2024 One-Act Contest Finalists
Congratulations to our 2024 One-Act Contest Finalists. Thanks to our one-act judge, Peter Hagan, and our contest coordinator, James Giltenan.
Pictured above from the top, left to right, our finalists are:
William Brasse has forayed fearlessly into a variety of literary forms and genres. Plays, novels, short stories; comedy, drama, history, biography, myth. He has even ventured into essays but freely admits that poetry is beyond him. Like so many people, he lives in California. Like fewer people, he is originally from Tennessee. Like essentially no one, he has been a vegan since 1979.
WINNER: Kevin Stuart Brodie is a playwright, screenwriter, storyteller, essayist, and poet. Four of his plays have been produced and two screenplays have been optioned by production companies. Mr. Brodie has won eighteen script writing contests and festivals and been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize in poetry. He was also a 2020 Writer-in-Residence at the historic home of Edwin Way Teale, and a Writer-in-Residence at Millay Arts in 2021 and 2023.
Bob Davis grew up in a small Georgia town. His father was a legally blind electrician and his mother was an avid yet eccentric reader. He is a practicing attorney who began his legal career helping farmworkers. Eventually he specialized in disability law and has been doing that ever since. The vulnerable and the marginalized have always captured his attention. As well as his heart. If given the slightest bit of encouragement, he’ll extol the virtues of a good whiskey, or defend the virtues of a vinegar-based barbeque sauce. He’ll grin when he meets a fellow Devil Dog, but is apt to cry when he hears a certain piano sonata. His one-act play, The Coin Bracelet, is based loosely on his parents.
Marc Littman, an Emmy award winner for public broadcasting, is an emerging playwright who previously placed in the finals for the Tennessee Williams International One-Act Playwriting Contest in 2022, 2021 and 2020 for three different dramas but didn’t win. He was a winner in the 2021 Long Beach Playhouse New Works Festival for his play, Leon’s Warning, and was a runner-up in the 2021 Rise against Fanaticism through the Arts playwriting contest in the UK, among receiving other awards. His play, God’s Train to Auschwitz, was presented in spring 2021 by the Riant Theatre in New York as part of its Jocunda Play Reading Festival. His short play, Bridge of Laughter, was part of the spring 2021 Change Festival presented by Theatre West in Los Angeles. Marc’s dramatic play about a suicide, Bittersweet Oranges, was part of WestFest at Theatre West in October 2022. The Braid in Santa Monica CA also has staged Marc’s work. Marc is a playwright member of Theatre West in Los Angeles. He lives in Los Angeles.
RUNNER-UP: Catherine Mew is the Barbara Grimmell Festival selected and Bechdel Project developed co-writer of Mavens of St Catherines Island. She is a Todd London Third Bohemia Playwright for 2024. Her work, Our Daily Bread, and her co-authored work, The Gay and the Jew, were part of the 2022 and 2023 Atlanta Fringe Festival. Her play, The First Time, represented feminist theatre at The South Eastern Women’s Studies Conference. Her short play Gathering Boxes was published in the October 2023 edition of the Hawaiian ULU Review. Mew’s play Girl Food appeared in the December 2023 edition of the Hawaiian Publication. Her full-length musical, The Last Song at Elinor’s Flying Pig was a second round finalist in TNT Pops. Mew is the former Chair of Theatre at Shorter College, Director in Residence and Associate Producer at The Atlanta Lyric Theatre, and The Director of Development at Synchronicity Performance Group. Mew is currently a producer at Atlanta Reclamation Studios and a script supervisor for CCP.
Keri Miller grew up in the community theaters of Central Florida. She is pursuing her PhD in creative writing at the University of Southern Mississippi where she serves as associate editor of Mississippi Review. Primarily a fiction writer, her stories can be found in or forthcoming from swamp pink, North American Review, Third Coast, Salt Hill, and more. She is working on a collection of short stories and a novel.
Rosemary Parrillo (she/her/hers) is a New Jersey playwright and journalist.Her work was selected as a semifinalist for the 2017 Eugene O’Neill Theater Center National Playwrights Conference. Parrillo’s play On the Road to Tikrit was recently performed at the 8 Tens @ 8 Festival at Actors Theatre in Santa Cruz, CA, and her one-act play, Cent’Anni, will soon be staged at the Strand Theatre in Hudson, NY. She also has been a three-time Tennessee Williams One-Act Contest finalist. Parrillo is a member of the Dramatist Guild, the New Play Exchange, The Philadelphia Dramatists Center and The Playwrights Group in New York.
RUNNER-UP:J. R. Stephens is a Connecticut-based playwright, performer, and active member of the Dramatists Guild of America, whose plays have been seen and heard in AEA and nonprofessional developmental readings and performances throughout Connecticut and New York, including at Hartford Stage and the HBO headquarters in Manhattan, courtesy of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. In addition, J. R. has worked for several years to help connect New England playwrights with local theaters to encourage the continued development of new works.
Nadya Todorova is a screenwriter & director with a love for stories that highlight the small human facing world-changing events. She graduated from Screenwriting at FAMU International and participated in several film labs, among which Sarajevo Talents and the EastWest Talent Lab. She graduated from the TV writing program Serial Eyes in 2020. She was chosen as a writer’s apprentice at Frank Spotnitz’ Big Light Productions in 2021. Nadya was a staff writer on a TV show for bTV Bulgaria and the TV show Franklin for the Spanish company Grupo Black Panther. She’s now in post-production for her documentary debut feature I’m not a bad man, and recently won the BBC International Playwriting Georgi Markov Award.
