Mike Oppenheim – 1^st Place Winner – Angels

ANGELS – Angels follows a group of interns and residents as they struggle through a year at a deteriorating public hospital fending off a zealous county official who aims to  economize and succeeds. The staff, all competent and hard-working but not overly humanitarian hate him because he makes their work harder. They graduate and leave but deliver an interesting revenge at the year end party

Mike Oppenheim – Mike is a UCLA Theater Arts graduate whose one-act play won a national Samuel French award before he left for New York. After a few years, he decided that getting into medical school was easier than having a play produced. This proved to be the case, but training in Bellevue provided material for Angels, his only full-length play.

Michael Bucklin – 2^nd Place Winner – Alliances

ALLIANCES – A long-standing relationship between a CIA agent and a British Security Service analyst is tested when it is revealed that one of the women was involved in America’s rendition program. Their confrontation exposes the moral compromises each made during the War on Terror, and its human cost. The play also explores the ethical fault lines that have formed over the past twenty years between the United States and Britain, and how the widening chasm threatens to destroy their “special relationship.”

Michael Bucklin – Michael Bucklin studied acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre. After appearing in numerous off- and off-off Broadway productions, he turned his attention to playwriting. Michael’s plays were produced in New York and other theatres across the country. His work was recognized by numerous competitions and festivals. He was a finalist at the Eugene O’Neill Conference of New Plays, the Writer’s Digest Competition for Drama, and the Live Oak Theatre’s International Play Competition.

Michael returned to school to receive a degree in film studies from the University of Texas at Austin. He attended UCLA’s graduate program in screenwriting. While at UCLA, Michael won the prestigious Samuel Goldwyn Writing Award. Since graduation, Michael’s work has been recognized by many competitions, including The McNerney New Play Contest, The Playhouse on the Square New Works Competition, The Risk Theatre Modern Tragedy Competition, and the ScreenCraft Drama Competition. His play, Signature Photo, won first prize at the Austin Film Festival in the drama competition. The film adaptation of Signature Photo was also a finalist in the Academy Nicholl Fellowship. Michael teaches playwriting, screenwriting, and acting at the University of California at Riverside.

Barbara Silverstone – 3^rd Place Winner, Mother, I Could Kill You

Mother, I Could Kill You – What happens when your certainties go up in smoke? What happens when someone in your family does something unforgivable? And can love strike at any time and at any age?

Emboldened by therapy, cynical Anthony decides to return home for Thanksgiving dinner. It’s the fifth anniversary of his brother’s tragic death and Anthony is sure that their mother Jacqueline was somehow involved. It’s finally time to find out …

Helped and hindered by his sister, his zealous aunt and uncle, his gothic cousin, a very quiet dog, an award-winning pumpkin pie, an excessive amount of alcohol and a gun, he convinces his mother to finally spill the beans.

And spill the beans she does! No one is spared and there are so many skeletons out of the closet that it becomes hard to walk through the room. As a result, not only does Jacqueline’s fiancé reevaluate their relationship, but the entire family reexamines their connections. Luckily, Anthony’s sister manages to slip away from this tense situation for a while with a friendly policeman. Jacqueline, though, is left with some hard truths and some hard decisions. What will she do now?

Barbara Silverstone – Continuing the long and overrated tradition of Americans in Paris, Barbara A. Silverstone left L.A. to move to the City of Lights, where she works as a French-to-English translator and writes plays on the side. Her two-act play Mother, I Could Kill You placed in the semi-finals of the 2021 ScreenCraft Stage Play Competition (Los Angeles), made it to the finals in the 2025 Stanley Drama Award (New York) and recently claimed the 3^rd place prize in the 2025 Beverly Hills Theatre Guild Playwriting Competition. Her short play The Cat-Sitter was selected as a finalist in the 2025 Spectacular Tournament of Playwrights (Michigan) and will be produced at The Acorn theater in Three Oaks, Michigan in November 2025.

Ms. Silverstone has a B.A. in French Literature from Occidental College in Los Angeles, where she also minored in Theater and Art, and a Master’s Degree in English Literature from the Université de Rennes II in France. She is a member of the Playwrights’ Center theater organization and the Dramatists Guild of America.