Moving Arts Reveals Members of 2025 MADLab Playwrights

Moving Arts has revealed the members of the MADLab 2025 cohort: Warren Davis (the book Creating Q*bert and Other Classic Video Arcade Games), Hutchins Foster (Mommy with a Penis), Adriana Jones (Women at Work Festival), Priya Mohanty (award-winning web series FOBia), and Sam Spoll (O'Neill Finalist). These five playwrights will develop new plays from the ground up as part of a comprehensive, year-long process that Moving Arts has administered since 2014. The development of these plays are part of a long-term commitment Moving Arts has shown to Los Angeles Playwrights that will culminate in 50 new plays being developed through MADLab by the end of this year. In previous seasons, MADLab has supported work by acclaimed playwrights including Boni B. Alvarez, Meghan Brown, Tom Jacobson, Matthew Paul Olmos, Marlow Wyatt, and many others.

"The original concept for MADLab was to provide space and support for playwrights to follow any idea that they found fascinating, and to write a play that they really wanted to write," said Darin Anthony, Artistic Director and MADLab founder. "We gave no parameters on content or theme, only that it had some connection, however loose or tight, to the city of Los Angeles. Beyond that, the playwrights had 100% control on where the play, and the MADLab process, would take them."

"Beyond providing actors, directors, and other artistic support for these new plays," said Dana Schwartz, MADLab Program Director, "it's been vital to our program to also gift writers with access to other resources that they may need; incorporating cold readings, workshops, feedback sessions and evenings with theatre experts which support writers on both the micro and macro level of play creation."

MADLab World Premieres, produced by Moving Arts:
My White Husband - Leviticus Jelks (Cohort 2022) - Moving Arts 2024
Reset - Howard Ho (Cohort 2020) - Moving Arts 2023
Apocalypse Play - Cory Hinkle (Cohort 2016) - Moving Arts 2017
Burners - Terence Anthony (Cohort 2014) - Moving Arts 2017

MADLab World Premieres, produced at other theatres:
A Home What Howls - Matthew Paul Olmos (Cohort 2021) - Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago, 2024; Milagro Theatre, Portland OR, 2024
Robbin, From The Hood - Marlow Wyatt (Cohort 2019) - The Road Theater, Los Angeles, 2024
What Happened While Hero Was Dead - Meghan Brown (Cohort 2019) - University of Oklahoma, 2023; Southern Oregon University, 2024; Raven's Feather, Montana, 2024
This Is Only A Test - Eric Reyes Loo (Cohort 2015) - Broken Nose, Chicago, 2022
America Adjacent- Boni Alvarez (Cohort 2016) - Playwrights Arena, Los Angeles, 2019
Hammer - Macada Declet (Cohort 2017) - Hollywood Fringe Festival, Los Angeles, 2018

MADLab playwrights have also gone on to write for television shows such as Watchmen, Man in the High Castle, Vida, and Lawman Bass Reeves, among others. Since its inception in 2011, more than half of MADLab participants have identified as women or non-binary, and more than half identified as persons of color.

MEET THE 2025 COHORT

Warren Davis is a man of many resumes. He has an acting resume, a directing resume, a sound designer resume and a software engineer resume. His shortest resume is his writing resume, which includes a few short film scripts, one feature film script, a handful of magazine articles and a book, Creating Q*bert and Other Classic Video Arcade Games, published by Santa Monica Press. Warren was born in Brooklyn, NY and spent 15 years in the Chicago area before moving to Los Angeles in the late 90s.

HUTCHINS FOSTER was the Artistic Director for Readers Theatre Workshop, a company that promotes literacy through classroom workshops and live performances. Foster has been a regular spoken word performer with Ensemble Studio Theatre LA's True Story, creating over fifty pieces. This led him to develop his own "one mom show," Mommy with a Penis, which premiered at the Hollywood Fringe Festival and then was remounted at Theatre Asylum as "best in the fest." His play The Art of Arson, a semi-finalist for Dramatist Guild's Fellows Program, had a reading at The Open Fist Theatre's First Look Festival. Last month at EST LA, a reading was done of Exquisite Poison, which delves into the decadent world of Louis XIV and the nasty habit they had about poisoning those who got in the way. Foster most recently completed Sistahs 3, an all Black retelling of Chekhov's Three Sisters which takes place in Alliance, Ohio, during the long hot summer of race riots of 1967. He's also completed the first draft of his memoir, One Day It's Justice, The Next It's Revenge, about marrying his husband when gay marriage was illegal and adopting two children after eleven harrowing adoption attempts. For three years, Foster and his husband Michael A. Shepperd have maintained a livestream event called Boozin' with Gays.

Adriana Jones is a writer, producer, and performer based in Los Angeles. She creates original work that centers strong female characters, often in the genres of dark comedy, dramedy, and sci-fi. Her solo shows, Vivien On The Rocks and An Anonymous Contributor, were performed at Theater Row, the Women at Work Festival, All for One Festival's Salon, Live from Gramercy Park at The Players Club, and Edmonton Fringe Festival. Her short play, Hiding With Company, was produced at University of British Columbia's Brave New Play Rites Festival. Her latest full-length play, I Heard You Were Close, received a staged reading at the Anthony Meindl Actors Workshop in Hollywood in May 2024. Her short films Introvert's Guide to Activism and Death of a Vacuum have screened at film festivals across the country including Chelsea Film Festival, Westfield Film Festival, Broad Humor Film Festival, YoFiFest, Katra Film Series, Indieworks Film Series, Atlanta Comedy Film Festival, and New York No Limits. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from University of British Columbia and a BFA in Theater from Cornish College of the Arts. adrianajones.net

Priya Mohanty came to America from India to get her MBA from Duke University and started working a corporate job in Chicago. A series of fortunate events and a dare from a friend led her to acting. In 2015, she made the very practical decision to quit her corporate job to pursue life as an artist, student loans be damned. She trained at Steppenwolf acting school and appeared in several prominent Chicago stage productions including the world premiere of Queen at Victory Gardens and Gender Breakdown at Collaboraction. Seeing a dearth of immigrant representation in American media, she started writing to give immigrants like her a voice. In 2019, she wrote, acted and produced the pilot of her web series FOBia which won several awards for "Best Pilot" and "Best Web Series" including at omni TV Festival, T.O Webfest, New Delhi Film Festival to name a few. Her scripts have placed in the Red List on Coverfly (top 1%) and placed in Austin Film Festival, WeScreenplay, Screencraft, Outstanding Screenplays and Atlanta Film Festival as well as winning at Cinequest Screenwriting Competition. Priya recently moved to LA (well, Santa Clarita, but that's almost LA). She lives with her husband and two young kids and really enjoys toddler tantrums and sleepless nights. Or so she tells herself.

SAM SPOLL (they/she) is a playwright, actor, and comedy writer. Formerly: prep cook, bar manager, and hostel toilet cleaner. Sam's first play was about the 2011 "London riots" based on interviews conducted with a research grant from Northwestern University. Sam's second play was about children and the atomic bomb, written while living alone in a haunted house on an island in Japan. Finalist: Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, Lanford Wilson New American Play Fest. BA: Northwestern.

THE MADLAB TEAM

DANA SCHWARTZ is the Program Director of the MADLab New Play Development program at Moving Arts as well as an LA writer, director, producer and actress. Her play "@Playaz" was a Eugene O'Neill Finalist and had its World Premiere in 2021. "Presto!" was developed with The Workshop Theater in New York and is an O'Neill Semi-Finalist. "Early Birds" premiered in 2019. She has also had plays produced at Echo Theater, Theater of NOTE, Sky Pilot, REDcat LA, Disney Hall, Segerstrom Center, La Jolla Playhouse, Curtis Theater, LACMA, and Iron Skirt Stories. She is a member of Directors Lab West and has directed plays across the country, and has performed around the world.

DARIN ANTHONY is the Artistic Director of Moving Arts in Los Angeles, a company dedicated to the development, production, and promotion of adventurous new works by Los Angeles artists. For Moving Arts he directed: the world premieres of RESET by Howard Ho, @PLAYAZ by Dana Schwartz, Isolation Inn - A Zoom Series, Apple Season by E.M. Lewis, BLISS (or Emily Post is Dead!) by Jami Brandli, Apocalypse Play by Cory Hinkle, the west coast premieres of The Kill-or-Dies by Meghan Brown, Viral by Mac Rogers, The Gun Show by Em Lewis, and numerous Car Plays. Other recent productions: Daniel's Husband at Dezart Performs (DTL Best Director Award) and Dinner with Friends (DTL Best Director Nomination) at CV Rep, the world premiere of the rhythm and blues musical The Devil You Know for Devilish Productions, and Nureyev's Eyes at American Stages (FL) and The Bluebarn Theatre (NE).

The award winning theatre company MOVING ARTS is dedicated to the creation, promotion and production of original works by Los Angeles artists. Founded by Lee Wochner and Julie Briggs in 1992, Moving Arts has produced many world, national, West Coast and Los Angeles premieres. Moving Arts began as a 22-seat venue in the Silver Lake area and quickly grew to become a resident artist company that includes actors, directors, producers, designers, and playwrights. Since 1992, Moving Arts has continuously produced adventurous new plays in a variety of venues across Los Angeles, ranging from traditional theatres such as [Inside] the Ford in Hollywood and the Los Angeles Theatre Center, downtown to nontraditional spaces such as the Natural History Museum and the parking lot across from Disney Hall, showing remarkable versatility and commitment to the craft of theatre. Many of the new play we have created have gone on to be produced across the country. Once called "The tiny Silver Lake theatre with an enviable reputation," Moving Arts has now taken up residence in its new home the larger Moving Arts Theatre. www.movingsrts.org

To post a comment, you must register and login.