Two world premiere plays appearing at Playwrights’ Arena this year are written by School of Dramatic Arts alumni. Both plays will premiere during the 2019 season, Southernmost by Mary Lyon Kamitaki MFA ’18 from April 6-29 and Like/Share by Janine Salinas Schoenberg MFA ‘07 from Sept. 21-Oct. 14.

Southernmost follows a daughter as she returns home to Hawaii for vacation. However, her father is appalled by her modern lifestyle on the mainland and the loss of her rural Hawaiian roots. With a lava flow impending, a conflict of ideas ensues in what will be battle for both of their ways of life.

Kamitaki is a lauded playwright whose plays have been named semifinalists in the Bay Area Playwrights Festival and the Eugene O’Neil Theater Center’s 2017 National Playwrights Conference. Past works include How to Survive a Millionaire and Spending the Night.

Like/Share takes inspiration from today’s headlines, as the filming of an unconscious female college student being molested in an alley way by two men becomes viral. What seems clear at first becomes blurred by different points of view.

Schoenberg’s play The Anatomy of Gazellas had its world premiere at Playwrights’ Arena as well. Her work has been produced at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Center Theatre Group, South Coast Repertory, the Los Angeles Theatre Center and the Atwater Village Theatre. She is a recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship and a Project Involve Fellowship in Screenwriting. Her short film, Jenny & Lalo, was awarded the Nancy Malone Award in directing at the AFI Directing Workshop for Women. She is currently the executive story editor for the TV series Riverdale. Previously she was the story editor for Snowfall and a writer for American Crime.