Aurora Behlke is an Alaska-raised, St. Louis-based playwright and director. She is currently the Teaching Artist Fellow at Metro Theater Company, where she pens the interactive performances for their flagship education program, “Building Community Through Drama”. Her writing has been produced at the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival, Echo Theatre, Slightly Askew Theatre Ensemble, Young Americans Theatre Company, The Valdez Theatre Conference, The University of St. Andrews and Webster University. When she’s not writing, you can find her teaching, tinkering, playing the accordion, or doing all three at the same time.

M Kamara (Carbondale, IL) is a writer of the world, having lived in places like England, Georgia, and Virginia, and being a first-generation Sierra Leonean American. Each place has shaped them into the person they are today, opening their eyes to the multitude of stories that varying communities hold. M is currently an MFA Playwriting student at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. As a budding playwright, M is interested in telling black diasporic stories that engage history, afro-surrealism, speculative fiction, and various cultural myths.

Aaron Scully is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at the University of Central Missouri (UCM). He received his PhD from the University of Missouri in 2018. Aaron is the Chair of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (KCACTF) Region V National Playwriting Program and is the Co-Coordinator for the Judith Royer Excellence in Playwriting Award for the Association of Theatre in Higher Education. Aaron’s play Sliding into Home was a semifinalist for the Eugene O’Neill Playwright’s Conference, was selected for the Plays-in-Progress workshop at the Mid-America Theatre Conference, and was also presented as part of KC Public Theatre’s Theatre Lab. Aaron was the recipient of the National Planet Earth Award, which recognizes the top 10-minute play that focuses on environmental issues for his play Nah-Zhee. In the spring of 2021, Aaron directed Oedipus for State Fair Community College, a play he also wrote that reimagines Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus the King; for this play, he received meritorious recognition for adaptation from KCACTF. Most recently, Aaron’s play Remember the Dance, received several meritorious awards from KCACTF and was selected as an Invited Production at the 2024 Regional Festival. Currently, he is writing a children’s show, Guinevere and Lancelot that reimagines the Camelot story that will be produced this summer and toured around central Missouri. This fall, KC Public Theatre will be producing his play The Disappointments.