The Reading Room Festival 2026

Anthony De Angelis (Composer- Cymbeline) Folger Theatre: debut. Composer: Off-Broadway / Los Angeles / National Tour: SAW the Musical: The Unauthorized Parody of Saw; The Players Theatre/The PIT/ CAP 21/ 54 Below: An Axemas Story; Nazareth University: A Christmas Carol Part II; Wichita State University Musical Theater Incubator Program: The Fox Sisters; Utah Fringe Festival/ FUSE Productions (State College, PA): The Prince’s New Pet (TYA) – presented nationally, licensed by Dramatic Publishing. Arranger/Orchestrator: Randy Rainbow’s Christmas album; The New York Pops; The Cincinnati Pops; National Symphony Orchestra; The American Pops Orchestra (multiple PBS performances); Lyrics and Lyricists series at 92nd Street Y; Broadway Backwards 7 and 8; West End productions. Member of the BMI Workshop.

Alexa Babakhanian (Playwright – Dark Lady) Folger Theatre: debut. With degrees from Juilliard (BM, MM), award-winning multi-hyphenate Alexa Babakhanian champions the unrepresented through her artistic output.  Her work I Care Do You?” in collaboration with Malala was presented at the United Nations, while her song “A Million Me’s” was presented at the Women’s March on Washington. The Women of Don Quixote featured Alexa’s song cycle and her opera Lady Liberty premiered at Lincoln Center in 2020 while she was artist in residence.

Dark Lady was presented as a reading at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival.  Dark Lady was presented as a one act at the Minnesota Fringe Festival with Lori Parquet (Suffs, As You Like It, The Public Theater) playing both Shakespeare and Amelia Bassano. Dark Lady was presented as a reading at the Lyric Theater at University of Illinois under the direction of Julie Gunn. Dark Lady was featured on NPR.

Alberto Bonilla (Playwright – Cymbeline) Folger Theatre: debut. Director: New York City (selected credits): King Lear, Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, Macbeth, Richard III, Three Sisters, North of Providence, Dia De los Muertos, Look Back in Anger, Walking to America, The Servant to Two Masters, North of Providence, Dolores, Adaptive Radiation, Hearts Like Fists. Playwright: PS.357, Walking to America, Nonnie, Hunting for Ewoks. Film/Television: Director: Tabla Rosa (2026), Nerd Wars, Speed of Love, Shakespeare Hashish and Ish; Writer: Bounty, Hunger, Nerd Wars, Speed of Love.  Musical Theatre faculty member at Molloy University/CAP21; teaching: Stella Adler Studios, Maggie Flanigan Studio. albertobonilla.com albertobonilla-director-writer.com 

Barbara Fuchs (Playwright – Fuente Ovejuna) Folger Theatre: debut. Distinguished Professor of Spanish and English: UCLA. Founder and Director: Diversifying the Classics. Founder and Director: LA Escena Festival of Hispanic Classical Theater. Playwright: Fuente Ovejuna, a children’s version of Lope de Vega’s classic play. Author: Fuente Ovejuna, a picture-book adaptation of Lope de Vega’s classic play. Co-editor, with Aina Soley and Robin Kello: Golden Tongues: Adapting Hispanic Classical Theater in Los Angeles (Bloomsbury, 2024). Co-translator, with the Diversifying the Classic collective: Ana Caro: The Courage to Right a Woman’s Wrongs; Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Love is the Greater Labyrinth; Lope de Vega: The Travels of Teodor, The Beast of Hungary, The Widow of Valencia, A Wild Night in Toledo; Guillén de Castro: Don Quixote, The Force of Habit; Calderón: To Love Beyond Death; Alarcón: What We Owe Our Lies, The Pretender.

Marcus Gardley (Playwright – LEAR)Folger Theatre: debut. Marcus Gardley is an acclaimed TV writer, playwright, and screenwriter who wrote the screenplay for the  reimagining of The Color Purple (2023), which won 11 NAACP Awards and the most nominations and wins in history. He won the 2022 WGA award for Best Adapted TV Longform Series for Maid (Netflix). He is the recipient of the 2019 Doris Duke Artist Award. He is a 2019 Obie Award winner for his play The House That Will Not Stand, the 2015 Glickman Award winner, and a finalist for the 2016 and 2015 Kennedy Prize. Other plays include X: Or, Betty Shabazz v. The Nation, black odyssey (2023 Drama Desk nomination), The Gospel of Lovingkindness, every tongue confess, …and Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi, and the road weeps, the well runs dry.

Nadia Guevara  (Director – Cymbeline) Folger Theatre: DC, I Love You. 1^st Stage: Young Americans; Keegan Theatre: N; Imagination Stage: Cinderella: A Salsa Fairy Tale; American University: Fefu and Her Friends, Spring Awakening. Off-Broadway: Keen Company: Cell; Atlantic Theater Company: Caribbean MixFest; Latinx Playwrights Theatre / The New Group: The Invisible Hand of God Touched Me in a Bad Place; The Public Theatre: Apple Bottom; National Queer Theatre: The Survival, Criminal Queerness Festival; Red Bull Theatre: The Beast of Hungary, Short New Play Fest. Regional: University of Rochester: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead; Texas Tech University: Water by the Spoonful; Dallas Theater Center; McCarter Theatre; New York Stage & Film. Awards: 2018 San Diego Critics Circle Actor of the Year; Drama League Stage Directing Fellowship. SDC Member. nadiaguevara.com

Rebecca Martínez (Director – Dark Lady) Folger Theatre: debut. Regional: Baltimore Center Stage: Miss You Like Hell; Geva Theatre: Sancocho, In Her Bones; Two River Theater: Living and Breathing; Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center: Anna in the Tropics (Henry Award for Directing); Syracuse Stage/ Geva Theatre: Somewhere Over the Border; Repertory Theatre of St. Louis: Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles. Off-Broadway: Mobile Unit, The Public Theater: Much Ado About Nothing, The Comedy of Errors (LATA Award winner; Drama Desk nomination) WP Theater/ Spark Theatrical: Dirty Laundry; WP Theater/ Colt Coeur: Bite Me; WP Theater/ Latinx Playwrights Circle/ Sol Project: Sancocho; Radical Evolution/  Working Theater: Songs About Trains. Artist-in-Residence at Radical Evolution; SEED Directing Commission at Public Theater. https://www.rebeccamartinez.org/

Kelsey Mesa (Director – Fuente Ovejuna) Folger Theatre: The Cuban Vote (Reading Room Festival); Taffety Punk Theatre Company: Othello, Antigonick, She Rode Horses Like the Stock Exchange, The Trojan Women, Charm. The Hub Theatre Company: The Pavilion, The Magi, Wish List; Catholic University: Crimes of the Heart; University of Maryland, College Park: Fefu and Her Friends. Awards: 2024 Helen Hayes Outstanding Production of a Play: La Salpêtrière (playwright). The Inkwell: Artistic Associate. John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts: Manager of Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival and Resident Director of the Kennedy Center Directing Intensive. 

Hana S. Sharif (Director – LEAR) Folger Theatre: debut; Arena Stage: The Motion (*upcoming*), The Age of Innocence, Death on the Nile. Regional: Murder on the Orient Express (7 STLCC nominations), A Christmas Carol (4 STLCC nominations, STL A-List Award), Pride and Prejudice (5 STLCC nominations), Porgy and Bess, The Who & The What (3 SFBA Critic Circle nominations), Fun Home, Sense and Sensibility, The Christians, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Pride and Prejudice (DCArts: Best Director/Best New Play), The Whipping Man, Gem of the Ocean (six CCC nominations), Gee’s Bend (CCC Award Best Ensemble, two nominations), Next Stop Africa, Cassie, The Drum, IFdentity, Pretty Fire, Patient 463, I, Marcus Garvey, Quicksand, Hospice, and The Blacker The Berry. Her plays include All the Women I Used to Be, The Rise and Fall of Day, and The Sprott Cycle Trilogy (1880, 1964, 2010).

Alec H. Wild (Adaptor – Cymbeline) Folger Theatre: debut. Director: Shakespeare Theatre Company Academy: East of the Sun, West of the Moon; The Odyssey; Cymbeline; Romeo and Juliet; Tales from Ovid; Hamlet (Radio); Pericles; The Maid’s Tragedy; Great River Shakespeare Festival (Founding Artistic Director): A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello, The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew, Richard III, Twelfth Night, Henry V, The Winter’s Tale; Milwaukee Shakespeare: Richard II, Titus Andronicus; Shakespeare Festival of St. Louis: Good in Everything, Old Hearts Fresh; New Jewish Theatre: Value of Names; Folio Theatre Company (Founding Artistic Director): Hamlet, Henry IV, Part One, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead; Illinois Shakespeare Festival: Henry V. Film: Whisper (Writer/Director, Best Film, 48Hour Film Festival), Arcadea (Writer/Director, Best Film, I48 Film Festival). MFA, Yale School of Drama.