Since its inception in the 1970s, the Iowa New Play Festival has brought guest artists to campus to meet with students. Festival special guests attend all performances and give feedback to the creative team for each show, especially the playwright. The feedback is given in roundtable discussions following each reading and on the morning after each production or workshop. These roundtables help the playwright and his or her collaborators see their work in a professional context.

The following guests will join us for Iowa New Play Festival 2026:

Noel Allian

NOEL ALLAIN

Noel Allain is the Co-Founder and Artistic Director of the award winning Bushwick Starr Theater.  He has programmed artists and companies such as Misha Chowdhury, Heather Christian, Jeremy O. Harris, Dave Malloy, Raja Feather Kelly, Daniel Fish, Clare Barron, Ayesha Jordan, The Mad Ones, Phillip Howze, Erin Markey, Flako Jimenez, David Greenspan, Haruna Lee, Diana Oh, David Cale, and Julia May Jonas.  He has served as a panelist for NYSCA, LMCC, The Shed, Sundance Theater Lab, and HERE’s HARP Residency, appeared as a guest artist for the University of Iowa’s New Play Festival, and as a guest speaker at Colombia, Juilliard, Trinity Rep, NYU, Hunter, Bard, Skidmore, the Prelude Festival and Sarah Lawrence College.  From 2021-2025 he served as the Chair for the Panel of Interdisciplinary Performance for MacDowell Admissions.  As an actor, he has performed in various theater, television, and film productions in and out of New York City.  He is a graduate of Skidmore College and the Juilliard School’s Drama Division.

Alexis Williams

ALEXIS WILLIAMS

Alexis Williams is the Associate Artistic Director of The Playwrights Realm in NY, an organization dedicated to providing support and mentorship to early career playwrights. Before joining the Realm, Alexis worked as an agent at Bret Adams Artists’ Agency, representing playwrights, directors, composers, designers and choreographers. In her time in the industry, she has worked as a director, a producer, a dramaturg, a teaching artist, and has worn multiple other hats. She has appeared on panels for the National New Play Network, the League Of Professional Theatre Women, the NUEA, and the Musical Theatre Factory; has conducted roundtable discussions with the New School for Drama, Sewanee Writers Conference, the 24 Hour Play Fest, UCSD and Brown University and more.  In Fall of 2017 Alexis was named one of the Interval's "Women To Watch".  Alexis is on the advisory board of the Bret n’ Paul Foundation, is an alumnus of the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab and is a graduate of Northwestern University.

Ruth

RUTH MARGRAFF

Ruth Margraff's plays are drawn from the edges of opera and art. She’s critically acclaimed for her six martial arts operas with Fred Ho for the Apollo, Guggenheim Museum, LaMama, Brooklyn Academy of Music and a CAMI tour to 33 US cities. Margraff’s monologue for SEVEN was introduced by Diane von Furstenberg and Meryl Streep at the Broadway Hudson Theater, performed in more than 30 countries and translated into 20+ languages. Ruth has been developing four operas with Overtone Industries (Los Angeles); International Nišville Jazz Theatre Festival (Serbia), Still Point Theater Collective/Sixfest at Athenaeum Center and Chicago Dramatists/Audio Artisans. She has received awards from Rockefeller, McKnight, Jerome, NEA, TCG, TMUNY, NYSCA, IAC, MASS MoCA, Fulbright, etc; and is published by Innova Records, Dramatists Play Service, American Theatre, Theater Forum, Performing Arts Journal, TDR, Applause, Backstage and Lexington Books, Playscripts, Autonomedia, New Village Press among others. She's been a member of Theater Without Borders, alum of New Dramatists and the Playwrights’ Center, and is a Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.