Best Line Wins: A Play Inspired by the Improvised Lives of Elaine May & Mike Nichols

LA Theater: Rev. Shannon in The Night of the Iguana at Boston Court (LA Times Best Play of 2025), Resident Artist at A Noise Within; Regional Theater: Utah Shakespeare Festival, Theater of War, PCPA, Book-It Repertory, Cafe Nordo, Seattle Shakespeare, Intiman, ArtsWest Playhouse, Washington Ensemble, Horse in Motion, Cape Rep; Film: Second Nature, 20 Pounds to Happiness; Music Videos: The National’s I Am Easy to Find, Bon Iver’s Day One; Short Films: Parallel Lines, Breakdown, Nice Guy, Heathens; TV: Series Regular in Doom Patrol; Titans, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Chicago PD.

Lori Vega (Best Line Wins – Elaine May): CATF 2022: Babel & Ushuaia Blue; NYC: Downstate (Playwrights Horizons), Trifles & Other Plays (Classic Stage Co,); The Scream Inside (Working Theater), One Night, P* SSY C* CK KNOW NOTHING, Pay No Attention to the Girl (Target Margin Theater); Regional: Dial M For Murder (The Guthrie); 10×10 New Play Festival (Barrington Stage); The Good John Proctor (Trinity Rep); The 39 Steps (Cape Playhouse); Nonsense and Beauty (Rep Theatre St. Louis); As You Like It (Idaho Shakespeare); A Midsummer Night’s Dream & As You Like It (Lake Tahoe Shakespeare). TV: Pretty Little Liars, And Just Like That, FBI, BULL, El Deafo. Education: LAMDA, Cornell University

JESSICA KUBZANSKY (she/hers) is the Artistic Director of Boston Court Pasadena, a theatre primarily dedicated to risky, adventurous new works and significantly reenvisioned classics, and an award-winning director working nationally in theatres such as Arena Stage, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, The Cherry Lane, Portland Center Stage, ACT Seattle, Utah Shakespeare Festival, South Coast Rep, the Geffen Playhouse, Pasadena Playhouse, and many others. Kubzansky directs inventive work across many genres, most recently: the world premiere of Weston Gaylord’s Octopus’s Garden, Tennessee Williams’ The Night of the Iguana (Boston Court), the world premiere of Sarah Mantell’s Everything That Never Happened (Baltimore Center Stage, Oregon Shakespeare Festival [pandemic-paused], Boston Court), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Utah Shakespeare Festival), Florian Zeller’s The Father with Alfred Molina (Pasadena Playhouse), world premieres of Aditi Brennan Kapil’s Orange (South Coast Rep), her own immersive site-specific Measure STILL for Measure, Tira Palmquist’s The Body’s Midnight, Kit Steinkellner’s Ladies (Boston Court), plus the West Coast premiere of Luis Alfaro’s Mojada, A Medea in Los Angeles (Boston Court at the Getty Villa), Othello (A Noise Within), Aaron Posner’s Stupid Fucking Bird (ACT Theatre Seattle), Jeanne Sakata’s Hold These Truths (Arena Stage), and many more. Most recent new play development work with: E.M. Lewis, Jeanne Sakata, Keiko Green, Julia Lederer, and more. Kubzansky has received many awards and honors, among them the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle’s Margaret Harford Award for Sustained Excellence in Theatre.

is a USA Today best-selling novelist and longtime dramatist. Described as a “genre-defying author and playwright” (Oxford American), her writing style blends warmth, wit, and solid punches to the gut. Her work often explores identity, transitional moments in life or society, and how worlds old and new connect—or collide.