2025 Incubator/Mentor Program
What is the Incubator/Mentor Program?
A multi-month, multi-modal, tuition-free program designed to offer participants the opportunity to build their professional skills and confidence. The goal of the Incubator/Mentor Program is to give practitioners the tools to create and maintain a safe, inclusive, anti-racist and consent-based space for creating theatre, and a network of relationships within the Seattle theatre community.
What is new about the 2025 I/M Program?
The 2025-2026 Incubator/Mentor Program takes a broader and more inclusive approach to bringing gender-marginalized theatre-makers into space together. We believe that everyone deserves access to professional development and a sense of belonging in the theatre community.
We have increased access for working theatre folks who may not have the time to commit to a full year of activities, by crafting short, nimble programs on targeted topics. In community we can help one another grow and respond collectively to the burning questions we all have about making theatre in a world that doesn’t always acknowledge the value of our existence.
What is the Vision Driving the I/M Program?
The TSGP I/M program seeks to make the theatre world more equitable by empowering theatre artists who have been marginalized on the basis of their gender, including but not limited to cis and trans women, non-binary folks, and trans-masculine+trans-feminine folks, to move into professional playwright or director roles.
We center the philosophy of feminist co-mentoring, which emphasizes a non-hierarchical understanding that we all have something to learn AND something to teach.
Our focus on gender justice is not an excuse to ignore racism, homophobia, ableism, transphobia, ageism and other intersecting oppressions faced by the people our organization seeks to empower. We work to take an intersectional approach to empowering emerging theatre decision makers and future leaders.
What Does the 2025-2026 Program Include?
September-November 2025
Gatherings and conversations to cultivate your career connections in the Seattle theatre community. Mondays from 7-9 PM. Registration for the full series and individual sessions opening August 27, 2025. Click for more details.
January 2026
Mentor Speed-dating
One-time events introducing playwrights to playwrights and directors to directors for prospective formal and informal mentoring relationships. Speed-dating for professionals.
February-April 2026
Mentoring Connections
A three-month formal mentoring program to foster deeper connections between experienced and emerging artists; includes 12 hours of mentoring with a person in your practice area and monthly peer-mentor gatherings with fellow emerging artists.
April-May 2026
Plays in Progress: The Salon Series
Playwrights and directors apply as a team to bring concert-style readings of new plays in front of an audience. 1 rehearsal, 1 performance, 1 critical response process. An opportunity to work on a script-development project with a new creative partner in a casual environment.
June-November 2026
2026 New Works Festival: New Voices, New Narrative
A festival featuring 4 plays by local playwrights. Playwright and director teams submit a joint application for a specific play to be included in the New Works Festival, and collaborate in the production process from audition and design to closing night strike.
Location:
The Green Room, MLK FAME Center, 3201 E. Republican St., Room 109, Seattle, WA 98112
New Works Festival performance Venue TBD
Scene and Heard
Gatherings and conversations to cultivate your career connections in the Seattle theatre community.
September 15-November 24, 2025
Mondays, 7:00-9:00 PM
What is the format?
Sessions will explore practical tools and real-talk topics, prompted and guided by questions and knowledge shared by the participants. Each conversation will be facilitated by a team of local theatre makers with lived experience in the topic of discussion. Most sessions will be discussion based and some will include practical activities (rehearsing your elevator pitch, anyone?)
What’s the goal?
This tuition-free series provides space and time for emerging women, nonbinary and transgender playwrights and directors to develop self-confidence and personal agency, build career connections, and share and grow your professional knowledge as a theatre maker.
Who are we centering?
Some sessions will highlight specific disciplines or roles, with a primary focus on women, nonbinary, transgender and gender-diverse playwrights and directors. Artists from all areas of theatre practice and levels of experience are welcome, allies are welcome, and every voice matters.
Template schedule for each evening:
7:00 PM - Networking activity
7:30 PM - Discussion/Conversation OR Skill-building activity
9:00 PM - Final check-in or closing activity
How do I register?
Click the button below to register for all available sessions. Open the drop lists under Topics and Facilitators to register for individual sessions.
Topics and Facilitators*
(*topics and facilitators are subject to change)
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Making Connections: A Discussion and Info Share for Theatre Makers Starting or Building a Career
Defining the burning questions around being a 21st Century theatre maker.
How do you network?
What does mentoring mean to you?
Sharing your favorite practical tools.
Practice area focus: All theatre makers
Facilitators
Shana Bestock, Associate Artistic Director, Union Arts Center
Rebecca O’Neil, Artistic Director, The Shattered Glass Project
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Take what you need and leave the rest: navigating the post-show discussion
Practice area focus: Playwrighting
Facilitators
Amy Wheeler, playwright and professor
Carolynne Wilcox, playwright and actor
Kate Danley, playwright
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Navigating the director/designer relationship - a discussion
Practice area focus: Directors and designers
Facilitators:
Jenn Zeyl, director, scenic designer, artistic director at Intiman Theatre
Robin Macartney, scenic designer
Caitlin McCown, production manager, Union Arts Center
Cristin Miller, actor and director
September 2025
October 2025
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“You’re in the elevator with…”: Creating and practicing your personal and project pitches
A workshop for developing, practicing, and sharing a pitch about yourself or projects you are working on with your fellow theatre makers.
Practice area focus: All theatre makers
Facilitator
Alexandra Kronz, playwright, actor, dancer, and teaching artist
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Writing with a creative partner: nurturing the creative relationship
Practice area focus: Playwrighting
Facilitators
Lisa Every & Jenn Ruzumna, playwrights
Mariah Lee Squires and S.W. Jones, playwrights
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Safe Room: Leading a Supportive Rehearsal Space as a Director
Practice area focus: Directors
Facilitators:
Aidyn Stevens, director, 2023-24 I/M cohort member
Registration opening soon
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Fostering a healthy career: self care in the theatre profession
Practice area focus: All theatre makers
Facilitator
Ian Bond, intimacy coordinator, fight choreographer, actor
Dr. Lisa Price, playwright, naturopathic physician
Kathy Hsieh, actor, director, producer, SIS Productions
Registration opening soon
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Strong creative choices: working with a director and a cast to get the information you need from a staged reading
Practice area focus: Playwrighting
Facilitators
TBA
Registration opening soon
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Imposter Syndrome: believing in yourself as a director and a creative leader
Practice area focus: Directors (and all of us, really…)
Facilitators:
TBA
Registration opening soon
