Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition: 2016/2017

Winner: Mansa Ra 

Too Heavy For Your Pocket 

Mansa Ra is an Afro-Futurist writer who brings a soulful new voice to the American Theatre. His plays are poetic reflections of Black life in the American South. From his award winning debut Too Heavy for Your Pocket to his latest play … what the end will be which was hailed by The New York Times as “everything that is meant when we say that Black lives matter.”  His other plays include In the Southern Breeze, Shutter Sisters, and The Dancing Granny. Ra’s screen credits include NBC’s New Amsterdam and Tyler Perry’s Ruthless. He is currently commissioned by The Roundabout Theater and Alabama Shakespeare Festival. He has won numerous prizes and awards including the Alliance/Kendeda National Competition. He has commissions with Hattiloo Theatre, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, the Old Globe Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, and the Roundabout Theatre Company. 

He was educated at Morehouse College and Spelman College before earning an M.F.A. in Playwriting from the Geffen School of Drama at Yale. He also taught theater studies and creative writing for the Playwriting Center at Emory University. He currently lives in Memphis where he writes at sunset on the Mississippi River. 

Emily Feldman 

Lover in Tableau 

Emily Feldman is a playwright living in New York City. Emily's play, The Best We Could (a family tragedy), premiered at Manhattan Theatre Club in 2023, directed by Daniel Aukin. It received an Edgerton New Play Award, and Emily served as the Tow-Playwright in Residence at Manhattan Theatre Club from 2019-2020. Emily's work has been generously supported by MacDowell, The Jerome Foundation, The Kilroys, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Page 73, The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, The Playwrights Center, The Kennedy Center's Paula Vogel Award, The Broadway Women's Fund, The New Harmony Project, New York Stage and Film, Montana Rep, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Roundabout Theatre Company, and other theaters and development organizations. Emily is working on new play commissions from Manhattan Theatre Club and Playwrights Horizons and a TV project with AMC/Dwight Street Books. She is a proud member of the WGA. She's an alum of Middlebury College, UC San Diego, and The Juilliard School. 

Lindsey Ferrentino 

Moonlight on the Bayou 

Lindsey Ferrentino is a prolific playwright who writes with, according to The New York Times, “a muscular empathy which seeks to enter the minds of people for whom life is often a struggle of heroic proportions.” Whether writing about a female burn survivor or the first leading role for a person with Down Syndrome, Lindsey has been called, “a brave playwright of dauntless conviction whose unflinching portraits are hard to come by outside of journalism." 

Her produced plays include Ugly Lies the Bone (Roundabout Theatre Company, The National Theatre, UK, NYT Critics Pick), the “barrier breaking” Amy and the Orphans (Roundabout Theatre Company), This Flat Earth (Playwrights Horizons), and The Year to Come (La Jolla Playhouse). She is currently under commission from Roundabout, Manhattan Theatre Club, and South Coast Rep. She is writing the book on a number of new musicals: The Queen of Versailles with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, starring Kristin Chenoweth; The Artist, based on the film by the same title, directed by Drew McConie.  Lindsey is also a screenwriter with various projects in development. Most recently announced, she is adapting and directing her play Amy and the Orphans, produced by Aggregate Pictures and the screenplay for the film Not Fade Away, for Annapurna Pictures. David O. Russell and John Krasinski are producing.  

Lindsey is the recipient of the 2016 Kesselring Prize, Laurents/Hatcher Citation of Excellence, ASCAP Cole Porter Playwriting Prize, Paul Newman Drama Award, 2015 Kilroys List, finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn, Catalyst Award for Entertainment Industry Excellence, NYU Distinguished Young Alumna Award, nominated for the Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award, and is the only two-time finalist for the Kendeda Playwriting Prize. She holds a B.F.A. from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, and has two M.F.A.'s in playwriting from Hunter College and The Yale School of Drama. 

Bennett Fisher 

Borealis 

Bennett Fisher is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. His plays include Shelter, Candlestick, Damascus (Samuel Goldwyn Award, O'Neill Conference finalist), Borealis (Alliance/Kendeda Prize finalist), Don't Be Evil, Campo Maldito, and the immersive theatrical experience The Speakeasy. Other immersive projects include private events for First Person Travel and content for The Unreal Garden, presented at the 2019 E3 Conference. He is currently developing film and television projects with Bill Mechanic (former CEO of Fox), Simon West (Con Air, Laura Croft: Tomb Raider), Constantin Films (the Resident Evil franchise), Atar Studios, and more. In addition to his creative work, Bennett has designed and taught storytelling seminars for Airbnb's Product Team and works with private clients as a communication and writing coach. 

Bennett's theatrical work has been presented and produced by the Magic Theater, the House Theater of Chicago, Strawdog Theater Company, Kansas City Repertory, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, La Jolla Playhouse's WOW Festival, Oregon Contemporary Theater,  Alliance Theatre, the Kennedy Center MFA Playwrights Workshop, Florida Repertory Theater, the Martin E. Segel Center, Burbage Theater Company, People of Interest, Campo Santo, Oakland Theater Project, Theater Emory, the Unicorn Theater, Sleepwalkers Theater, New Conservatory, the Cutting Ball Theater, Custom Made Theatre Company, and others. 

​Bennett is currently a resident playwright at Playwright's Foundation, a company member of Campo Santo, and a former Shank Fellow and Associate Artist at Victory Gardens Theatre in Chicago. Bennett is professionally represented by the Gersh Agency and source management + production. He received his MFA in playwriting from UC San Diego. 

Mora Harris 

SpaceGirl  

Mora V. Harris is a playwright and educator based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  Since being selected as a finalist for the Alliance/Kendeda Award in 2016, her alien comedy Space Girl has received 26  productions in schools, colleges, and community and professional theaters throughout the United States, including The Weird Sisters Theater Project (Atlanta) and The National Women's Theatre Festival (Raleigh). It is published by Playscripts Inc., alongside Mircalla—a TYA adaptation of the gothic vampire novel Carmilla, and her contributions to two ten-minute play anthologies for teens. She is a founding member of the Pittsbrugh Public Theater's Playwrights Collective and her work has also received development and support through City Theatre Company, The Hangar Theatre, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Pittsburgh Opera, the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, and the Kennedy Center’s Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center Fellowship. She was a two-time National Finalist for the Kennedy Center's John Cauble Award for Outstanding Short Play for her plays Boxed In and Ondine's Curse, and a Second Place winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Script Competition for her screenplay, Egghead Genius. Recent productions include Indoor Cats (Red Theater) and The Astronots (Bloomsburg University). She holds a B.A. in Creative Writing and Theater from Oberlin College and an M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing from Carnegie Mellon University. She teaches Middle School Literary Arts at Pittsburgh CAPA 6-12. and is Pittsburgh's Regional Co-Representative for the Dramatist Guild.