TimeLine Theatre Company is pleased to announce that four new playwrights have joined its Playwrights Collective, the company’s new play incubator.
Kimberly Dixon-Mays, Terry Guest, Omer Abbas Salem and Catherine Yu are now in residence with TimeLine’s Playwrights Collective through December 2027.
New TimeLine Theatre Playwrights Collective members (from left) Kimberly Dixon-Mays, Terry Guest, Omer Abbas Salem and Catherine Yu.
Over its first 29 seasons, TimeLine has produced 16 world premieres and 43 Chicago premieres, making an ongoing commitment to developing, supporting and featuring new work. The TimeLine Playwrights Collective continues that effort, offering a supportive environment for emerging Chicago playwrights to create an original play inspired by TimeLine’s mission of presenting stories inspired by history that connect with today’s social and political issues.
The Playwright Collective is a two-year writing residency program, hosted and facilitated by TimeLine under the new leadership of Company Members Anish Jethmalani, Director of Playwrights Collective, and Maren Robinson, Resident Dramaturg. The Collective meets regularly, and playwrights choose their own projects that fit TimeLine's mission. Together the group reads and hears scenes from work under development, asks questions, discusses challenges and shares progress with peers. TimeLine provides support throughout the process, including readings, and any works developed with the Playwrights Collective may be considered for future development and production at TimeLine Theatre.
“We are so excited to bring together four incredible Chicago-based writers who come from such different backgrounds and lived experiences,” said Jethmalani. “Together, they represent a multitude of diverse voices that define our beautiful city. We’re looking forward to working with them to bring to life an amazing collection of new plays that will lift their view of the human condition and embody TimeLine's mission.”
“Anish and I are really excited to co-facilitate a space for this talented group of Chicago playwrights,” said Robinson. “The Playwrights Collective is designed to meet as a cohort over two years, which gives the playwrights space for experimentation and play in the process of creating new work. Of course we want to see four wonderfully different new plays at the end, but we’re also committed to making the process of getting there a supportive and rewarding experience.”
“TimeLine is thrilled to further our commitment to developing new works, with an emphasis on nurturing Chicago writers,” said TimeLine Artistic Director PJ Powers. “This fourth cohort of the Playwrights Collective coincides with the move into our new home in Uptown, embarking on a new era for the organization and expanding ways in which our mission is supported and shared. We look forward to supporting these four exciting, emerging writers as they craft plays that probe history and spark dialogue about today’s social and political issues.”
Dixon-Mays, Guest, Salem, and Yu are the fourth cohort to join TimeLine’s Playwrights Collective. The inaugural Collective, created in 2013 and originally led by former TimeLine Company Member Ben Thiem, included Alice Austin, John Conroy, Emily Dendinger, Frances Limoncelli, Susan McLaughlin Karp, and Brett Neveu. The second cohort, including Tyla Abercrumbie, Will Allan, Maureen Gallagher and Calamity West, convened in 2017 and culminated in TimeLine’s inaugural FIRST DRAFT: Playwrights Collective Festival in December 2018. The third, Dolores Díaz, Kristin Idaszak, Osiris Khepera, and David Rhee, were in residence at TimeLine from 2020-2021, and had their works read in TimeLine’s second FIRST DRAFT festival in December 2021.
To date, the Playwrights Collective has resulted in four productions going on to receive their world premieres at TimeLine Theatre: To Catch a Fish by Brett Neveu (2018), Relentless by Tyla Abercrumbie, which was subsequently remounted for an extended run at Goodman Theatre (2022), Campaigns, Inc. by Will Allan (2022) and Black Sunday by Dolores Díaz (2024).
TimeLine’s new Playwrights Collective will begin their monthly meetings in early 2026, culminating with public staged readings of each play as part of TimeLine’s First Draft: New Play Festival, in late 2027 or early 2028.
The first year of TimeLine’s 2026-2027 Playwrights Collective has already received generous support from Timothy C. Sherck, a longtime supporter of the Collective.
TimeLine Theatre Playwrights Collective Biographies
Kimberly Dixon-Mays (she/her) is a poet, playwright and sometimes performer. Her work was featured in Congo Square Theatre Company’s 2019 August Wilson New Play Initiative. She was a semi-finalist for the 2019 Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, a semi-finalist for the 2020 National Black Theatre I Am Soul Playwright Residency, and recipient of NBT's Soul Series Lab Playwriting Micro-Development Session. She was nominated for a 2021 3Arts Award, selected for Goodman Theatre's 2022 Future Lab series, a 2023 and 2025 finalist for American Blues Theater’s Blue Ink Award, and a 2024 finalist for Definition Theatre’s Amplify Series. In 2025 the world premiere of her play Rabbits in Their Pockets opened the 43rd season of Chicago’s Lifeline Theatre. Dixon-Mays has also developed work with theaters including Rivendell, Shattered Globe, Stage Left, and The Gift. In 2023, she received an Illinois Arts Council fellowship. She was also a 2018-20 Russ Tutterow Fellow with Chicago Dramatists. Dixon-Mays is currently one of Chicago Dramatists’ Resident Playwrights, and serves as a Senior Editor for RHINO poetry magazine. She holds a B.A. from Yale, an M.A. from UCLA, and a Ph.D. from Northwestern.
Terry Guest (he/him) is a three-time Jeff Award-winning playwright, actor, director and teaching artist. Works include OAK, At The Wake of a Dead Drag Queen, Milo Imagines The World, The Magnolia Ballet (Jeff Awards for Best Production and Best Performance in a short run), A Ghost in Satin (Williamstown Theater Festival), Marie Antionette and the Magical Negroes (three Jeff Awards including Best New Work, Best Director, and Best Ensemble), Nightbirds (Goodman New Stages Residency), The Madness of Mary Todd (Goodman Playwrights Unit commission), and Andy Warhol Presents the Cocaine Play. As an actor, Guest has worked at regional theaters including Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, Alliance Theatre, About Face Theatre, and Actors Express.
Omer Abbas Salem (he/they) is an actor and playwright. As an actor, they've worked at Roundabout Theatre, Atlantic Theatre, St. Louis Repertory Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Goodman, Steep Theatre, Jackalope Theatre, Silk Road Rising, First Floor Theatre, The New Coordinates, About Face Theatre, Griffin Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, Court Theatre, A Red Orchid, and The Second City. As a playwright, their work has been produced at The Goodman, Steppenwolf, About Face, Steep, First Floor, Jackalope, The New Coordinates, The Story Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, National Queer Theatre, Definition Theatre, A Red Orchid, and The Theatre School at DePaul University. They are a member of the 2021-22 Goodman Playwrights Unit and participated in The Goodman’s New Stages Festival in 2022. They are also the winner of the 2022 Blueprint Commission from First Floor Theater and the Cunningham Commission from DePaul University. They are an Emerging Playwright Commission from Audible Theater and are also the most recent recipient of the Edgerton Commission from Steppenwolf. They were a member of the 2024-2025 New Stages Commission at The Goodman, part of the 2024-25 Chicago International Film Festival Screenplay Cohort, and the winner of the 2022 3Arts Award in Theater. They are an ensemble member of Steep Theatre, First Floor Theater, and The New Coordinates. They graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and the University of Chicago.
Catherine Yu (she/her) is a Chicago-based writer of plays and librettos. Her plays include In Spite of My Ambivalence (2025 Venturous finalist; forthcoming: Synchronicity Theatre); Alice Wareham and the Fabulation of Time (2025 Screencraft Stage Play Quarterfinalist); In Love and Friendship (2023 Austin Film Festival Second Round); Le Jeté (2019 BAPF Semifinalist); The Day is Long to End (2018 University of Florida production); and The Sun Experiment (FringeNYC Excellence in Playwriting; Time Out NY’s Top Ten Nightlife and Music Events of the Week in August 2014). She has held fellowships and residencies at NYSCA/NYFA, MacDowell, Soho Rep, New York Theatre Workshop, Tin House, Illinois Arts Council and Chicago Dramatists. Yu was commissioned for librettos by Atlanta Opera and Strange Trace in 2023. She is a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University and a Fellow with the Confluence Writers Project in St. Louis. She is a co-librettist of an opera premiering in 2026. She holds a B.A. from Stanford University and M.F.A. from New York University.
About TimeLine Theatre Company
TimeLine Theatre Company, recipient of the prestigious 2016 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions, was founded in April 1997 with a mission to present stories inspired by history that connect with today's social and political issues. As it celebrates this milestone 29th season, TimeLine has presented 96 productions, including 16 world premieres and 43 Chicago premieres, and launched the Living History Education Program and TimeLine South summer arts program, which bring the company’s mission to life for students in Chicago Public Schools and beyond. Recipient of the Alford- Axelson Award for Nonprofit Managerial Excellence and the Richard Goodman Strategic Planning Award from the Association for Strategic Planning, TimeLine has received 64 Jeff Awards, including an award for Outstanding Production 11 times.
The company departed its longtime home on Wellington Avenue in August 2024 and moved into new administrative offices at 5539 N. Broadway, Ste. B, a few blocks north of the site of its future new home, located at 5035 N. Broadway in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood. Construction is ongoing on that site, where plans feature an intimate black box theater seating up to 250 audience members, expanded area for the immersive lobby experiences that are a TimeLine hallmark, new opportunities for education and engagement, room to allow audience members to arrive early and stay late for theatergoing experiences that extend far beyond the stage, and more.
TimeLine is led by Artistic Director PJ Powers, Executive Director Mica Cole, and Board President Thaddeus J. Malik. TimeLine Company members are Will Allan, Nick Bowling, Janet Ulrich Brooks, Behzad Dabu, Charles Andrew Gardner, Lara Goetsch, Juliet Hart, Anish Jethmalani, Mildred Marie Langford, Mechelle Moe, David Parkes, Ron OJ Parson, PJ Powers, Maren Robinson, and Helen Young.
Major corporate, government and foundation donors providing season support via TimeLine’s Annual Fund include Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation; Bayless Family Foundation; Bulley & Andrews, LLC; Carol Oppenheim and Jerome Lamet Charitable Fund; Crown Family Philanthropies; Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation; Laughing Acres Family Foundation; Lloyd A. Fry Foundation; Paul M. Angell Family Foundation; Polk Bros. Foundation; The Shubert Foundation; and Walder Foundation. TimeLine also acknowledges support from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.
For more information, visit timelinetheatre.com, or Facebook or Instagram (@TimeLineTheatre on both platforms).