2026 Amplify Reading Series Festival
~ November 20-21, 2026 ~
Two Days | Four Plays
Regina
by Bernardo Cubría
directed by Jessica Kubzansky
dramaturgy by Margaret Shigeko Starbuck
RSVP for Regina
In Case of Bruising
by Kamila Boga
directed by Veronica Burt
dramaturgy by Sarah Showich
RSVP for In Case of Bruising
Marble Rooftop
by Eliana Theologides Rodriguez
directed by Lily Tung Crystal
dramaturgy by Avis Zane
RSVP for Marble Rooftop
The Ballad of the Unfallen
by Maggie Lee
directed by Amy Poisson
RSVP for The Ballad of the Unfallen
Meet the Playwrights...
Kamila Boga (she/her) is an LA & NYC-based director, playwright, and actor. Fueled by the belief that creatives are first responders, she develops and directs expressive, ensemble-driven work that turns tension into art. Her plays have been developed by Rogue Machine Theatre, Ashland New Plays Festival, Boise Contemporary Theater, The Road Theatre, Eight Ball Theatre, Breaking & Entering Theatre Collective, Horizon Theatre, Williams College, and Dartmouth College. Kamila recently graduated from Columbia University with a B.A. in Creative Writing and a minor in Drama and Theatre Arts. She is thrilled to be a part of UC Santa Barbara’s LAUNCH PAD Festival and grateful for the opportunity to collaborate on new work.
Bernardo Cubría is a Mexican writer/director. His play Crabs in a Bucket won the 2024 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Writing. The Play You Want premiered at L.A.’s Road Theatre in 2022, garnering Cubría a Stage Raw Award and a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle nomination for Playwriting. In 2019, Cubría was nominated for the Ovation, Stage Raw, and Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Best Playwright awards for The Giant Void in My Soul. Other playwriting honors include the Smith Prize for Political Theater. He has served as a chair for the Dramatists Guild National Playwrights Fellows in 2025 & 2026. Cubría was also a 2023 Sundance Screenwriters Lab Fellow for Kill Yr Idols, which he co-wrote, and was a writer on Seasons 3 and 4 of Apple TV+’s Acapulco.
Maggie Lee (she/her) is an award-winning Seattle playwright who creates imaginative worlds on stage in genres like science fiction, fantasy, and horror, with productions in Seattle, New York, Seoul, Minneapolis, and San Francisco. Her work includes Songs of the Moon (book writer, The 5th Avenue Theatre Educational Touring Company commission), Once More, Just for You (Seattle Public Theater; 2024 Gregory Award Winner, Outstanding Original Script), And So That Happened (book writer, The 5th Avenue Theatre commission), The Sunless Scar (ACT Theatre Young Core Company commission), Sheathed (Macha Theatre Works; 2019 Gregory Award Winner, Outstanding New Play), The Tumbleweed Zephyr (Pork Filled Productions; 2016 Gregory Award Nominee, Outstanding New Play), The Flight Before Xmas (Seattle Public Theater commission, Macha Theatre Works), and The Clockwork Professor (Pork Filled Productions). In 2021, she was a Hedgebrook writer-in-residence and a Jack Straw Artist Support Program residency awardee. She is currently a Resident Playwright at Seattle Public Theater, a board member of Rain City Projects (an organization supporting Pacific Northwest playwrights), and a member of the Dramatists Guild. Her plays are available on New Play Exchange and published by Mneme Press. She holds a BA in English from the University of California, Berkeley.
Eliana Theologides Rodriguez (she/her) is a writer and dancer whose plays include Indian Princesses (2026 Off-Broadway Premiere at Atlantic Theater Company, 2025 World Premiere at La Jolla Playhouse), Poor Queenie (2025 World Premiere at Subtext Studio), Marble Rooftop (2024 O’Neill NPC Finalist), and We Are Angels, Just Like You!(24/25 Clubbed Thumb ECWG). Eliana is a proud member of EST/Youngblood and an alum of the Playwrights Realm Writing Fellowship, the Terrence McNally New Works Incubator, Clubbed Thumb's Early Career Writers Group, and the Bonnie Hammerschlag National Capital New Play Festival. Additional honors include: Craig Noel Nomination for “Best New Play”, Ollie Award Nomination, Weissberger/Harris Award Runner-Up, Susan Smith Blackburn Nomination, and the John Golden Award for Excellence in Playwriting. She is currently under commission at South Coast Repertory. www.elianatheologidesrodriguez.com
Meet the Directors...
Veronica Burt is a director, intimacy coordinator, movement director and teacher working across theatre and film. Her theatre credits on creative teams and as a performer include New York Theatre Workshop, Arena Stage, Pasadena Playhouse, Center Theatre Group, The Muny, Metropolitan Opera, The Kennedy Center, Chicago Lyric Opera, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Hammer Museum, and IAMA Theatre Company. Her work as an intimacy coordinator has been featured at Aesthetica Short Film Festival, Atlanta Film Festival, Dances with Films, LA Latino Intl Film Festival, LA Shorts Intl Film Fest, New Orleans Film Festival, NY Latino Film Festival, Rhode Island International Film Festival, Vancouver International Film Festival, and AFI’s DWWW+ program. She has intimacy-choreographed and movement-directed for film and theatre departments at USC School of Cinematic Arts, New York Film Academy, London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, Loyola Marymount University, Williams College, and her alma mater, Dartmouth College. Veronica was a 2024 WIF Fellow and the inaugural intimacy coordinator in the program. She has also received BOLD Ventures Grant funding for INTERIOR, a dance opera she conceived with composer Shaye Swanson. Upcoming: intimacy directing What We Leave Behind for IAMA Theatre Company, directing Kamila Boga's Crushed Bones (and other vices) at Williams College, and graduating with her MFA in Movement Directing and Teaching from Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. veronicaburt.com
Jessica Kubzansky (she/hers) is the Artistic Director of Boston Court Pasadena, a theatre primarily dedicated to risky, adventurous new works, 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 joys in directing a great deal of inventive new work, most recently: the world premieres of Beth Kander’s Best Line Wins (Contemporary American Theatre Festival), Weston Gaylord’s Octopus’s Garden (Boston Court Pasadena), Sarah Mantell’s Everything That Never Happened (Baltimore Center Stage, Oregon Shakespeare Festival [pandemic-paused], Boston Court), 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). Other recent directing work includes: Tennessee Williams’ The Night of the Iguana (Boston Court), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Utah Shakespeare Festival), Florian Zeller’s The Father with Alfred Molina (Pasadena Playhouse), 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, and Julia Lederer. Kubzansky has been blessed to work at a number of new play development festivals, including South Coast Rep’s Pacific Playwrights Festival, Perry Mansfield, Ojai Playwrights Conference, The Fords Theatre First Look, Cygnet Finish Line Festival, Playwrights Center of Minneapolis, Portland Center Stage’s JAW West, and now, joyously, Launchpad. Kubzansky has received many awards and honors, among them the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle’s Margaret Harford Award for Sustained Excellence in Theatre.
Amy Poisson (she/her) is a Seattle-based dramaturgical director specializing in world premiere plays and musicals by femme writers. She is the Producing Artistic Director of both Seattle Public Theater and Macha Theatre Works. Amy is currently producing and directing The Ballad of the Unfallen written by Maggie Lee, a rewrite of Aviatrix, and shepherding Jenn Ruzumna and Lisa Every's next play, Jew, and supporting a rewrite of their play The Park.
Directing work: World Premiere of Aviatrix by Angela Russell and Dionne McClain-Freeney, Macbeth: A Rock musical by Lisa Tricomi and Joe Popp, Letters from Max, a ritual by Sarah Ruhl, World Premieres of The Park, The Fifth Wave and Happy, Happy, Happy... by Ruzumna and Every and Stage of Fools, La Tofana's Poison Emporium, Blood Water Paint, Smoke & Dust by Joy McCullough. Amy has world premiered several plays written by Maggie Lee including: Sheathed (2019 Gregory winner for Outstanding New Play); Once More Just for You (2025 Gregory Award winner for Outstanding New Play), The Flight Before Xmas for Macha and Seattle Public in 2017; A Hand of Talons (2016 Gregory Award for Costumes), The Clockwork Professor and The Tumbleweed Zephyr (2016 Gregory nominee for Best New Play). Other work: 17 Minute Stories, Macha’s Live-streamed Covid Season, The Twelfth Story by Rebecca Goldberg at Annex Theatre; Fast Company by Carla Ching (2014 Seattle Times Footlight Award); These Streets by Gretta Harley & Sarah Rudinoff at ACT Central Heating Lab.
Meet the Dramaturgs...
Margaret Shigeko Starbuck (she/they) is a theatre director, dramaturg, and arts administrator. Recent directing projects include Ellen McLaughlin’s PlayOn translation of Pericles for Boston Court Pasadena; Kate Hamill’s Pride & Prejudice at Pomona College; Hamlet at Ensemble Theatre Company Santa Barbara; Henry 4 Parts I & II with The Porters of Hellsgate; and the world premiere of Rosie Narasaki’s Unrivaled at Boston Court Pasadena. They have directed staged readings of new plays at companies throughout LA including EST/LA, The Road, Company of Angels, and Rogue Artists Ensemble. Margaret has served as the dramaturg for the world premiere of Benjamin Benne’s at the very bottom of a body of water at Boston Court Pasadena and E.M. Lewis’s The Frankenstein Project in Boston Court’s New Play Reading Festival. In 2027, she will be the dramaturg on Hamlet at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and in 2025, she was the Phil Killian Directing Fellow at OSF where she assistant directed As You Like It and Quixote Nuevo. She is also the Literary Manager of Boston Court Pasadena.
Sarah Showich is an LA-Based Director and Dramaturg dedicated to developing ensemble-based New Work highlighting familiar relationships that teach us something about our society. She is also the Literary Manager of Eight Ball Theatre. Selected Recent Directing Credits include Memory Lane is a Desert Road (Eight Ball Theatre) and Dr. Mr. Science Boy (The Blank Theatre). Recent Dramaturgy/Literary work includes developing work with playwrights Nabra & Michael Nelson, Zack Rochlin-Waltch, Dylan Malloy, Cris Eli Blak, Kamila Boga, Makeda Declet, Kate McMorran, Amari Amai, Oscar K, Dom Martello, Habib Yazdi, Nova Cypress Black, Astrid Solace, and Eka Savajol. Sarah has worked with Geffen Playhouse, South Coast Repertory, Eight Ball Theatre, Rally Cat Theatre, the Blank Theatre and Celebration Theatre. She is so grateful to be a part of LAUNCH PAD Amplify Reading Series for the first time this year!