This past year has been challenging for everyone, especially the theater community. Due to many extenuating factors, the co-founders of Mission to (dit)Mars – Kari Bentley-Quinn, Don Nguyen, Meredith Packer, and Laura Pestronk – came to a difficult but necessary decision, which is to formally wind down the company after nine amazing years.
We started Mission to (dit)Mars in 2012, as four artists who wanted to build a new and unique theater community in the great borough of Queens. We started off with the Propulsion Lab writers group, which invited Queens-based playwrights to write a brand new play over the course of a season.
Playwrights in the Propulsion Lab included: Jack McCarthy, Corinna Schulenberg, Courtney Lauria, Jane Miller, Jennifer Lane, Kristine M. Reyes, Mac Rogers, David Lawson, Lisa Huberman, Jonathan Alexandratos, Tyler Rivenbark, Tori Keenan-Zelt, Mrinalini Kamath, Christopher Moncayo-Torres, Tim Errickson, Nat Cassidy, Ray Yamanouchi, Sasha Sharova, Megan Bussiere, Jason Tseng, Enrique Urueta, Amy E. Witting, Elizabeth Seldin, and Scott Casper. Through the lab, we oversaw the development of more than 35 new plays. We were able to present these brand new plays with our Launchpad Reading Series, which was the first public presentation of plays that went on to win numerous awards and productions. We worked with directors such as Kristin McCarthy Parker, Jordana Williams, Colette Robert, Dev Bondarin, and Christopher Diercksen.
Through our annual All Systems Go – a reading of excerpts from all the plays written in Lab that season – we fostered relationships with over 100 actors. We also hosted a Mindful Writing workshop in the summers with Emily Herzlin, and we initiated the Salon Series, which was a next step dramaturgical program for plays written in Lab. We hosted two retreats in a partnership with Queens Theater, presented All Systems Go at Astoria Performing Arts Center, and were in residence at The Secret Theater, the Chain Theater, and the Broom Tree Theater. Countless professional and personal relationships were born in this company.
While Mission to (dit)Mars as a company might be winding down, the community that we have built remains. We are confident that the relationships and creative partnerships that we built will continue to grow and flourish. This is not a goodbye – the resources on our website will still be available for the next year – and we will always be a part of this incredible group of artists. We hope that theater artists in Queens can pick up where we left off and build something brand new, when we can all be in the same space again. We will see you again – hopefully soon – right here in Queens.
Born and raised in Edison, NJ, Megan started performing and writing from a young age. She attended Kean University, where she minored in theatre and received her MA in Speech Pathology. After college she traveled the world performing in Japan, Hawaii, China, and the Eastern Caribbean. She now resides in Astoria and currently works as a private accent reduction coach with AccentsOff in midtown Manhattan. Her play Talk to Me has had two professional staged readings and was named a finalist for the 2016 Bauer-Boucher Playwriting Award through Premiere Stages. She is dedicated to writing new works centered around communication, in hopes of starting difficult, weird, and fun conversations. 
Tim is a playwright and stage director based in New York City. He is the Founder and Artistic Director of Boomerang Theatre Company, an award-winning nonprofit theater. His play Endless Summer Nights premiered with Boomerang, and was a “Pick of the Week” by 
Christopher Moncayo-Torres is an Ecuadorian-American playwright and live storyteller, born & bred in Queens, NY. He first practiced creative writing at John Jay College of Criminal Justice while pretending to study for his forensic psychology degree. He is an alumnus of Playwrights Horizons’ Perspectives on Playwriting Core Workshop. He wrote the short play “We Come Here” (Astoria Performing Arts Center / 2016 New York Innovative Theater Award for Original Short Script nomination), full-length play “Hablas y Te Salvas” (Staged reading: Astoria Performing Arts Center, 2017) and co-wrote the hip-hopera “A Sunnyside Mixtape” (Working Title Theater, 2016) which was performed under the 7 train in Sunnyside, Queens. His work has been read at InViolet Theater’s “Second Monday Social” and INTAR Theatre’s Steep Salon. He also volunteers as a dramaturg and playwright for 52nd Street Project. He is the co-founder and Managing Director of the developmental collective, Fail Better NYC.
Sasha Sharova is a playwright and artistic administrator based in Astoria. Her plays include The Great Russian Expedition, (developed at Gallatin Summer Theatre Lab, The Lark Apprentice Roundtable and Fail Better Reading Series), and Rabbit Hunt, (developed at Fail Better). A bi-lingual writer and a native of Russia, Sasha has served as an interpreter for The Lark’s Russia-US Play Exchange Program and as a translator and dialect coach for ABC’s Quantico. Sasha studied at NYU Gallatin under Kristoffer Diaz and Kristin Horton (BA 2016). Sasha has a passion for shinning the light on female characters and exploring their complexities, as well as exploring cross-cultural relationships. As an artistic administrator, she has focused her work on new play development and making theater accessible across the country by working with companies like The Lark, The Playwrights Realm, and Dramatists Play Service.
