Announcing Rogue Machine’s 2026
Playwright's Roundtable Festival
July 15–19 | Six Plays in Five Days!
At the historic Matrix Theatre in West Hollywood
Roundtable Director: Lina Patel
The Playwright's Roundtable is Rogue Machine Theatre’s incubator for bold, boundary-pushing new work. Over the course of a seven-month residency, participating playwrights meet biweekly in a peer-led environment to develop original plays from the ground up.
"A year centered on women playwrights isn’t a theme; it’s a practical investment in the future of the field. Even now, national data from The Count 3.0 -- one of the most comprehensive surveys of U.S. nonprofit theatre seasons -- shows that women’s representation in produced work still falls short of parity.
Progress happens only when institutions choose to make room for underrepresented voices, year after year. We have the honor and responsibility to ensure that the stories we tell reflect the full breadth of who we are. Rogue Machine has always been a place where bold voices are met with trust and craft is taken seriously.
I’m deeply proud of this Roundtable and grateful to Justin and Guillermo for listening and for making a year like this possible." says the Roundtable's Director, Lina Patel.
AMA QUAO
Playwright
Ama Quao is a first-generation African American writer and comedian based in LA and Accra. Raised in Tennessee, her passion for writing stems from the day her English teacher said her writing was so bad she was “unfit to be a member of the sophomore class.” Since then she’s studied playwriting at Brown and instructed creative writing at Rikers while she received her MFA in Film from Columbia.
Ama won the 2020 Urbanworld Film Festival Screenplay competition, was a 2021 Disney General Entertainment writing fellow, and participated in New York Stage and Film’s 2022 Filmmakers’ workshop. Ama worked as a writer on Freeform’s Single Drunk Female and Hulu’s How I Met Your Father. Her comedic writing seeks to expand the representation of women of color in media and explores the fantastic and ordinary relationships we form with each other and within ourselves.
JEANNE SAKATA
Playwright
Jeanne recently performed in the 2025 national tour of Moises Kaufman and Amanda Gronich’s Pulitzer-nominated Here Are The Bluberries at the McCarter, The Wallis, and Berkeley Rep, and in Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles 1992 at CTG/Mark Taper Forum.
Recent TV: Station 19, NCIS Hawaii, Magnum P.I., NCIS Los Angeles, and High School Musical: The Series. Jeanne authored the renowned solo play Hold These Truths, and For Us All and The Secret Garden for L.A. Theatre Works. Her latest play, Springs, will be workshopped with Ford’s Theatre’s Legacy Commissions Program in Washington DC.
LINA PATEL
Playwright/ 2025 Roundtable Director
JENNIFER CHANG
Playwright
Hannah Kenah is a playwright, performer, and devised theatre artist. She has developed work with the Rude Mechs, Salvage Vanguard, New Dramatists, and Yale University, among others. Hannah has performed in national and international tours, including runs at Lincoln Center, Humana Festival, and Yale Repertory Theatre.
Her plays have been finalists and semifinalists for the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and the Relentless Award, among others. Hannah received a BA from Dartmouth College, a certificate of physical theatre from Dell’Arte International, and an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin.
JENNIFER MAISEL
Playwright
Jennifer Maisel is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter whose work has been produced off-Broadway, nationally and internationally.
Her plays include EIGHT NIGHTS, OUT OF ORBIT, PROVENANCE, THERE OR HERE, YELLOW WALLPAPER 2.0 2020 and @thespeedofJake, and have been workshopped, produced and honored by the Sundance Theatre Lab, the Ojai Playwrights Conference, The Kennedy Center, the Ovation Awards, Jewish Plays Project, the Woodward/Newman Award, the Asolo Theatre, Antaeus Theatre, Detroit Public Theatre and the PEN West Literary Awards. She also writes for film and television; the screenplay adaptation of her THE LAST SEDER is in pre-production with Rosalind Productions.
Playwriting Work:
https://newplayexchange.org/users/2119/jennifer-maisel
JUNE CARRYL
Playwright
Playwright and actor June Carryl's plays include THE WRONGED PARTY (2025 Finalist, O'Neill Playwrights Conference; 2022 IAMA Theatre's Shonda Rhimes Unsung Voices Commission); BLUE (2023 Scotsman Fringe First award, Edinburgh Fringe Festival; World Premiere: Rogue Machine); COLOSSUS (2023 Ojai Playwrights Conference; Semi-Finalist, 2021 O'Neill Playwrights Conference); N*GGA B*TCH (developed at Nancy Manocherian's the cell theatre and the Vagrancy); FLORENCE & NORMANDIE (Playwrights Arena and UCLA Diversifying the Classics, published in GOLDEN TONGUES: ADAPTING HISPANIC CLASSICAL THEATER IN LOS ANGELES by Methuen), and GIRL BLUE (developed at Center Theatre Group's 2021 L.A.
Writer's Workshop. Favorite acting roles include Fraulein Schneider in Celebration Theatre's CABARET and Coeurage Theatre's FAILURE: A LOVE STORY, both directed by Michael Matthews. June can also be seen in KEMBA, MINDHUNTER, and HULU'S HELSTROM.
