The Playwrights' Lab is the new plays development arm of 142 Throckmorton and includes a dozen Bay Area playwrights who meet regularly to discuss and critique each other's work. All readings are produced with professional actors and directors and observe the Actors Equity Staged Reading code.

For information or questions about the Playwrights Lab please email playwrightslab@142throckmortontheatre.org

Current members of Playwrights' Lab are:

Charles Brousse: Senior Critic for the Marin Independent Journal; artistic consultant to Mill Valley Live Arts; prize-winning playwright; founding artistic director of Theater ARtists of Marin and specialist in new play development.

Brad Erickson: playwright and theatre administrator; Executive Director of Theatre Bay Aea; the non-profit member organization serving Bay Aera theatres; dance companies and other performing arts groups and individuals. His THE WAR AT HOME, seen as a reading of a short play in the Lab's first Writers with Attitude and developed into a full-length play, was produced at New Conservatory Theatre Center in October/November, 2006.

Dyke Garrison: playwright, actor and director; former president of the Board of the Playwrights Foundation; author of short pieces as well as full length works including a show about Pearl Buck, for and with Valerie Harper on Broadway, and a play with music based on the life and music of Ella Fitzgeralds at TheaterWorks in Hartford, Conn. summer, 2005. This work is slated for productions at San Jose Rep and San Diego Rep.

Dan Harder: playwright, essayist, poet, screenwriter, children's book writer. Dan has worked as a cowboy in California, a truck driver in Oregon, a ski instructor in Switzerland, and a successful restaurateur in San Francisco. He currently teaches at International High School, and writes essays for the Los Angeles Times on a variety of subjects.

Lynne Kaufman: 14 full length plays which have won numerous awards and have been premiered at the Magic, TheatreWorks, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Fountain Theatre, Florida Studio, and the Abingdon Theatre; prizes and awards include the Will Glickman Award, NEA Fund for New American Plays, Dramalog, and the William Inge Festival Award. She also has three published novels to her credit.

John F. Levin: many plays and screenplays to his credit, including PACHECO, the story of the Seminole Wars for Warner Brothers (Danny Glover, producer); DUST IN THE WIND (Wayne Wang, director; Oliver Stone, producer); SOUTH OF MARKET for American Zoetrope, (Francis Ford Coppola, producer); VERACRUZ, premiered at Pear Theatre in Mountain View, 2004; 1741, the musical, with music and lyrics by Bruce Barthol, presented as a staged reading at the Throckmorton. His new play SNOWBIRDS is scheduled for presentation this fall; his novel, THE GREAT DIVIDE (with co-author F.R. Robinson) was published in 2004.

Jonathan Luskin: has a commission from the Magic Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for EARLY ADOPTER, a short play on nanotechnology. He has been a member of PlayGround for five seasons and his play AEGIS was a 2004 Emerging Playwright Award winner. He is also the founder of Take My Ball and Go Home, a playwriting workshop. He is co-founder of Flying Moose Pictures, a video production company where he writes, directs, and produces narrative, documentary, corporate and music videos, as well as digital media for live performances.

Kenin Rabin: recipient of a Marin Arts Council Fiction grant, a Playground fellowship, an Associate Residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts, and a commission from Marin Theatre Company for FOUND OBJECTS, presented in the NuWerks series of the 2007-08 season; two Emmy nominations for television work, including PBS’ Eyes on the Prize; extensive film and TV credits for work with Barry Levinson, Sean Penn, Steven Soderbergh, George Clooney and Gus Van Sant. He is currently working on a book on documentary film-making for Focal Press.

Martin Russell: theater and film critic for the San Francisco Examiner in a previous life, his plays have been performed in ACT’s Plays in Progress, One Act Theater, Berkeley Stage, Theater Artists of Marin, the Marsh, Marin Theatre Company Short Plays Festival, Off Off Broadway, and Squaw Valley Community of Writers. His one-act THE WEDDINGS AT MUKADAREEB, seen in the first Writers with Attitude, was produced at the 2006 ReOrient Festival of Golden Thread Productions.

Joan Sadler: a co-founder of Playwrights Lab, she has a background in acting and broad- casting, served for many years on the Board of ACT and is active in their Conservatory program. She is also a playwright whose work has been seen at Marin Theatre Co. and honored at playwrights’ centers across the country. She is also a co-founder of PlayBrokers.

Marilyn Shaw: devoted to the cause of new plays; co-founder, PlayBrokers; board member of many non-profit arts groups; long career in arts administration and fundraising, currently sitting as a member of the Literary Committee at the Magic.

Bernard Weiner: playwright, director, dramaturg; co-founder, Playwrights Lab, and PlayBrokers; poet; recovering theater critic; co-editor, political website www.Crisis Papers.org