The Playwrights
2012 Young Playwrights Festival Participants
Connor is an 18 year-old graduate of the Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts where he studied theatre and vocal music. His favorite acting credits include A Raisin in the Sun (Karl Linder), Gospel at Colonus (Pastor Polyneices), Little Shop of Horrors (Mr. Mushnik), Violet (Father), Rent: School Edition (Angel), Anything Goes (Billy), tick, tick... BOOM! (Mike), and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Dale Harding), Once on this Island (Daniel), and Waiting for Godot (Estragon). In the summer of 2010, Connor attended the New York State Summer School of the Arts (NYSSSA) program where he studied theatre arts in an intensive conservatory environment. It was there where he began to write his play The Waiting Room which he later won “Best Director” for during BAVPA’s annual One Act Play Competition. During high school, Connor sang with BAVPA’s Resonance Vocal Ensemble, BAVPA’s Select Choir, and the ABC Amherst Bel Canto Choir. He will be seen next in Hamburg Theatre Under the Stars’s production of You Can’t Take It with You as Ed Carmichael. In the fall, Connor will be attending the University at Buffalo for a BFA in Theatre Performance.
Emily Sheera Cutler is an incoming freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, where she plans to study creative writing at the Kelly Writers House. She is originally from Birmingham, Alabama, where she has been pursuing her passion for creative writing since before she can remember. Her plays have been recognized by the Alabama Writers' Forum, the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Young Playwrights' Inc., and the Blank Theatre in Hollywood, California. This year she was named a YoungArts Finalist in Writing as well as a Pushcart Prize nominee. Emily is especially honored to be part of this production with the American Repertory Theater of WNY and would like to thank all of those who have played a role in putting on the show.
