Our Team

Ally Varitek is a dramaturg and arts administrator passionate about new works who has worked in the Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, and New York City areas currently based outside of Atlanta, Georgia. With a background in acting, acapella, choir, sports, and  theatre performance, she knits all sides of her performance past, movement methods, introverted disposition, and current literary affinity in the development of new works. Ally has a wide and varied interest in all theatrical works and promises to approach your writing with an open heart and curious mind.  You'll see this in both her recommendations and past work! Past: LMDA/Kennedy Center Dramaturgy Intensive Fellow, Concord Theatricals Intern. Current: Affiliate dramaturg with both DDP and MusicalWriters.com. Script Reading: Amphibian Stage, NPC, BAPF, Epiphanies, OOB Festival, SHE DFW Arts, and Working Title Playwrights. 

Area(s) of specialty: 

New play and new musical dramaturgy, including plays with music, musicals, and plays; melancholy & the bittersweet, poet-playwrights, introverted main characters, femme-centric stories, movement in theatre and its development process, sports plays, & literary adaptations.

Other interests: 

Archives & theatre history; women’s sports including soccer, flag football, volleyball, & tennis; folk musical styles, especially from Irish and Scottish traditions; climate advocacy & environmental science/sustainability; stories where melancholy is invited to the table of acceptable emotions; introverts as characters and introversion as a lens to see the world (#theatreneedsmoreintroverts); stage combat; Laban; comes from a background in movement-based work and musical theatre as a performer; grew up in the American South (from Georgia, college in Texas).

Arly Rubens is a New Jersey-based dramaturg specializing in experiential, communal, and mixed-media production dramaturgy. In her work with new plays, she draws in part on six years of experience as a college writing coach, working with folks from all fields and walks of life to develop writing and share ideas through conversation. She’s an alum of Kean University (B.A. Theater and English Literature), the Kennedy Center’s National Dramaturgy Intensive, and apprenticeships at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey and Premiere Stages. Arly is a current graduate student in Labor Relations at Rutgers University, a member of the People’s Theater, a socialist theater collective, a collector of vegetarian recipes, a propagator of plants, and a pur(r?)veyor of cat pictures. arlyrubens.com

Caili Crow is a San Antonio-based dramaturg specializing in interdisciplinary new work development, storytelling-for-peacebuilding, and stories of enchantment as environmental advocacy. While attending university in Scotland—where she graduated with degrees in English Literature (MA, University of Edinburgh, 2019) and Playwriting & Dramaturgy (MLitt, University of Glasgow, 2020)—her dramaturgical perspective was deeply informed by immersion in The Edinburgh Fringe. She’s been a 2021 Kennedy Center Dramaturgy Intensive Fellow, the 2021-2022 Literary and Casting apprentice at Asolo Repertory Theatre (Sarasota, FL), and script reader for Broadway Licensing, BAPF, and Austin Film Festival. Current projects include Mother Tree at The Vortex Theater, Austin and an upcoming panel presentation on storytelling for community building, enchantment, and environmental wonder for The Vortex's Green New Theater Symposium.

Emma Bilderback is a dramaturg based in Los Angeles. She is a graduate of the University of Amsterdam’s International Dramaturgy program, where she researched the connections between our contemporary world and the theatrical works of Ancient Greece. She is a Co-Vice President of Anti-Oppression for the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas–a multi-national non-profit that holds the belief that theater is a vital art form that has the power to nourish, educate, and transform individuals and their communities and that dramaturgy is central to the process of theater-making. https://www.emmabilderback.com/

Jihye is a freelance dramaturg and a deviser based in Seoul. Her interest and specialty lie in new play development, ensemble-devising, site-specific immersive works, solo performance and literary translation (Korean to English). Jihye has worked for Great Plains Theatre Common’s New Play Conference in 2022 and 2023 and she is a current season researcher at Doosan Art Center in Seoul. In 2021-2022, Dogs or Cats; Augmented Body, the experimental puppet show she co-developed with Chicago-based puppet artist Jaerin Son has performed in Steppenwolf and Links Hall Chicago.

(https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/becketts-babies/id1456311563?i=1000619112763)

NPX: https://newplayexchange.org/users/59510/jihye-kim

Kemi King is a writer, director, dramaturg, producer. She is the Artistic Director of YIKES Co. founded in her second year of undergrad. Working within her practice, Theatre of Critical Care, Kemi emphasizes relation and exploration in her work. This work takes from abolitionist principles in care and disability justice in order to resist formal inclusion. 

Over the years she has collaborated with several arts organizations such as Intermission, Outside the March, Black Theatre Workshop, and New Harlem Productions. 

Kemi loves experimental work and different interpretations on what theatre and the performing arts can be. 

Suzi Elnaggar is an Egyptian-American freelance dramaturg, performance scholar, and theatre-maker. She was a 2021 Kennedy Center Dramaturgy Intensive Fellow. She has been the production dramaturg for TACTICS Ottawa ANANSI V. GOD(S); Jubilee Theatre Waco’s Fairview (Texas Premiere); Wild Imaginings’ Jesus and Valium (World Premiere), The Way He Looks at You, Cardboard Castles Hung on Walls (World Premiere); Baylor Theatre’s Wills and Secession, Dancing Lessons, Treasure Island (adapted by Bryony Lavery), and The Laramie Project. Her research interests include recontextualizing Greek tragedy, post-colonial theatre contexts, theatre of social change, and work that centers around SWA/MENA (Southwest Asian/Middle Eastern and North African) experiences. Her scholarship and practice center community, collaboration, and context. 

Yasmin Zacaria Mikhaiel (she/they) is a dramaturg, theatre journalist, and oral historian with roots in and around Chicago. As a queer, fat, brown femme, they endeavor to amplify and archive stories that go lost/stolen/forgotten. Their writing and research explores possibility models for a more inclusive and sustainable theatre culture and industry. They serve as the VP of Freelance for the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas and take pride in advocating for equity across the industry and mentoring the next generation of creatives. As a new play dramaturg, they specialize in queer family drama, romance, TYA, and SWANA/MENA stories.