Erik Patterson – 1^st Place Winner – Oakwood High School Presents Thornton Wilder’s Our Town

OAKWOOD HIGH SCHOOL PRESENTS THORNTON WILDER’S OUR TOWN – When the socially awkward girl gets the dream role of Emily Webb in her high school production of Our Town, the three most popular girls in Drama set out to ruin her. Twenty years later, the past comes back to haunt them. Nothing is as it seems in the world of this play for reasons that have everything to do with our growing dependence on computers and artificial intelligence. Oakwood High School Presents Thornton Wilder’s Our Town is a meditation on what it means to be human in an increasingly virtual world.

Erik Patterson – Erik Patterson is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and writing teacher. Recent plays include F**king Strangers, One of the Nice Ones (Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award winner) and Handjob. His work has been produced or developed by Echo Theater Company, Playwrights’ Arena, the Los Angeles Theatre Centre, Theatre of NOTE, the Evidence Room, The Actors’ Gang, The Echo Theater Company, the Lark Play Development Center, Moving Arts, Black Dahlia, Naked Angels, the Mark Taper Forum, and New Group. His plays have been nominated for the Ovation Award, the Stage Raw Award, the LA Weekly Award, and the GLAAD Media Award. Erik has written films for Warner Bros., Universal, 20th Century Fox, Disney, Freeform, MTV, Paramount, Hallmark, and Syfy, among others. Credits include Abandoned (starring Emma Roberts and Michael Shannon), fourteen episodes of R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour (two Emmy Award nominations), Another Cinderella Story (winner of the WGA Award), Deep Blue Sea 2, and Radio Rebel (winner of the Humanitas Prize). Erik is the creator of Your Daily Writing Prompt on TikTok and is the author of a series of writing prompt books for Simon & Schuster, including Write a Romantasy and Write a Dystopian Novel, available in bookstores nationwide. Erik is a graduate of Occidental College and the British American Drama Academy.

Ali MacLean – 2^nd Place Winner – The Point

THE POINT – The Point is a darkly funny thriller based on the true story of a murder among friends in the woods of western Massachusetts—and the cover-up that follows. After a college student disappears following a night of heavy drinking, four working-class friends find themselves trapped in a web of suspicion, betrayal, violence, and simmering class resentment as the police close in.

Ali MacLean – Ali MacLean is an award-winning playwright, director, and actor, originally from Boston. She is a graduate of Miami University, the La Jolla Playhouse Conservatory, and the Frantic Assembly (UK) residency.

Her work has received the David Sedaris Humor Writing Prize, John Gassner Playwriting Award, Julie Harris Playwrights Award, SheNYC Arts Best Play, Long Beach Playhouse Best Play, EST/ LA Winterfest Pick of the Playwrights, the Arcola Theatre SLAM X Monologue Competition, and a residency with the Citadel of Playwrights. She has also been a finalist for more than 60 playwriting competitions and development programs, including the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference (twice), the Women’s Prize for Playwriting (UK), the Orchard Project, The Parity Commission, Kitchen Dog Theater, Orchard Project, Creede Rep Headwaters, Moxie Arts, Women’s Playwriting Prize UK, Garry Marshall Theatre, and New American Voices.

Ali is an award winning filmmaker, Women In Film mentee and has received fellowships from Writers for Writers, Stowe Story Labs, RespectAbility Entertainment Lab, the 1in4 Writers Coalition, and the Blackmagic Filmmakers Collective. Her work has been published by Applause Books and Smith & Kraus, and she has written for MTV, VH1, FOX, and Pop TV.

She is a member of the Sundance Collective Kitchen, GreenLight Women, Screen Actor’s Guild, The Colony Theater Lab, EST/LA Playwrights UNIT, and the Dramatists Guild.

Seth Freeman –3^rd Place Winner – Role Model

ROLE MODEL – Brad Simmons faces the perfect storm of life’s complications and challenges as his current work project crashes and burns, his daughter faces a difficult time at college, his elderly, charming, sometimes exasperating but formerly vigorous father Healey is suddenly suffering from heart failure, and Brad’s unstable brother Teddy dives into a tailspin of anxiety.  As Brad makes the crucial decisions and navigates these troubled waters, both he and his father discover untapped reserves of resilience, grit, love and humor. 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.”

Seth Freeman – Seth Freeman is a playwright, a journalist, a writer of fiction, and a writer/producer/director of television.  He created the series Lincoln Heights and his work in television has received multiple Emmys, Golden Globes, Writers Guild, and other honors.  His plays have been presented at over three hundred theaters and festivals in the United States and around the world.  He has written for The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Stars and Stripes, Southern Theatre Magazine, California Magazine, Pacific Council Magazine, Los Angeles Magazine, the Huffington Post, The Hill, The Boston Globe, YaleGlobal and other periodicals.  

In 2019 he received a Master’s degree from UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health.  He contributes time to initiatives involving education, healthcare, the empowerment of women, and human rights.