The Present Process Podcast

Jun 14, 2023

Egress with Sarah Saltwick and Melissa Crespo

In the seventh episode of Present Process, Daniel talks with Sarah Saltwick and Melissa Crespo about their play Egress. The goal of Present Process is two fold: first, to highlight great plays from lesser known playwrights and elevate them as much as we can; and second, to demystify the process of writing a great play and increase the shared knowledge of playwriting. Melissa's Bio: Melissa Crespo (she/her/hers) is from Connecticut with Dominican, Puerto Rican, and Chilean roots. She is a director of theater, opera, and film. She most enjoys developing and directing new work. She is also a producer, playwright, and educator. As a director, Melissa has developed work at New Dramatists, The Lark, The Playwright's Center, and theatres around the country & abroad. As a playwright, Melissa co-wrote Egress with Sarah Saltwick. Egress was produced as a workshop production at Cleveland Playhouse in 2019 and received the Roe Green Award for Outstanding Achievement in Playwrighting. Egress received a world premiere production in 2021 at Amphibian Stage, followed by another production at Salt Lake Acting Company in 2022. She is a Founding Editor of 3Views on Theater, an online theater journal conceived by The Lillys. Melissa has served as a Time Warner Fellow at WP Theater, Allen Lee Hughes Directing Fellow at Arena Stage, and Van Lier Directing Fellow at Second Stage Theatre, and is an alum of the Drama League Director's Project. She is a Usual Suspect at New York Theatre Workshop and received her MFA in Directing from The New School for Drama. She is the current Associate Artistic Director of Syracuse Stage. Sarah's Bio: Sarah Saltwick is a playwright based in Austin, TX, a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers at UT Austin and was a Jerome Fellow at the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis. Recent Austin productions include A Perfect Robot at The Vortex (nominated for 3 Austin Critic Table Awards, and 6 B. Iden Payne Awards), Responsible in Out of Ink at Hyde Park Theatre, and Tender Rough Rough Tender as a Rude Fusion project at the Off Center. Tender Rough Rough Tender was awarded the David Mark Cohen award for best new play by the Austin Critic's Table. Recent workshops include Europa at Playwrights Week at the Lark in New York and The Pleasure Trials at Amphibian Stage Productions in Fort Worth TX. Sarah's plays have been recently been produced or developed by groundswell theatre company, Kitchen Dog Theater, Swan Dive, the Navigators, Red Theatre Collective, Phoenix Theatre, the Icicle Creek Theater Festival, WildClaw Horror Theater, Weber State University, Barnyard Theater; as well as in cars, backyards, dressing rooms, lobbies, and a swimming pool. Content Warning: Gun Violence, mass shootings.

1 hr 7 min