About the Producer & Playwrights

After a lengthy career in voiceover acting, Robyn Ginsburg Braverman (Producer) pivoted to theatre arts in 2002. Since its founding, Robyn has supported Pear Theatre, from co-founding through board membership and beyond. A lifelong fan of new works and artist development, she has been involved for seventeen years with Pear’s annual short play festival, Pear Slices, from naming through producing, designing, and directing. Robyn has brought Pear audiences dozens of full-length developmental readings of new works from the Pear Playwrights Guild, originally happening throughout the season. In 2014, along with her playwright husband, Paul, she co-created Fresh Produce as a multi-day event; she currently serves as director and production coordinator.

Paul Braverman 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. He was a Heideman Award finalist in 2009 for The Alpha Bindleman, and several times has been a wild-card finalist at the world’s largest short play festival - Short & Sweet in Sydney, Australia. Paul is a member of The Dramatists Guild of America, The Playwrights’ Center of SF, and is a co-founding member of The Pear Theatre Playwrights Guild. He and his wife Robyn produce and direct Fresh Produce, a series of developmental readings of full length plays by Guild members, many of which have gone on to receive productions at The Pear and elsewhere.

Cherielyn Ferguson is pleased to return to this year’s Pear Slices. An East Bay playwright, her plays have been produced and read in the U. S. and internationally. Recent productions include This Flag at Playwrights’ Round Table of Orlando, Florida and Have a Seat which appeared in the Queens Short Play Festival in NYC as well as at the Lantern Theatre in Sheffield, England. In June she heads to Alaska to participate in the Valdez Theatre Conference where her short play, A Girl Who Acts Like That, will receive a reading. Cherielyn is a member of the Dramatists Guild and is a past member of PlayGround-SF’s writers pool. She is an alumna of the Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive. https://newplayexchange.org/users/29349/cherielyn-ferguson

Greg Lam is a playwright, screenwriter, podcaster and board game designer who lives in the Bay Area. He 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. His full-length epic Last Ship to Proxima Centauri premiered digitally at Kitchen Dog Theater in March 2021 and onstage at Portland Stage Co. in March 2022 after winning the Clauder Competition. His full-length play Repossessed received its world premiere at Theatre Conspiracy in 2018. His satiric serial play series Treachery Island premiered at The Pulp Stage in 2023. Chaplin & Keaton on the Set of Limelight premiered at The Pear Theatre in 2024.

Sophia Naylor’s works have been produced and/or developed by the Pear Theatre, Broad Horizons, Women Playwrights Series, Napa Valley Players, Women in SOLOdarity, Playwrights Center of SF, 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 shows. She’s the winner of New Voices, New Plays, New York (2023) and Valley Players Reading Series (2024), and was a finalist for the Susan Glaspell Award (2024). She earned an Honors Theater degree from Swarthmore College, specializing in playwriting, dramaturgy, acting, and Shakespeare. You can find her online at sfnaylor.com.

Erin Marie Panttaja is a Bay Area playwright. She received a Planet Earth New Play Festival commission based on her Best of PlayGround short play Preapocalyptica. Her large-cast plays for young audiences and casts include Don’t Let The Pigeon Vote, Pokemon Gruff and The Globe, the Crown, and the MegaPod. She is a June Anne Baker and TITAN award winner. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, Theatre Bay Area and the Pear Writers Guild. She has worked on ocean-going robots and video games, and graduated from MIT. She has two thirteen-year-olds, a ten-year-old, and a cat.

Bridgette Dutta Portman 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.

About the Directors

Bryan Moriarty is relatively new to directing, but has a longstanding connection with the Pear. This year’s Pear Slices marks his seventh production at the Pear, following his previous appearances as an actor in last season’s production of Noises Off, and in Love Letters—during which he shared the stage with his wife Vanessa Alvarez. It is also his second time working on Slices, having last participated in 2017. When not acting or directing, Bryan works in video production at Apple, and spends time with Vanessa and their dog Hugo. He is also grateful to Vanessa for her constant love and support.