Artists

Associate playwrights

Jessica Andrewartha

Jessica Andrewartha is a Seattle-based writer of more than six full length plays. Choices People Make won the Neukom Institute inaugural Literary Arts Award for Playwriting and received workshops in the Vox Festival at Dartmouth and at Northern Stage as part of the award. Light Delay was produced at Free Spirit Theatre in the UK in May 2019 after receiving a staged reading at the Ground and Field Theatre Festival at UC, Davis and a workshop with Parley in Seattle.

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. Her short plays have been produced in Seattle, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Dallas, and London. Jessica is an alumna of SMU.

Lenore Bensinger

Lenore Bensinger is the author of several prize-winning plays produced in Seattle, Tacoma, Vancouver, CA., LA and St. Louis. She has authored produced plays for local and US festivals. Her solo show, A GHOST STORY, is published by Broadway Play Publishing in FACING FORWARD. She co-authored the nationally touring show, DINOSAURUS, with Ed Mast. Her musical, BEHIND the VEIL, was produced at LATW. She authored the book for MEANWHILE, a musical with a time-traveling Einstein; workshopped in Seattle. Her playwrights’ radio show, NEW WAVES, ran on KUOW until the Iraq War. She produced the first U.S. Fringe Festival in Seattle. In the last year, she wrote and directed her first short narrative film and is currently at work on creating a documentary about Public Health Nurses. Other professional skills include journalism, free-lance editing and ghost-writing.

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.

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, Rebel Kat, and Parley Productions (Rebecca Tourino Collinsworth’s cherubin). 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 Water Over My Head, Crooked Grace, Magpie and Marita, Crocodile Plays the Drum, The Orchid and the Skull, and Triceratops Love Song. In her work, she enjoys pondering questions of redemption, 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.

Susan McNally

Susan McNally is a filmmaker and a playwright. For her work in film and television, she received EMMY, CINE and TELLY Awards, as well as a development grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for an independent feature film. As a playwright, she is a founding member of Parley and five of her full-length plays have been performed in Parley workshop productions. Sue’s short plays have appeared at various local festivals, including Forward Flux and the Seattle Play Series.

Julieta Vitullo

Julieta is an Argentine born and raised bilingual 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 for two decades. Her writing has beenpublished in the U.S., England, Ireland, Argentina, Brazil and Spain.She is the co-writer and protagonist of the award-winning film La forma exacta de las islas. Julieta started writing theater in 2017 under the guidance of Elizabeth Heffron and then with Rebecca Tourino Collinsworth. Since then, she’s written a handful of plays, short and long. Her most recent full length, Two Big Black Bags, received a first reading at the Multicultural Playwrights Festival REPRESENT and will have a workshop production at ACT in the summer of 2019, co-presented by Parley, eSe Teatro and ACTLab. She’s the Literary Manager of eSe Teatro, and a member of the Dramatist Guild and LMDA. She’s worked as a dramaturg with eSe, Thriving Artists and As If Theater.
Julieta lives in Shoreline with her husband and their three multilingual boys, the youngest of whom gets the award to the kid who’s spent the most hours in writing and rehearsal studios, and attending readings and plays with mamá. www.JulietaVitullo.com

Celeste Mari Williams

Celeste Mari Williams has been an associate playwright with Parley for over five years. With Parley’s support she has had workshop performances of Amelia’s Wall, A Fine Line, Best Friend, and Gills! Gills! Gills!, as well as a full production of Sex and the Apocalypse as part of Parley’s Shorts Fest. Celeste has also written for SIS Productions with Revealed, Insatiable, LAAFF, and Represent (including We Too!). Celeste’s full length play, My Samurai, was featured in UNLEASHED 2018 with Pork Filled Productions. Her one-act play, Beaver Town, was showcased last month as part of Mirror Stage’s Expand Upon series on immigration. Most recently Celeste was one of the playwrights for Infinity Box Theatre Project's CENTRIFUGE 2019 with her ten minute play, Resistant. Celeste is thrilled that the full production of Gills! Gills! Gills! (3 short plays about mating in the deep) will be performed at 12th Ave Arts this summer, co- produced by ReAct Theater and Parley Productions.

Rebecca Tourino Collinsworth
Creator/Artistic Director

Rebecca is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley (BA, English), the University of California, Irvine (MFA, Acting), and the Pacific Conservatory Theatre. At twenty, she made her professional acting debut at the rebuilt Globe Theatre in London, and she 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 helmed over 50 world premieres in the last five years alone.

A Latinx homeschooling mama of two, Rebecca teaches playwriting, acting, and voice through her tiny home studio, Salvo.