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Our 2021 Artists in Residence
Thanks to the generosity of the Noel Coward Foundation and the Peter Shaffer Estate, we are pleased to introduce you to our three artists in residence this summer. Each playwright has been invited to spend a week of residency on the Cape.
Rehana Lew Mirza
Rehana Lew Mirza is thrilled to be a Summer ‘21 writer in residence at The Cape Cod Theatre Project, supported by the Noel Coward Foundation, especially while her husband Mike Lew develops his play Tiny Father at CCTP. Rehana’s plays include: Hatefuck (WP/Colt Coeur); A People’s Guide to History in the Time of Here and Now (Primary Stages Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation’s Women Playwrights Commission; AADA workshop production); Soldier X (Ma-Yi; Brooklyn College; NYSCA/Lark commission); Tomorrow, Inshallah (Living Room Theater, Kansas City; Storyworks/HuffPost commission); Neighborhood Watch (NNPN/InterAct commission) and Barriers (Desipina, Asian American Theater Company.) She and Mike jointly received a six-year Mellon Foundation National Playwright residency administered in partnership with Howlround at Ma-Yi Theater, as well as the 2020 Kleban Award for most promising librettist for the book to the musical Bhangin’ It (with composer/lyricist Sam Willmott.) The musical received the Richard Rodgers Award and will premiere at La Jolla Playhouse in 2022.
Additional Awards/Honors include an HBO Access Fellowship, NYFA Fellowship, Lilly Award (Stacey Mindich “Go Write A Play”), E.S.T. Sloan commission, and a TCG/New Georges Fellowship. BFA: NYU, Dramatic Writing; MFA: Columbia University, Playwriting.
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Abe Koogler
Abe Koogler‘s plays include Fulfillment Center (Manhattan Theatre Club, Red Orchid Theatre), Kill Floor (Lincoln Center Theatre, American Theater Company), Blue Skies Process (Goodman Theatre’s New Stages Festival), Lisa, My Friend (Kitchen Dog Theater), Advance Man (UTNT), and Aspen Ideas (Studio Theatre, postponed due to COVID). He is the winner of an Obie Award for Playwriting, the Dramatists Guild’s Lanford Wilson Award, the Williamstown Theatre Festival’s Weissberger Award, and the Kennedy Center’s Paula Vogel Award. He was a member of the 2019-2020 Rita Goldberg Workshop at the Lark. Koogler has had workshops and residencies at the Playwrights’ Center, Great Plains Theatre Conference, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Blue Mountain Center, American Conservatory Theatre, and SPACE on Ryder Farm, among others. His work is published by Dramatists Play Service and Bloomsbury. He received an MFA from UT-Austin’s Michener Center for Writers and is a graduate of Juilliard’s Playwrights Program. With playwrights Gabrielle Reisman and Katie Bender, he co-founded Underbelly, a theatre company that produces immersive works in found spaces. Koogler also works as a political speechwriter. He was born and raised in Washington State.
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Sanaz Toossi
Sanaz Toossi is an Iranian-American playwright from Orange County, California. Her plays include Wish You Were Here (Williamstown Audible 2020; Playwrights Horizons production forthcoming) and English (Roundabout Underground production forthcoming; Weissberger New Play Award; Kilroys’ List 2019). She is currently under commission at the Atlantic Theater (Launch commission; Toulmin grant), Williamstown Theatre Festival, Manhattan Theatre Club, South Coast Repertory, IAMA Theatre and Oregon Shakespeare Festival (American Revolutions Cycle). Sanaz is a member of Youngblood and the Middle Eastern American Writers Lab at the Lark, and an alum of Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writers’ Group. She was the 2019 P73 Playwriting Fellow and a recipient of the 2020 Steinberg Playwright Award. MFA: NYU Tisch. TV: 5 Women; A League of Their Own. Sanaz is a proud child of immigrants.
