BA, 1999
Qui Nguyen is a screenwriter, director, playwright, and Co-Founder of the OBIE-winning Vampire Cowboys. He and his work, known for its use of pop-culture, stage violence, puppetry, and multimedia, has been called "Culturally Savvy Comedy", "Tour de Force Theatre", and “Infectious Fun” by the NY Times, TimeOut, and Variety.
Qui's currently with Walt Disney Animation Studios where he wrote Raya and the Last Dragon and wrote/co-directed Strange World. Other TV/Film includes Dispatches from Elsewhere (AMC), The Society (Netflix), Incorporated (SyFy), Peg+CAT (PBS), and Marvel Studios.
As a playwright, notable plays includes Vietgone, Poor Yella Rednecks, Revenge Song, and the critically acclaimed Vampire Cowboys productions of She Kills Monsters, Soul Samurai, The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G, Alice in Slasherland, Fight Girl Battle World, and Living Dead in Denmark.
His scripts are published by Concord Theatricals/Samuel French, Playscripts, and Broadway Play Publishing.
Notable honors include a 2016 Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing in a Preschool Animated Program (Peg+Cat), 2016 Steinberg New Play Award (Vietgone), 2015 NY Community Trust Helen Merrill Playwriting Award, 2014 Sundance Institute/Time Warner Fellowship; 2013 AATE Distinguished Play Award (She Kills Monsters) and 2012 & 2009 GLAAD Media Award nominations for his plays She Kills Monsters and Soul Samurai.
He is a proud member of the WGA, The Animation Guild, Dramatists Guild of America, Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Ma-Yi Writers Lab, and an alumni of New Dramatists, Youngblood, and the Marvel Studios Writers Program.
His company, Vampire Cowboys, often credited for being the pioneers of "geek theatre", holds the unique distinction of being the first and currently only professional theatre organization to be officially sponsored by NY Comic Con.
MA, 2015
Ayvaunn Penn (Columbia University Playwriting Dean’s Fellow) is named by Playbill.com and Black Theatre Coalition as a Next Generation of Black Theatre Professionals honoree. She is a playwright-director and lyricist-composer passionate about theatre for social change, applied theatre, adapting Bible scripture for the stage, and nurturing future generations of theatre artists. As a published and produced playwright, her work has received local, national, and international recognitions. Her directing work in theatre and opera reaches across New York, Chicago, and Texas while her lyric writing and compositions have graced stages ranging from the Tony Award-winning Signature Theatre NYC, to regional theatre, and churches. Penn is consistently commissioned by churches to write skits with original music for special programming and worship through the performing arts.
Penn’s play, For Bo, which met its first audiences through Theatre TCU, has gone on to be professionally produced and earn numerous honors. For Bo, co-produced by SheDFW Theatre Festival and Urban Arts Collective in collaboration with the Botham Jean Foundation in 2024, won an Irma P. Hall Black Theatre Award and garnered national honors including: finalist for the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference; runner up for the Judith Royer Excellence in Playwriting Award presented by The Association for Theatre in Higher Education and the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival; and quarter finalist for Third Culture Theatre’s NEXUS Festival made possible by WarnerMedia. The 2021 film adaptation of For Bo presented by Theatre TCU, The #ForBoInitiative, and the Botham Jean Foundation with generous support from the TCU Film, Television, and Digital Media Department was selected for three film festivals including: Silicon Valley African Film Festival (Honorable Mention), Gary International Black Film Festival, and Lone Star Film Festival (Special Screening at The Museum of Modern Art of Fort Worth). The film adaptation of For Bo is also the subject of the documentary “Let the People Come Inside” and was invited for a screening at Dawson College in Canada.
Penn’s play For the Love of Uvalde earned a coveted spot on the 2024 Yale Drama Series Short List. This distinction was bestowed by judge and Tony-nominated Broadway playwright Jeremy O. Harris who ranked For the Love of Uvalde in the top ten scripts of over 2,000 international script submissions. Other national honors include semi-finalist for both the Princess Grace Playwriting Fellowship and the Dramatists Guild Foundation National Fellows program. The very first staged reading of select monologues and original songs was presented by Theatre TCU and TCU School of Music in conjunction with El Progreso Memorial Library in Uvalde, Texas. Thereafter, El Progreso invited For the Love of Uvalde to be entered into their Robb Archives Collection funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities to document the narratives around the historic Robb Elementary School shooting. Urban Arts Collective has commissioned Penn as librettist and internationally acclaimed Dr. Kevin Day (TCU graduate) as composer to adapt For the Love of Uvalde into an opera.
As a director, some of Penn’s credits include: dwb (Driving While Black) at Fort Worth Opera, Resident Artist Showcase at Fort Worth Opera, Stethoscope Stage 2022 and 2024, Fabulation at Jubilee Theatre, The Feather Doesn’t Fall Far from the Wing at Signature Theatre NYC, March by June at Conch Shell Productions, and For Bo at Theatre TCU. She has also served as assistant director to two-time Tony Award-winner Ruben Santiago-Hudson at the Billie Holiday Theatre and Golden Globe-winner Regina Taylor at the Tony Award-winning Goodman Theatre.
Penn is the founder and lead producer of Stethoscope Stage – a national play festival dedicated to facilitating open and honest conversations between patients and medical care providers through the transformative power of live theatre. Receiving over 100 medical narratives from across the country for the inaugural festival, Stethoscope Stage launched in 2022 with Theatre TCU as host and co-sponsorship from TCU Burnett School of Medicine, College of Fine Arts, School of Music, Center for Connection Culture, and The Haley Family Fund for Medicine and the Arts. Presented bi-annually, Stethoscope Stage has continued as an interdisciplinary collaboration between Theatre TCU and Burnett School of Medicine.
During her time at Tech, she earned a Master of Arts in Theatre with a double concentration in acting and playwriting. She was honored with: the 2015 Lula Mae Sciro Award for Theatre Excellence, the 2015 Arthur W. Stone Playwright Award, and also won first place in the graduate level research symposium for her presentation on Shakespeare's use of metre to define relationships between characters as well as portray a character’s nature. For automatic updates on her work, subscribe to her website at www.ThePennSpeaks.WordPress.com
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