2026 TWFest One-Acts Finalists
Congratulations to our 2026 One-Act Winner, Runners-Up, and Finalists!
Thanks to our One-Act judge, Justin Maxwell, and our contest coordinator, Johanna Ziegler.
Pictured above from the top, left to right, our finalists are:
Conor McShane is a playwright, occasional actor, and even more occasional musician. Originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan, he holds a BA in creative writing and Spanish from Western Michigan University, but thus far has not found a way to successfully combine the two. His short plays have been produced throughout the Chicago area as well as his home state of Michigan, and several of his full-lengths have received staged readings in both states. He’s also had work performed in New York, Los Angeles, Virginia, and Ohio, and is the co-founder of TypeSet Theatre co., a new works initiative, and its monthly workshop, the Wayword Writers Collective. He strives to create theatre that is deeply human, exploring fundamental truths of existence with heart and humor. He recently moved back to Michigan after 10 years in Chicago with his partner and fellow theatre-maker, Leslie Hull.
Emily McClain is a professional playwright, theatre educator, and a proud member of the Dramatists Guild. She was a recipient of a Stripped Bare grant in 2021 for her play What the Water Gave Me, which went on to receive the William Faulkner Literary Prize in 2022. Her historical drama Copper Angel was the winner of the Texas Nonprofit Theatre competition in 2022 and received a world premiere production in Bourne, Texas in 2023. Her play The Poet The Spy and the Dark Lady won the Henley Rose Prize in 2024 and was a finalist in the Del Shores Playwriting competition in 2023. She was featured in the 2024 SheATL Festival with her political-romantic comedy Plan B. Her play The Rock & The Hard Place won the Essential Theatre New Play award for 2024. Her short plays have been produced throughout the United States and internationally. She’s published through Next Stage Press and Ghostlight Publications and more of her work may be found on New Play Exchange or at her website: emilymcclainplays.com
RUNNER-UP: Michileen Marie is a writer, performer, and director in the San Francisco Bay Area. After earning her B.S. in Psychology and Theatre Arts at Santa Clara University, Michileen found a passion for teaching while working for TheatreWorks Silicon Valley’s Education Program. She now teaches public speaking as a guest lecturer for graduate students at Stanford University. An advocate for female voices on and off stage, Michileen received a Master of Liberal Arts from Stanford with a thesis entitled, “Leading Ladies: The Overlooked Agency of Female Characters in American Theater, 1947.” She has published poems, including “Ode to the Door,” in Tangents Journal, and is now working on her first novel. Inspired by the dark magic realism genre, she hopes to write stories that illuminate our fears or at least make the dark more fun.
Cara Johnston is an actor, director, and playwright from Dallas, Texas. Her work blends humor and heartbreak to tell imaginative, woman-centered stories. Her plays, The Little Glass Slipper as Performed by the Queen of France and her Friends and The Madwoman, premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, earning five-star reviews, an OffFest nomination, and official selection from Frame of Mind, airing on PBS. As an actor, she has performed at theatres across Texas, Louisiana, Wisconsin, and Scotland. www.sisterjohnston.com
RUNNER-UP: Peter Surdo, a native of New York City, graduate of Hunter College, and longtime resident of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, would be thrilled to know his play, The Code, is a finalist in the 2026 Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival. Following careers in special education, retail, and mushroom farming, Peter enjoyed painting nature scenes, theater, and film. Peter was the proprietor of Kennett Kitchen Creations, a maker of mushroom based hot sauce. Although Peter passed away in a car accident on July 11, 2025, he lives on as the writer of Willy, and the co-writer of Red Carpet, Robert De Niro Ate Here, Spry, Dallas Week, I Blame Bruce Jenner, A Cake for Mr. X, and At The Tone.
Gary Helmore is a writer from Melbourne, Australia, whose work reimagines history through a queer lens, exploring memory, identity, and the politics of survival. A member of Melbourne Writers’ Theatre (MWT), he develops bold, character-driven work that blends humor with political bite. Through MWT, he has been selected to participate in ScriptLab, an immersive playwriting development program. Gary’s monologue, The Night Market, was staged at the Metropolis Monologues in March 2025. His new play, The Golden Boy, was presented as a rehearsed reading at Theatreworks in 2025. Gary is thrilled to produce a season of his play, He Partied Like It’s 1999 for the LGBTQI+ Midsumma Festival in 2026 at the Explosives Factory Theatre, Melbourne.
Sara Stefanelli’s poetry has appeared in Heliosparrow Poetry Journal. She is the librettist of Biophilia, an eco-dystopian chamber opera. She works in theatre and lives in New York.
Barbara McDonald was a lawyer and a judge in a prior life, but now her passion for playwriting is her primary focus. Her productions include: You Don’t Know Me, Artistic Home, Chicago and McKay Arts, Chicago; Truth (Or the President is an Alien), Stage 773, Chicago; Good Grief, Stage 773, Chicago, and Yellowhammer Theatre Group, Selma, Alabama; and Eti-Tech, Den Theatre, Chicago.
Mathew Green (he/him) is a Midwest-based playwright who has been creating theatre in various ways for 30 years. In the past year, he has had plays produced in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York. In addition to writing for the stage, he is a director and actor who lives in Champaign, Illinois with his stage manager wife and four kids, and he is pursuing (at long last) a degree in Theatre Studies at the University of Illinois.
WINNER: Whitney Rowland is a Minneapolis-based playwright, screenwriter, and game writer. She was a 2024-25 McKnight Fellow in Playwriting and is currently a Core Writer at the Playwrights’ Center. Her plays have been developed at the Last Frontier Theatre Conference, Mid-America Theatre Conference, Kennedy Center American College Theater Festivals, Great Plains Theatre Conference, and PlayPenn, where she was named a 2019 Haas Fellow. In the game development space, Whitney currently writes for Quantic Dream, and has worked with Ubisoft Shanghai, Ubisoft Quebec, Red Storm, and Massive Entertainment. You can find her writing in the AAA titles Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
