Pepatián

Desi Moreno-Penson

As a playwright, actor, and dramaturge, Desi has numerous stage and screen credits, including roles in Spike Lee's "Girl 6," "It Could Happen To You," and "Extreme Measures." She has studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, the Greer Garson Theater Center at the College of Santa Fe, NM with a BFA degree in Theater and Acting and is a recent MFA graduate in Dramaturgy and Theatre Criticism from Brooklyn College.

On scholarship, she carried out a postgraduate program at the British American Drama Academy in London. She is also a member of the Dramatist’s Guild of America, and the Screen Actors’ Guild.

Executive and Artistic Director of Actors Without Spaces (formerly Daddy Bear and Company), a professional multicultural theatre and new play development lab, Desi also completed a full-length play entitled A Divine Brew, which was successfully produced for an off-off Broadway run at the Blue Heron Arts Center in May 2000. She has written and developed three one-act plays entitled Screwing Rachel, The Red Chair, and A Latina Prepares which were first presented as staged readings at the Producers Club in June of 2001 and then as an Equity workshop production in March 2002 at the manhattantheatresource through their Flop-Night Development Series.

Since then, Screwing Rachel has been rewritten to a full-length and in May 2002, A Latina Prepares was picked up by the WOW Café Theatre for their Latina Playwrights Festival. The same piece, along with The Red Chair, has been presented as part of the Play Reading Series for the 2003 NewWorks Lab at INTAR sponsored by the Jerome Foundation.

In July 2002, the Buchwald Foundation instituted by Don Buchwald & Associates, awarded her a Theatre Internship grant. As such, she completed a literary internship at the Lark Play Development Center. She is also the recipient for the 2003 Samuel Levenson Memorial Scholarship sponsored by the Alumni Association at Brooklyn College and is the first graduate student in its history to receive this endowment. She has received the 2003 Wilson Lehr Award, the 2001 BRIO (Bronx Recognizes Its Own) Playwriting Fellowship as well as the 2002 Louis Delgado Jr. Playwriting Award for a full-length play Beige.

Beige received a staged reading in September 2002 at the Nuyorican Poets Café as part of their First Look reading series and is a finalist winner for the 2002-2003 New Voices/Nuestras Voces Playwriting Competition at Repertorio Espanol, sponsored by the MetLife and Jerome Foundations. Beige was also picked by Theatre Resources Unlimited for a producers showcase reading at the Greenwich Street Theatre.

She is currently at work on two plays Dead Wife and Grinch. This past May, A Latina Prepares was seen as part of the 2004 Downtown Urban Theatre Festival, produced by Reg E. Gaines (BRING IN DA NOISE, BRING IN DA FUNK)
and Arcos Entertainment at the Abrons Arts Center @Henry Street Settlement. A Latina Prepares won for Best Performance Short in the Festival, which came with $1000 cash prize. Her most recent play 3 To a Session: A Monster’s Tale was produced in June through INTAR Theatre as part of their 2004 NewWorks Lab, a program for emerging Latino/a playwrights and directors.

Desi has been a finalist for the 2004 Mabou Mines Resident Artists Program as well as a finalist for the 2004 American Theatre Affiliated Writers Program sponsored by Theatre Communications Group. She has been an arts panelist for the Artists Congress sessions sponsored jointly by the New York Foundation for the Arts and The Field, Inc. In addition, she is a literary arts administrator with the Bronx Council on the Arts and is presently the Literary Curator and Project Coordinator for the “Latinas In Literature” Series sponsored by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Association of Hispanic Arts (AHA).

LINKS
www.geocities.com/daddybearandco
www.songsfromcoconuthill.com