi-finalist for Seven Devils New Play Foundry and a two-time honorable mention for Wild Imaginings’ Epiphanies festival, and have had work developed by Valdez Theatre Conference, Bramble Theatre Company, Black Cat Theatre, and Fat Theatre Project. Zach serves as Literary Manager at Red Theater, curating the new play reading series “Script Club,” and is the creator of the video essay series “And Now They Sing” on YouTube. They are a proud member of the Dramatists Guild. Find them on NPX. @admiralzachbarr

Netta Walker

Netta Walker is an actor and playwright that began her career onstage in Chicago 10 years ago as the Rose of Sharon understudy at The Gift Theater for “The Grapes of Wrath”. Now she is known for starring as Keisha McCalla in “All American: Homecoming” and “All American” on The CW for 3 seasons. In 2019, she won a Jeff Award for “Best Supporting Performance in a Play” (“Yen”, Raven Theater) and was quickly named one of the Chicago Tribune’s “Hot New Faces” by theater critic Chris Jones.

She studied playwriting at The LIR at Trinity College for a year while simultaneously taking acting classes at RADA. As a writer in the Pearl Cleage writers workshop with the Tony Award winning Goodman Theater and Remy Bumppo Theater Company, she began developing Hayward – which was chosen as a Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference 2025 Semifinalist. Her play keerah was selected as a winner in Definition Theaters’ 2024 AMPLIFY New Play Festival, where it is set to be workshopped for two years. keerah has also been performed in scratch nights in London with Irish speaking casts. Her Filipino short film Balik won the Horror/Thriller short script category at Hollywood Just4Shorts Film and Screenplay competition, as well as being selected for London Film Festival International and Edinburgh FFI. This was swiftly followed by her short script Baby Gay being selected for the Chicago Script Awards and as a Cambridge Script Festival finalist (LGBTQ Screenplay). Both shorts were selected for the Best Script Awards screenplay competition in London in the same year. Walker was also chosen to pitch her original feminist dystopian series House of Dixie at the American Cinemtheque’s Proof of Concept Film Festival in LA in 2024 – it then went on to be selected as a Quarterfinalist for WeScreenplays’ Diverse Voices Lab Spring 2025. She is now adapting it for stage.

Chicago onstage acting credits include: Lion in Winter (Court Theater), How to Defend Yourself (Victory Gardens, original cast); Yen (Raven Theatre, Jeff Award for Best Supporting Actor); Hamlet, Grapes of Wrath (The Gift); No Child (Definition Theatre); Continuity (Goodman); truth and reconciliation (Sideshow Theatre Company); Great Expectations (Silk Road Rising/Remy Bumppo); The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley (Northlight, original cast) and in workshops and reading series with companies like Steppenwolf Theater, Jackalope Theater, and Pride Films and Plays. Regional: Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley (Milwaukee Rep).

Born and raised on the Florida/Georgia line in the Westside of Jacksonville, Florida, her unique background as a child of an immigrant and a Navy Chief influences every decision of storytelling she makes. The blended cultures of Cebuano Filipina and traditional Southern African-American heritage — fuels her passion for creating multicultural, multilayered and nuanced representation of the human condition in the arts.

This event is moderated by Joel Willison