Artists

Associate playwrights.

Jessica Andrewartha

Jessica is a Seattle-based writer whose short plays have been produced in Seattle, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and London. Most recently, her full length play Choices People Make was read at Akropolis Performance Lab’s New Year/New Play Salon. Other full length plays include Enter Starlighter and W.H.I.P., which have both received staged readings at Theatre Battery, Where Do We Start?, which was read at Seattle Playwrights Circle, and Ready to Start, which was read at Southern Methodist University. Jessica is an alumnus of SMU and a member of the Dramatists Guild.

Lenore Bensinger

Lenore is a Seattle-based playwright, dramaturg and director. Her plays have been produced in LA, St. Louis, Vancouver, B.C. and DC, her home town. She is a recovering journalist, using her skills to devise OIL and WATER, inspired by the enduring legacy of Standing Rock's "Water is Life."

Tré Calhoun

Tré moved to Seattle in 2015, after graduating from Cornell University. There, he studied computer science and theatre and developed his interest in solo performance and intersectional theatre. In Seattle, his writing has been presented in the 2016 Seattle Fringe Festival and with the Northwest Playwrights Alliance; he has also acted with Book-It Repertory Theatre and Forward Flux Productions.

Drew Combs

Drew is an actor and playwright based in Seattle. He graduated from Cornish College of the Arts in 2014, BFA Theatre, with a concentration in Original Works. His senior project, Book of Daniel, was selected for the Cornish New Works Festival and staged as a reading directed by Wayne Rawley. Favorite onstage credits include The Word in Ballard Underground's Battle of the Bards, Paul/Marita in Parley's Magpie and Marita, and Josh in John Baxter is a Switch Hitter at the Intiman. Drew loves to create and participate in new work, and is stoked to be a member of Parley.

Brian Dang

Brian is ecstatic that he gets the opportunity to work with Parley. He is currently going through his second year at the University of Washington as an undergraduate majoring in English Literature and Drama. He has been involved with theater since high school, and ever since making it to the college scene has dived head first into designing shows for UW’s Undergraduate Theater Society and the UW School of Drama. He loves all the bits and pieces of theater including and not limited to sound and light design, playwriting, and acting. However, it has been a childhood dream of his to someday become a writer, so he is looking forward to experiencing and being a part of so many new works in the community.

And last but not least, he likes cats and bread (separately).

Ryan Fields

Ryan is a Seattle native and theatre artist. As an actor he has been on stage at Intiman, Book-it, Balagan, Theatre 9/12 and other various theatres in and around Seattle. He has done film work in various commercials, small independent films and NBC's Grimm. Ryan is proud to be a member of Parley. He admires Parley's commitment to make theatre accessible to all and to tell stories for people who otherwise may not have a voice.

Amber Hughes

Amber is a Seattle native with a desire to create theatre that challenges and changes communities. She has trained at Profiles Theatre in Chicago, with Theatre of the Oppressed NYC, and Freehold Theatre. She currently works as a mental health therapist where she is constantly reminded of the healing power of storytelling. She hopes to continue training and utilizing Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed in her ongoing work.

Katherine Jett

Katherine is a Seattle-based performer and writer. Her interests include reimagined classical theatre, theatre for young audiences, little-known history, dramaturgy, and highly physical interdisciplinary performance work. She has performed with Book-It Repertory, Greenstage, Seattle Immersive, Thalia’s Umbrella, and Rebel Kat Productions. Her original musical about Bigfoot (in collaboration with composer Adam Quillian), Squatch! The Musical, received its inaugural production at Centerstage Theatre in the Spring of 2017 and won a 2017 People’s Choice Gregory for Best New Play. Katherine holds a BFA in Theatre: Original Works from Cornish College of the Arts (2011) and is a proud artistic associate of the DUENDE ensemble. www.duende-ensemble.com

Barbara Lindsay

Barbara Lindsay’s first full length play, FREE, won the NY Drama League's 1989 Playwrighting Competition and was given its premiere production in London in 1991. Since then there have been almost 400 national and international productions of her plays and monologues. Her full length play I-2195 won the Women in the Arts Award at UM St. Louis and was produced there in 2005. Her short play HERE TO SERVE YOU won the 2008 Goshen Peace Play Prize. In 2011 she was Playwright-in-Residence for New Voices for the Theater, a two week playwriting intensive for teens produced annually by SPARC (School of the Performing Arts in the Richmond Community) in VA. Babs is a fifth generation Californian living in Seattle, WA, married to an amazing man, and ridiculously happy

Hannah Merrill

Hannah Merrill is a devoted Seattle resident, and a (sometimes exasperated) student of the city's faults and virtues. Her workshopped plays include Triceratops Love Song, The Orchid and the Skull, Crocodile Plays the Drum, Magpie and Marita, and Crooked Grace. In her work, she enjoys pondering questions of morality, family, gender, and imagination. She is a proud student at Goddard College. She also loves meandering walks, feminist fantasy books, gender-bent Shakespeare, and her friends and family. Photo credit: Sharon D'Amico.

Susan McNally

Susan McNally is a filmmaker, fiction writer, and playwright. Her work in narrative film has received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and her large body of work as a travel producer/writer/director for PBS has garnered numerous awards including EMMY, Lowell Thomas Journalism, TELLY and CINE awards. Sue’s play, Hearts, was Parley’s inaugural production at the Bathhouse Theatre in March 2014. Pink Rabbits, a play about love, loss and art, had its Parley workshop in October of 2015 at West of Lenin. She has/had short plays put up about town, too.

Julieta Vitullo

Julieta is an Argentine born and raised writer who first came to the U.S. on a Fulbright. She received an MA in English and a PhD in Latin American literature from Rutgers, and taught culture and language in college and high school for two decades. In 2012, she published a book on the fictions produced in the aftermath of the Falklands War, and she finished working on the award winning film The Exact Shape of the Islands, which screened across the Americas and Europe. Her articles on literature and culture have appeared in books and journals in the U.S and abroad. She is the author of two short plays that she wrote while taking Elizabeth Heffron's Playwriting I at Freehold, and of the full length play About Marilyn, which she created with the support and encouragement of her wonderful Salvo II/III teacher and classmates.

Julieta is the mother of three multilingual and multicultural young boys. Author of a novel and countless short stories in Spanish, she’s excited to be undergoing the unique process of becoming a creative writer in English. And she’s thrilled to be doing it within Parley! www.JulietaVitullo.com

Celeste Mari Williams

Celeste has written poetry, short stories, and scripts for stage and film. One of her early credits was an English adaptation of "Cinderella" for Mikhail Baryshnikov’s Stories from My Childhood. She has since written a short film, Ball-e, which she also directed, My Frankenstein Man, and Dear Valentine for the Shoreline Shorts. She is a member of the SiS Writers Group where she wrote Leanne’s Bon Dance for the "Revealed - Celebrating Women" tour of the International District of Seattle and the short one-act, Someday My Prince Won’t Come for Insatiable! Celeste is proud to be an associate playwright for Parley, with whom her full-length play, Amelia’s Wall, was showcased last spring and her next play, A Fine Line, will be showcased in May 2016. Celeste is grateful to Rebecca Tourino Collinsworth and the members of Parley as well as all its supporters for helping her release her creative voice.

Rebecca Tourino Collinsworth
Creator/Artistic Director
A mother of two, Rebecca is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley (BA, Hill Scholarship, English), the University of California, Irvine (fellowship recipient, MFA, Acting), and the Pacific Conservatory Theatre (Santa Maria Arts Council Grant). She made her professional acting debut as Hero in Much Ado About Nothing at the rebuilt Globe Theatre in London, and has since acted in regional theaters all over the United States. As a teaching artist, she’s worked with the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at UC Irvine; the Alliance Theater in Atlanta; the New York Film Academy in Soho; Seattle University; Meadows School of the Arts at SMU; Freehold Theatre Studio/Lab; Freehold’s Ensemble Training Intensive; and served for three years as Resident Playwright at the Washington Correctional Center for Women as part of the Engaged Theater Residency. Her plays have been produced in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, and elsewhere at venues such as the American Theatre of Actors, Center Stage, and the Barrow Group. As a director, she has focused almost exclusively on developing new work. She is the creator and artistic director of Parley, a playwrights’ group, where she mentors the development of new theatrical works by emerging local writers and produces them in workshop form for public audiences. She currently teaches playwriting, acting, and voice through her studio, Salvo.