Developing innovative, site-responsive scripts in community!
Keep yer eyes peeled for a reading coming to a public space near you - spring 2026!
Meet our writers!
Danny Tejera
Danny Tejera is a playwright, film/TV writer and teacher from Madrid. His play Toros (Second Stage Theater) was a New York Times “Critic’s Pick,” Theatrely “Best Off-Broadway Theater of 2023,” 2024 HOLA Award Winner for Outstanding Achievement in Playwriting, and Lucille Lortel Award Nominee (Frank Wood, Best Featured Performer in a Play). It’s published by Dramatists Play Service. Danny has received fellowships from MacDowell, Djerassi, Millay Arts, Stillwright (Erik Ehn’s Silent Retreat), and Tofte Lake Center. He’s a member or alum of Youngblood, Ensemble Studio Theater’s Obie Award-winning collective for emerging playwrights, Colt Coeur, Roundabout Space Jam, and the Sun Valley Playwrights Fellowship/MTC workshop. He is a recipient of a Peter Jay Sharp Foundation Commission from Second Stage, an EST/Sloan Commission, and a Lucille Lortel Alcove Commission. He has taught at The National Theater Institute, UT-Austin, New York Theater Workshop, The Bushwick Starr, Colt Coeur, Saint Ann’s School, The School of the New York Times, and Columbia University’s Double Discovery Center, among other institutions. He received a B.A. from Columbia University and a Playwriting M.F.A. at UT-Austin, where he was mentored by Annie Baker and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. He’s represented by WME and 2AM.
Jack Towhey Calk
Jack Towhey Calk is an NYC-based writer and voice actor from Chicagoland, and is excited to return to The Motor Company after participating in its 2021 Celebration of New York with an audio installation beneath Hell Gate Bridge in Astoria Park. His writing has been produced or developed at The Tank, The Asolo Rep, InVersion Theatre, Hudson Theatre Works, St. Lou Fringe, First Run Theatre, and Pendant Productions. He consulted on Samuel D. Hunter's award-winning play A Case for the Existence of God at Signature Theatre Company. Previously he was assistant to Hunter (Lewiston/Clarkston at Rattlestick), Halley Feiffer (The Pain of My Belligerence at Playwrights Horizons), and James Manos, jr. (film & TV development). He voices Static Man in the hit horror podcast Archive 81, which was adapted into a 2022 Netflix series; other voice appearances include Ivar, Timewalker in Valiant Comics’ Archer and Armstrong: The Michelangelo Code and Kaylock in Pendant Audio’s long-running series The Kingery. Training: Columbia University School of the Arts (MFA, Playwriting), Saint Louis University (BA), Upright Citizens Brigade. For Ty and Packy and Jam.
Miles Orduna
Miles Orduña is an award-winning mixed, Filipino-American playwright and screenwriter who tells complicated stories through the lens of his mixed Filipino heritage and unique upbringing in San Francisco, Syracuse, and Des Moines, IA .
Miles is a 2023/24 Sundance Institute / TAAF AAPI Collab Scholar, a 2024 Fresh Ground Pepper PlayGroup member, a 2023 Great Plains Theater Commons PlayLab participant, a 2023 Bay Area Playwright’s Festival Finalist, 2022 Royal Family Productions Emerging Artist, a founding member of The Nobodies theater collective, a member of Access Theater Writers Group, Columbia University’s TV Writing Summer Intensive (2013) and a member of Fresh Ground Pepper’s BRB Retreat (2022)
Miles’ plays and screenplays have also been developed at The Lark, Cherry Lane Theatre, Cherry Picking, and Naked Angels.
He is currently a writer’s assistant to Writer/Producer Frank Pugliese.
BFA: Conservatory of Theater Arts at SUNY Purchase, MFA: The New School for Drama
Sabina Sethi Unni
Sabina Sethi Unni is a public theater artist, community organizer, and urban planner who tells funny stories about our changing climate in public spaces. She is the co-founder of Fresh Lime Soda, a contemporary South Asian political theater ensemble. She’s proudest of creating theater in open spaces in every corner of her city: Hunts Point Riverside Park, Traver’s Park, Queens Botanical Garden, Qahwah House Astoria, Washington Square Park, Newkirk Open Street, La Plaza Cultural, Lt. Frank McConnell Park, Rockaway Beach, the Astoria Food Pantry, Gowanus Dredgers Community Boathouse, PYO Chai, Edgemere Farm, Rockaway Community Park, 31st Avenue Open Street, PS Family NYC, & more if you let her! www.sabinasethiunni.com
Samantha Cooper
Samantha Cooper is a NYC based playwright, theatre maker, and creative consultant. She has been affiliated with organizations such as: Bay Area Playwrights Festival (2017 & 2023 Semifinalist), Blood Ensemble, Columbia@Roundabout (2018 Finalist), Book-It Repertory Theatre, Crashbox Theatre Company, HERON Ensemble, Last Frontier Theatre Conference (2015 Play Lab), Macha Theatre Works, Northwest Playwrights Alliance, O'Neill National Playwrights Festival (2017 Semifinalist), Princess Grace Awards (2017 Semifinalist), Project Y Writer's Group, Samuel French OOB Festival (2016 Final 30), Seattle Repertory Theatre, Unicorn Theatre (2017-18 New Play Series Semifinalist), and Western Washington University (WWU). BA: WWU MFA: Columbia University. Find her online at http://www.samanthajcooper.com/ and read her weekly newsletter "This'll Have to Do" at https://samjeancoop.substack.com/.
Tori Lassman
Tori Lassman was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. She is a grateful alumnus of Young Playwrights Inc. and a graduate of SUNY Purchase college, where she studied playwriting. Her plays are inspired by power and class dynamics, silly smut, ritual and the magical, theatrical and cruel possibilities of our body, mind and nature surrounding us. Past plays have been seen and workshopped with Young Playwrights Inc., Breaking and Entering Theater, The Dionysian Magazine, the Casa Na Ilha residency in São Paulo Brazil, New Georges and MOMENTUM 6 festival in La Paz, Mexico. She is especially inspired to create work that is accessible, community rooted and mischievously goofy so she is very excited to be a part of The Motor Company Writers' Lab!
Anoop Desai
Anoop Desai is an actor, musician, and writer originally from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and currently based in Brooklyn, NY. His creative career started with a 6th place finish on Season 8 of American Idol. Music he since has written or performed under the pseudonym TOTEM has been streamed more than 50 million times on Spotify, and his diverse on-screen credits range from starring roles on mockumentaries like What We Do In the Shadows on FX to Hulu’s true crime hit Under the Bridge. Anoop has been published in equally varied spaces from The Journal American Folklore to Billboard and is currently penning two TV pilots.
Kate Mulley
Kate Mulley (FACILITATOR) is an internationally acclaimed playwright, librettist/lyricist, producer, and dramaturg whose work has been produced on four continents. Her musical Razorhurst, written with composer Andy Peterson, was commissioned by and had its world premiere at Luna Stage. Razorhurst, which musicalizes the lives of Sydney gang leaders Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine, received its Australian premiere at the Hayes Theatre in Sydney. Other current projects include Female Complaints, a musical about Inez Burns, a pre-Roe San Francisco abortionist, written with Tina deVaron, which has been developed at Catwalk Art Residency, Soaring Gardens Artist Retreat and VoxLab at Dartmouth College. Kate is also the co-librettist of In the Light with Nathan Wright, with music & lyrics by Michael Mott. She is the editor of Dramaturgy of Sex on Stage in Contemporary Theatre (Routledge) and a founding member of Vox Theater. She graduated from Dartmouth with a degree in Theater and History, received an MA in Writing for Performance at Goldsmiths College, London, and an MFA in Playwriting from Columbia. Kate is a writing mentor with Girls Write Now and the PEN Prison Writing mentorship program and was awarded the 2023 PEN America/L’Engle Rahman Prize for Mentorship. Originally from Boston, Kate lives on the Upper West Side.