PEAR PLAYWRIGHTS
The Pear Theatre is proud to support new plays from the Pear Playwrights Guild, a collective of talented local playwrights. Join us as we stage new works in our Fresh Produce series, and each spring for Pear Slices, an evening of short plays.
BARBARA ANDERSON
has authored business books and a book on walking the French Camino, Letters from the Way. When she retired five years ago, she began writing plays. Produced plays include “Telecommuter”, “Birders” and “Afternoon Tango” in Pear Slices and “Perfect Parents” and “Artist Loft” in Piedmont. After readings in San Francisco, Mountainview, Detroit and New York, Fugitive Colors became a finalist in Ashland and has been selected by Play4Keeps, a virtual version of Ashland New Plays Festival, to be recorded as an on-demand podcast. “Books are read, plays are said. We want Fugitive Colors to be heard.”
PAUL BRAVERMAN
is a Bay Area playwright, actor, and improviser, whose plays have received dozens of productions and readings in Bay Area venues, nationally, and internationally. In addition the Frankie Payne trilogy, Pear Theatre audiences may know Paul from his many previous short plays included in the annual Pear Slices production. He’s a member of The Dramatists Guild of America, Theatre Bay Area, and the Pear Improv Troupe, and is a founding member of The Pear Playwrights Guild. Paul and his wife Robyn are cocoordinators of Fresh Produce, The Pear’s annual developmental play reading series.
PATRICK BRENNAN
has authored a body produced plays including Singulariteen (San Francisco Fringe), No Politics (Theatre Cooperative, Somerville MA), Milgram’s War (Attic Theatre, Los Angeles), and Get Out of My American Way (Boston Theatre Marathon). His plays have been performed in Boston, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and around the world. Patrick is a cofounder of Undefined Symbol Theater. Patrick is a member of the Dramatists Guild, Playwrights’ Center of San Francisco, the Pear Playwrights Guild, PlayCafe, and Playwrights’ Platform.
Amanda Glassman
is a playwright and screenwriter. She received a BA in Journalism and History of Art from Yale University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford in Oxfordshire, UK. She has worked in film, stage and television - most recently for CBS on their show Valor. Her stage play, The Wedding Affair, was workshopped at Edward Albee's Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Valdez, Alaska.
H. G. CLARKSON
Helena’s play called “As Is = No Warranty Necessary” was part of Pear Slices 2010 and her short, “Start Happy Endings,” was produced as part of the 2014 Pear Slices. The Tabard Theatre included two of her shorts, “Family Jewels” and “Family Portrait” in the company’s first production of short plays they called “10 in 10.” Broadway West and City Lights have also done staged readings of her plays. City Lights also did a staged reading of her full-length play “SF Seeks M.” She is currently working on adapting a short story she wrote into a play entitled “Necessary Restraint.”
LEAH HALPER
is an award-winning California writer with a quirky global perspective. She finds history, Silicon Valley, and digital life endlessly fascinating fuel for plays about change, ethics, and hubris. Her plays have been widely produced on the West Coast. Her ten-minute Ready was a Heideman Award finalist, and she has been a nine-year member of PlayGround, the Bay Area’s new play incubator, a long-time Dramatist Guild member and an Arts Council Silicon Valley Playwriting Fellow. The Pear Playwrights Guild and Pear Theatre are her home bases.
NEVA HUTCHINSON
is a founding member of the Pear Playwrights Guild. Her writing has appeared on stages in New York and at the Pear. She has had produced plays in Pear Slices and the New Works Festival. She’s now producing and starring in a play that started with the Guild: Raptured: the Disappearance and Discovery of Aimee Semple McPherson, with Anthony Clarvoe as dramaturg. The production is slated for late October/early November at the Phoenix Theatre in San Francisco.
EVAN KOKKILA-SCHUMACHER
is a playwright, actor, and musician from the Midwest. He joined the PPG in 2014 and has had three plays in Pear Slices: “Duelin’ for Keeps,” “The Wheel of Fortune,” and “Not All That Glimmers is Gold.” Plays produced elsewhere include “We Need to Talk” and the full-length punk-rock opera “Don’t Abandon Me.” He also co-founded and wrote for the sketch-comedy group Fireplace Puppies, including a classic about murderous sloths and why you should be afraid. His full-length play “Sojourn” will have its world premiere at the Pear Theatre in March 2019.
MEGHAN MAUGERI
is a writer currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She participated in the Berkeley Rep School of Theatre program and her full-length play Keep had a staged reading at Central Works Theatre. Her short film "Headwind" was an official selection of the 2017 Glendale International Film Festival. Her fiction and screenplays have been finalists in several competitions. Originally from Connecticut, Meghan graduated from Boston College with a degree in literature and worked for several years as a public school teacher.
ELYCE MELMON
Retirement, even from a rewarding teaching career, can be a blast! Lots of time to read and write! Elyce Melmon is no stranger to the Pear stage. Her full-length play Vehicle was produced in 2003. Her works have been included in several Slices and in several Eight Tens at Eight in Santa Cruz. She has been given developmental readings for her longer plays Room Fifteen, Ellipsis and Beyond Measure. In 2013 A King’s Legacy was produced, directed by Jenny Hollingworth with a stellar cast. It was recognized as a stand-out new work in Silicon Valley.
ROSS PETER NELSON
earned his MFA in playwriting from the University of New Orleans. He recently served as playwright-in-residence at Can Serrat. Ross’s most recent full-length productions include Becoming Number Six and Colter’s Hell, and two of his one-acts have been featured at the Spokane Playwrights’ Festival. Over two dozen of his short plays have been produced in the US and overseas; several are published by Heartland Plays. In addition to his dramatic work, Ross is the author of prize-winning short fiction and two technical books. He taught undergraduate playwriting at UNO and is a member of the Dramatists Guild.
BRIDGETTE DUTTA PORTMAN
has been writing for most of her life. Her interest in playwriting, began around 2009. Since then she has had nearly 30 of her plays produced or read around the San Francisco Bay Area, across the country, and overseas. She has a special interest in writing plays that pose existential questions: How do people create meaning and purpose in life? Does free will exist? How do we deal with grief, loss, and the knowledge that one day we will all die? She also loves writing plays inspired by mythology and classical Greek drama, and has written several plays in verse. She has a humorous side, too, and enjoys writing silly, absurdist comedies.
DOUGLAS REES
has been writing plays for about eight years, but is better known for his works for children and teens. His short plays have been produced in several Bay Area theatres as well as venues in Los Angeles and Panama. He is the author of several longer works, including Kidnap! Or The Abduction of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth and Company, which received a staged reading at The Pear Theatre, and Desperate Hearts, which has received stated readings at The Pear and at City Lights in San Jose. When he is not writing plays, picture books, or young adult novels, he works as a librarian.
BARRY SLATER
has had, over the past five years, plays performed in New York, LA, and the Bay Area. Although the settings vary—a seedy Vegas hotel, a pristine campsite in the Sierras, an art gallery with a central controversial sculpture — the themes all explore the struggles, failures, joys and redemptive qualities of human relationships. He continues to practice as a family physician and the courage and friendship of his patients has been an ongoing inspiration for his plays and his life. Barry currently lives and practices in northern California with his garden artist wife and flurry of kids and grandkids.
Carol Wolf
has had her plays seen on both coasts and on five continents, and include The Terrible Experiment of Jonathan Fish, Daughter of France, Day/BlackNight/Morning, Walking on Bones, and The Thousandth Night, which won the London Fringe First, the Bay Area Critic’s Circle Award, and an L.A. Drama Critic’s Circle Award. Translated into French, this summer it will be seen, as La Millieme Nuit, at the Avignon Theatre Festival. Wolf taught Master’s classes in Playwriting at Manhattan College, Mills College, and Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced classes in playwriting at Foothill College, the UC Santa Cruz Extension Program, and Mills College. She wrote the the scripts for the blockbuster video games Blood Omen II: Legacy of Kain, and Legacy of Kain: Defiance. She co-founded the micro-budget film company Paw Print Studios, for which she wrote and directed two feature films, The Valley of Fear, and Far from the Sea, and directed and edited the feature documentary, Letters to my Grandchildren. Her books include Playwriting: The Merciless Craft; Comprehensive Techniques for Mastering Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced Playwriting, and her novels, Summoning, and Binding, Books One and Two of The Moon Wolf Saga, Savage Island, Voyages of the Shep, and Coyote Run (with Eric Elliott). The Book of Lost Days was released in March, 2019, by Short Fuse. Wolf lives in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas in California with her husband, two border collies, and a varying number of sheep.