Sanaz Toossi
Playwright
Sanaz Toossi is an Iranian-American playwright from Orange County, California. Her plays include Wish You Were Here (productions forthcoming) and English (Kilroys’ List 2019; Roundabout Underground production Fall ‘20). She is currently under commission at the Atlantic Theater (Launch commission; Toulmin grant), South Coast Repertory, IAMA Theatre, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival (American Revolutions Cycle). She is a member of Youngblood and the Middle Eastern American Writers Lab at the Lark, and an alum of Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writers’ Group. She was the 2019 P73 Playwriting Fellow. MFA: NYU Tisch. Sanaz is a proud child of immigrants.
Gaye Taylor Upchurch
Director
Gaye Taylor Upchurch is a freelance director with a background in dance.
Williamstown Theatre Festival: Carson McCullers's The Member of the Wedding.
Selected directing credits: world premieres of Lauren Gunderson's The Half-Life of Marie Curie (Audible Theater); Anna Ziegler's The Last Match (The Old Globe and Roundabout); Nick Gandiello's The Blameless (The Old Globe); Clare Lizzimore’s Animal (Atlantic Theater and Studio Theatre, DC, Helen Hayes nomination); Laura Marks’s Bethany with America Ferrera (WP and Old Globe); Melissa Ross’s Of Good Stock (South Coast Rep).
And productions of Simon Stephens’s Harper Regan and Bluebird (with Simon Russell Beale, Atlantic); Michael Kimmel and Lauren Pritchard's musical Songbird (Two River); The Year of Magical Thinking (with Kathleen Turner, Arena Stage); Lucy Thurber’s Stay (Rattlestick Theater); An Iliad and As You Like It (Hudson Valley Shakespeare, the International Falstaff Award for Best Production and Falstaff nomination for Best Director).
She is an alum of UNC School of the Arts.
