About the Playwrights

Paul Braverman (Brick House) is a Bay Area playwright and actor. His plays have received dozens of productions and readings in Bay Area venues, as well as nationally and internationally. Pear audiences may know Paul from the Frankie Payne trilogy, or from his 20+ plays from previous Slices productions. His short play The Alpha Bindleman was a finalist for the 2009 Heideman Award, and he’s been a wild-card finalist at Short & Sweet in Sydney, Australia several times, most recently with Stuck in the Middle (The Hot Dog play). He and his wife Robyn co-produce The Pear Theatre’s annual festival of new play readings, Fresh Produce, having presented over 30 play readings since 2014. Paul is a member of The Dramatists Guild of America and is a co-founding member of The Pear Theatre Playwright Guild.

Cherielyn Ferguson (Backyard) is pleased to be included in Pear Slices 2024. She’s an East Bay playwright whose plays have been produced and read at PlayGround-SF, Fargo Moorhead Community Theatre, Pan Theatre, Shawnee Playhouse, Chameleon Theatre Circle, Adams State University, Monster Box Theatre, and at Australia’s Gemco Players. This spring her work was featured at The Storefront Theatre and at the Lantern Theatre in Sheffield, UK. She’s a member of the Dramatists Guild, Theatre Bay Area, Berkeley’s Play Café, the Playwrights Center, the Pear Playwrights’ Guild, The Playwrights' Center of San Francisco, and PlayGround-SF’s 2023-24 writers pool. She is an alumna of the Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive.

Christine C. Hsu (Cleaning Up) is an playwright, essayist, poet, and short story writer based in San Francisco. She has been published by The Bold Italic, xoJane, KQED, ABC News Radio Online, Yellow Arrow Journal, Lunchbox Moments, Slipform Poetry Anthology, Mixed Mag, DropOut Literary Magazine, NonBinary Review, Nonwhite and Woman Anthology, Red Ogre Review, Soft Star Magazine, and Livina Press. Her plays have been performed by the Negro Ensemble Company, Crafton Hills College, Houston Community College - Stafford, Pear Theatre, Enterwine, The Playwrights’ Center of San Francisco, Pan Theater, Gather by the Ghost Light's inaugural Off-Broad Street Short Play Festival, and the Community Bake-Off Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival. The Writers Grotto of SF selected her as a Rooted & Written Fellow for Screenplay. Her play, FAITH, will be performed at the Short Plays Festival by the Black Theatre Troupe of Upstate New York in June of 2024. @HsuChristineC

Greg Lam (Juliet’s Post Credits Scene) is a playwright, screenwriter, podcaster and board game designer who lives in the Bay Area. His play Chaplin and Keaton on the Set of Limelight debuts at the Pear Theatre next month! Greg is the co-founder of the Asian-American Playwright Collective, a member of The Pulp Stage Writer's Room, Playground SF, and the administrator of The Pear Theatre's Playwright Guild. Greg writes, largely, full-length epics which combine grinding moral quandaries with science fiction, short plays that are comic romps, and one-minute plays which are incredibly depressing. For more about Greg, see https://greglam.wixsite.com/home.

Sophia Naylor’s (The Tarot Reading | Accidental Immortal) plays include For A Brighter Tomorrow, Frankenstein: Unbound, Blood and Dolly, and Boxed. Her works have been produced and/or developed by the Pear Theatre, Broad Horizons, Women in SOLOdarity, PCSF, MN Fringe Festival, and Local Color. Sophia co-founded the murder mystery theater company The Clue Collective. She served as CEO for six years, as well as writing and customizing shows. She is a member of the Pear Playwrights Guild. Her work has also been published in numerous literary journals, including Qu, Literature Today, and Fresh Words. She earned an Honors Theater degree from Swarthmore College, specializing in playwriting, dramaturgy, acting, and Shakespeare. You can find her online at sfnaylor.com.

Bridgette Dutta Portman (Fertile Soil) is a playwright, teacher, and novelist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. More than two dozen of her plays have been produced locally, nationally, and internationally. She is president of the Pear Theatre board of directors and a member of the Pear Playwrights' Guild, the 2022-23 PlayGround writers pool, and the Dramatists' Guild. She received the 2023 June Anne Baker Prize from PlayGround, and has been a finalist for the Bay Area Playwrights' Festival, the Theatre Bay Area TITAN award, the PlayPenn Conference, the Kentucky Women’s Theatre Conference Prize for Women Writers, the New Dramatists playwrights' residency, and more. She holds a PhD in political science (UC Irvine, 2011) and an MFA in creative writing (Spalding University, 2018). She has taught playwriting and creative writing to a variety of age groups, and recently joined the faculty at UC Berkeley's College Writing Programs.

Teresa Veramendi (I’m Not Her) is a Basque-American multidisciplinary theatre artist, playwright, director, performer, and community facilitator who utilizes the arts as a tool to disrupt social injustices. She manifests her political interrogations of gender, ability, nationality, class, and climate change into visually poetic, documentary, and historical theatre projects that have been produced locally, nationally, and internationally. A recipient of the Norma Elia Cantú Creative Writing Award, Veramendi has lectured at St. Lawrence University and currently teaches at San Jose State University. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and their two cats.