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​BLOSSOMING

The Vagrancy Playwrights’ Group is a cohort of writers tasked with the goal of developing full-length plays for production. The Vagrancy annually selects a core group of five playwrights representing the diverse perspectives and voices of Los Angeles. Beginning each fall, the writers meet regularly throughout the year as they craft their plays. The Vagrancy hosts two mid-year development workshops wherein the plays are explored with actors and a director in a rehearsal setting with the playwright. As with the writers, the actors represent the breadth and diversity of Los Angeles. During the workshops, the playwrights are encouraged to take risks and stretch the bounds of theatre in an attempt to continue pushing the art form forward. The process culminates each summer with BLOSSOMING, a weekend of staged readings of each of the plays performed before an audience. The Vagrancy then selects one of the plays for Play Date, an extended ten day intensive workshop which takes place the following winter.
​Vagrant Writers 2015/2016
Abbey Fenbert – Writers Group
​Abbey Fenbert is a writer from Detroit, MI. Her work celebrates empathy, comedy, living in truth, aggro-theater, and women having lots of lines.

She holds an MFA in Playwriting from Boston University and a BA from NYU. Her original plays have been produced by the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, the Boston Theater Marathon, the KNOW Theatre, the Gallatin Arts Festival and a student collaborative at Indiana University. She’s received multiple honors from the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, including the 2013 Mark Twain Prize for Comic Playwriting. Additional short pieces are slated for publication in anthologies from Smith & Kraus. Fenbert belongs to the Dramatists’ Guild and is a 2015-16 Core Apprentice with the Playwrights’ Center of Minneapolis.

​Fenbert has worked and studied in New York and Boston, and completed three years of Peace Corps service in Ukraine.
Howard Ho – Writers Group
​Howard Ho writes plays and musicals. Recently, he was a Center Theatre Group Literary Fellow and a finalist in the East West Players Musical Theatre Initiative. He developed his play Various Empora through the Vagrancy last year. He is also a member of the Playground-LA Writers Pool, Playwrights Arena, and Cold Tofu Improv. His short plays have been produced at Company of Angels, and his 15 minute musical (book writer) was presented by New Musicals Inc. He has written two full-length musicals and is working on a third. He has also written for the LA Times, Entertainment Weekly, and the blog YOMYOMF. BA Musicology/Communications, UCLA. Master of Professional Writing, USC.
Nicholas Pilapil - Writers Group
Nicholas Pilapil is a writer of plays and songs. His plays have been developed/performed at East West Players, Fresh Produce’d LA, and Playwrights Foundation. Nicholas is a writer in the 2016/17 Playground-LA Writers Pool and a producing member of Los Angeles theatre collective Artists at Play. @nicholaspilapil
Katherine Vondy - Writers Group
Katherine Vondy is a Los Angeles-based writer and director whose credits span theater, film and literature. She is the recipient of the 2015 Davey Foundation Theatre Grant for her play The Fermi Paradox, and her award-winning short film, The Broken Heart of Gnocchi Bolognese, has screened at festivals worldwide. Kat is currently directing Jon Caren's Friends In Transient Places with Fresh Produce'd LA; other recent projects include pieces for All Terrain Theater, Lost Moon Radio and One Axe Plays. Kat is the recipient of dramatic writing residencies from the HBMG Foundation/Creede Repertory Theatre, Vermont Studio Center, Starry Night and Wildacres, and her prose and poetry has appeared widely in literary magazines and journals. She earned a BA from Amherst College and an MFA in Film and Television Production from the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts. More information about all her creative work is available at katherinevondy.com.
PLAY DATE
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PLAY DATE is The Vagrancy’s yearly month-long intensive workshop of a new play chosen from our BLOSSOMING reading series. Through the workshop we hope to catapult the play to a place of more secure footing as it progresses towards a full production.


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