We are thrilled to share the Edge Fest winning playwrights!


Peter Dakutis - Pardoning The Turkeys

Peter Dakutis is an Atlanta-based technical writer/editor who reconnected with his muse through playwriting. His work has appeared in a number of Atlanta area theatre productions. Last December, Xtreme Xmas Boot Camp was produced by Out of Box (Atlanta), Bare Essentials (London), and Zero Untitled (Kingsville, TX). Most recently, his plays Road Rageaholics Anonymous and Diagnosis: Improv were included in Onion Man’s spring comedy show.

Sandy Dietrick - A Biology Lesson

Sandy Dietrick is a graduate of the Iowa Playwrights Workshop whose work has been produced from coast to coast by professional theaters, colleges and universities, and some of the finer theater-producing correctional facilities of the Midwest. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband, Fight Director Robert Tuftee.
Gina Femia - Jump

Gina Femia’s plays include The Mermaids' Parade (Semifinalist, The Relentless Award, Finalist, Princess Grace Award), Annie and the Fat Man (Finalist, Leah Ryan Prize for Emerging Playwrights, Honorable Mention The Kilroys), ALLOND(R)A (Finalist, American Blue Ink Playwriting Award and the Doric Wilson Independent Playwriting Award), THIS HAPPENED ONCE AT THE ROMANCE DEPOT OFF THE I-87 IN WESTCHESTER (Workshop, Youngblood), Super, or, How Clark Graves Learned to Fly (semi-finalist The O’Neill and The Princess Grace Award), For The Love Of (World Premiere: Pride Films & Plays, West Coast Premiere: Theatre of NOTE), and The Violet Sisters (Great Plains Theatre Conference). Gina is a current member of Joust Theatre’s Writer’s Round Table and Project Y Writer's Group. She is a New Georges Affiliated Artist and a New York Madness Company Member, and has received residencies with P73’s Summer Residency, NTI at the O’Neill, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Fresh Ground Pepper and Grin City Collective. She has been nominated for the Doric Wilson Award and the Cherry Lane Theatre Mentor Project. MFA, Sarah Lawrence College (Lipkin Prize in Playwriting).
Steve Flowers - Waxing Poetic

Steve lives in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, Illinois where he is a music teacher. He has been playing piano and drums since childhood and first started composing music and writing plays in high school. His published works include two full-length musicals and a composition for jazz band. Some of Steve's personal/professional highlights include playing piano for shows at Second City in Chicago and trying out for the Blue Man Group (even though he didn't make it). Steve would like to thank his wife and daughter for their continuous love and support.
Aren Haun - Longshot 

Aren Haun’s short plays have been produced in San Francisco, Chicago, New York, London, Abu Dhabi, and Tokyo. He has an MFA from Columbia University and teaches playwriting at the San Francisco School of the Arts.
Brendan Healy - The Way It Really Truly Almost Was

Brendan Healy's full-length plays have been produced in Chicago, Minneapolis, and Seattle. His short plays have been produced in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Louisville, Maine, Massachusetts, Miami, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Seattle. He is a four-time finalist and one-time recipient of the Heideman Award from Actors Theatre of Louisville. His short play Picnic (pik'nik'): v.i. was published by Playscripts, Inc., and his full-length play The Secret Recordings of Lenin to His Lost Love Mary Anne of Topeka, KS was published by Rain City Projects in the Manifesto v. 2 anthology. Some of his other full-length plays include Relatively We…; Suffering, Inc.; The Final Tribunal into the Mysterious Death of Mister Senor Salvador Dali; Hotdish, City of Presidents, and two children's plays. He received his MFA in 2006 and was a member of Seattle Repertory Theatre’s Writers Group from 2013 – 2015.
Nick Rafello - A Mist upon The Window

Nick’s thrilled to have his short play, A Mist Upon The Mirror, premiere at Birdhouse Theatre. Nick’s theatrical career began on a hope and a prayer after his parents divorce in 1977, where he snuck out of the house to follow a dream of become a dancer. By great fortune and a lot of sweat and tears, he has performed in such National Broadway Tours of A Chorus Line, Chicago, Fiddler on the Roof- starring Theodore Bikel and Sweet Charity, directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse himself. It was the last show where Bob Fosse said on the day of his death, “Get out there and do other things. Get yourself noticed.” Nick has done many other numerous shows and television work but always goes back to that fateful day of Mr. Fosse’s wisdom. After twenty years on the road with many shows, Nick put pen to paper and began telling a story. Nick is the recipient of the Best Premiere of a Solo Show, through the United Solo Festival in New York City, for his one man show, Yeah, That Happened. His first two person comedy, 6%, THIS IS WHY, (a REAL estate story), was given many accolades in New York’s Midtown International Festival and was a runner up for Best Play. He dedicates this play to a time of innocence, in the 1960s and 70s, where he grew up in Cupertino, CA. As well as, to the strong women in his life; his mother with her incredible comedic wit, his two grandmothers - one being a farm hand in Ohio and the other from San Francisco who actually slept under a pyramid made of copper piping with her spiritual guides painted over her bed. (Yes, Pyramid Power was a thing in the 1970s. Don’t even get him started on that story! ….or maybe it should be the next story?)

Jonathon Ward - A Playwright's Dream

Recent work includes: The Theatre Made in Paradise (FringeNYC Festival 2016, published by Indie Theater Now of FringeNYC plays), “I M = 2 U” (#metoo Plays, Barrow Group reading, Plays & Pizza 2018), “What-If Cliff” (Manhattan Rep, Secret Theatre, Little Funky Theatre Spectrum 2017), “Selfie Satisfied” (Northport Readers Theatre 2017, Open Eye Theater Reading 2016), “Garden of Delusions” (Plays & Pizza 2017), “Kain’s Curse” (Secret Theatre Act One: One Acts NYC 2017, Manhattan Repertory Theatre NYC 2017, Itinerant Theatre Louisiana 2017, William Inge Festival New Play Lab 2016), “The Artist of the Beautiful” (Metropolitan Playhouse 2016), Dexter and Lewellyn (Barter Theater Appalachian Festival Reading 2015), “Room to Roam” (InspiraTO 2015 Toronto), “B’Hoys Do Macbeth” (Metropolitan Playhouse NYC 2015, published 2016 Applause Books Best Short Plays of 2014-15), An Island Dream (Commission 2015 NYSCA Huntington Arts Council. !

Birdhouse Theatre is an incubator for professionally driven artists, of multiple mediums, that recruits and nurtures talent while delivering professional quality. Utilizing local and
outside talent, while educating and enhancing civic engagement of modern issues, we hope to create dividends of participants driven and motivated by the arts to be active
citizens. Richard Nelson recently wrote that a theatre at its essence is simply a kind of intimate human relationship between an artist and the audience. Today, television networks
fight for the rights to “time-sensitive” events where audiences share in a feeling at the same time. This is where theatres have and continue to thrive. All one needs is an empty
space and a shared amount of time where live human beings are in front of live human beings to share. Birdhouse Theatre seeks to continually provide a theatre experience that
creates culture, motivation, engagement, economic development, intelligence and growth of a community.