Everything the Devil Stole

Nikki Brake-Sillá (playwright + filmmaker) is Southern to her core with a Northern patina, and proudly calls Southwest Philadelphia home. She is the Founder of DrAW (Dramatists At War) and an inaugural member of Jouska Play Works. Nikki’s full-length plays include Trouble of the World, Finalist (Terrance McNally Award, Lark Apothetae, Space on Ryder - Family Residency), Semi-Finalist (O’Neill, Bay Area Playwrights Festival), Dear Ann, Residency (The Mitten Lab), Semi-Finalist (Premiere Stages), In Defense of Ourselves, Commission (Philadelphia Women’s Theater), and GTFOH. Her full-length narrative, A Weathering  was a Semi-Finalist (Middlebury Scriptlab) and Second Round Selection (Sundance Narrative Lab). The pilot, L&D,  was a Semi-Finalist (Middlebury Scriptlab). 
She has received funding from The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation, RECPhilly, The Puffin Foundation, The Lark Foundation, The Princess Grace Foundation, the Leeway Foundation and the Regional Center for Women Artists. Nikki received her M.F.A. from the City College of New York and her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania. She is a proud member of Dramatists Guild and Directors Gathering.

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Shanti at Peace

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Nimisha Ladva is a writer and storyteller. Her story performances have been broadcast nationally on NPR on The Moth Radio Hour and other programs, and on PBS in Stories from the Stage, and have been featured on many podcasts. She has performed internationally, in Geneva, and at the London Podcast Festival with RISK!. She is a Moth GrandSlam winner, a Moth Mainstage performer, and was twice dubbed the “Best of the Best Storytellers in Philadelphia” by First Person Arts (2016, 2020). Her solo play, Uninvited Girl, first staged in Philadelphia at the First Person Arts Festival in 2016, premiered in New York at the Women in Theater Festival in 2018. She is currently at work on a screen adaptation of Uninvited as well as two stage plays. Published in the U.S. and UK, Nimisha's writing can most recently be found in The Guardian online and RISK! True Stories People Never Thought They’d Dare to Share, an anthology. Her work has been supported by grants from the Mellon Foundation and the Leeway Foundation. She teaches writing and public speaking at Haverford College.

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God Bless Them

Keenya J. Jackson is an emerging playwright and one of the co-founders of Jouska PlayWorks at Simpatico Theatre. Her play Botanicals or Giving it to God, was the recipient of PlayPenn’s professional public reading in 2019. The ten minute version of Botanicals also received a production with Mojaaa Theatre in 2018.  Additional plays have been produced and workshop/developed by The Philadelphia Women’s Theatre Festival (Amerrica’s Favorite Feminist, August 2020),  Revamp Collective, Philadelphia Dramatist Center and other theatres in the Philadelphia area.  A graduate of Arcadia University, Keenya continues to grow as a playwright by being an active member of Jouska PlayWorks and The Foundry at PlayPenn.  She also enjoys learning and honing in on her craft by taking classes at such places as Play Penn in Philadelphia and the National Playwright Symposium in Cape May, NJ.  

Por La Ventana, Through the Window

or For the Window

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Iraisa Ann Reilly (She/Her) is a Jersey-born artist with theatre roots in Philadelphia, passionate about bilingual and cross-cultural storytelling. Select full-length plays include Good Cuban Girls (Teatro del Sol, at The Arden Theatre), The Jersey Devil is a Papi Chulo ( Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival Latinx New Play Prize, Second Place Mark Twain Prize for Comedic Playwriting) Madame Anastasia’s Crystal Ball (Semifinalist, Bay Area Playwright’s Festival 2021), Medallas Por Un Abrazo (New Light Theatre Dark Room Series) and One Day Old (Philadelphia Fringe). As an actor, she recently appeared as “#14” in Philadelphia’s Theatre Company’s virtual production of The Wolves.  Iraisa Ann has also performed her original one-woman show, A Beginner’s Guide to Interpreting Aphasia, as a part of Philadelphia’s Solow Fest. She was a semifinalist for the Page 73 Fellowship in 2019 and has trained with LAByrinth Theatre’s Summer Intensive and the Maria Irene Fornes Workshop (with Migdalia Cruz). She is currently a Development Studio Fellow with NYU’S Production Lab, where she is working on her original screenplay, La Reina Del Bronx. MFA in Dramatic Writing, NYU ’21 (Thesis TV), BA Theatre and English University of Notre Dame. iraisaannreilly.com.