Shoreline Playwrights

Teresa Mella Fogel

Teresa Fogel is a playwright in the second chapter of her life. Her play, “Wedding Day Blues”, was produced at Theatre Artists Workshop New play festival, April 2018. “Speed Dating”, was one of the winners of ICWP’s 3-minute play contest. “Looking for Juliet” was published in the Drama Notebook in Spring 2020, and her full length play Knock! Knock! was a semi-finalist at the Garry Marshall Theatre New Works Festival. Her plays have been performed at Drama Works Theatre in Old Saybrook, from 2021-2023. Teresa is a member of the Dramatists Guild, PWC, International Center for Women Playwrights and the League of Professional Theatre Women. She has attended various playwrighting conferences including Yale, Wesleyan, Cape May Stage and the Kennedy Center Intensive preview. Teresa is currently workshopping her full length play, "Grief" while working on several others. She gets her inspiration from living on the Connecticut shoreline in Old Saybrook and spending time with her husband of 35 years.

Laura Thoma

Laura Thoma is an internationally published playwright and theatremaker originally from Tidewater, Virginia. She started her career as a dancer and choreographer. Laura has developed her work with GreenStage Guilford Live Arts Festival, Cape May Stage, Chestnut Street Playhouse, Eden Prairie Players, Marist College, Chicago Dramatist, Legacy Theatre, and Drama Works Theatre. She was a playwright in residence with The Pawling Theatre Exchange (now CTE) in 2018. Laura is an alum of the National Playwrights Symposium and the Kennedy Center Playwrights Intensive. Her monologue turned short film Me, Myself, and I, which she wrote during the pandemic starring Broadway veteran Erin Stoddard, has garnered awards from film festivals around the globe, including London, Paris, and New York. In 2023, Laura attended The Desert Playwrights' Retreat in Palm Springs, CA, had a development workshop and public reading of her play Yours in Words, through GreenStage Guilford, she was a featured playwright in The Bechdel Group's Fall Reading Series in NYC, and was a semi-finalist for the Dramatist Guild Foundation Fellows Program. Laura is a member of AEA, The Dramatist Guild, PWC, and The League of Professional Theatre Women, CT Chapter. Laura lives in Guilford, Connecticut, with her bookish wife, Chris, and their dog Buddy Fitzwilliam.

Our Story

Laura and Teri met in 2015 in a script-in-hand theatre group and immediately hit it off. Being middle-aged and new to playwriting, it seemed like kismet to have someone to share the experience with, so they started to meet for coffee and talk about playwriting. Sharing rides on different theatre adventures, they used the time in the car to talk about their own projects, dreams, and goals. Their journey has included being board members for a theatre development organization, resident playwrights at a local theatre, and encouraging each other through the completion of Dramatic Writing Certificates from the Dramatists Guild. In 2021, they created Shoreline Playwrights to create their own opportunities and support one another in developing new work. Since its inception, they have been collaborating with local playwrights and theatres.