ELAINA
HAYGEN-BRICE
he / him
she / her
Haygen-Brice Walker is a Puerto Rican-American playwright-creative producer born and raised in the American South and currently dividing his time between Philadelphia and Minneapolis, where he is the 2018-2019 Jerome Many Voices Fellow at The Playwrights' Center. He holds a BFA in Directing, Playwriting, & Production with a focus in Playwriting and a Creative Writing minor from the University of the Arts and is a two-time alumnus of the National Theatre Institute (Theatermakers 2011, Advanced Playwriting 2012).
His work is a kaleidoscopic clash of caffeine, history, pornography, violence, pop-culture, myth, and magic. Haygen-Brice’s plays find characters trapped in a confused landscape muddled with the taste of the American South; the feel of Appalachia; the blinding desert heat of the Wild West; and the lyricism of Latin America. He was awarded the 2013 Excellence in Playwriting Award from the University of the Arts; a Semi-Finalist for Forward Flux Theatre Company’s THREE NEW AMERICAN PLAYS Commission; a Finalist for the Kennedy Center’s John Cauble Award for Outstanding Short Play; and a Finalist for PLAYPENN’S 2018 Dark Night Reading. He has been developed or produced by Theatre Underground, UArts, The Firehouse Theatre Project (Richmond, VA), Route 66 Theatre (Chicago), Dixon Place, Manhattan Repertory Theatre, The Philadelphia Fringe Festival, Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, Interact Theatre Company, Playpenn, and The Playwrights’ Center.
In addition, he is a third year member of PLAYPENN’S The Foundry, a Philadelphia Playwrights' Lab; and a 2018/2020 Core Playwright at Interact Theatre Company. Each day, Haygen-Brice is one step closer to becoming Jennifer Lopez, which is trite for a gay Puerto Rican, but he's embracing the cliché and living in his truth.
Elaina Di Monaco is a director, dramaturg, producer, new work enthusiast, and active do-er of "all the things." She holds a BFA in Directing, Playwriting & Production from the University of the Arts.
Around Philadelphia, she can be found directing, workshopping new plays, organizing lady-centric theatre events, hosting readings, freelancing to pay the bills and self-producing to feed her soul.
Elaina is most passionate about developing and directing new work with local playwrights. When collaborating with playwrights, she is most interested in blunt, thoughtful feedback that challenges and pushes the piece towards the writer's ultimate vision. She has recently worked with The Wilma Theater, Theatre Horizon, Headlong, Act 2 Playhouse, Theatre With A View, Nichole Canuso Dance Company, The Bearded Ladies, InterAct Theatre Company, Tiny Dynamite, 11th Hour, The Barrymores, PlayPenn & FringeArts.
As a director, Elaina is grounded in storytelling and social responsibility. Her work is fast-paced, truthful and full of surprises. She is currently into “impossible” stage directions, rapid-fire dialogue, heightened worlds, queer narratives, and the terrifying human interactions that make our daily lives theatrical.
As a human, she loves her herb garden, reading books in coffee shops, the ocean, and margaritas. Elaina is also decidedly over the patriarchy, knows that Black Lives Matter, is uninterested in the gender binary, loves feminism, apologizes when she's wrong, values kindness, practices transparency, and disapproves of being interrupted during production meetings. She is working on unlearning.