The Omnivores is a theater collective started by five playwrights cooking up new shows in scrappy and sustainable ways.
We come from wildly different backgrounds and life experiences, and met as the Hunter College Playwriting MFA class of 2023.
We graduated into a precarious time for theater, and decided to follow in the footsteps of 13P and start our own collective.
We make plays that are hilarious and deeply moving, raunchy and fiercely political, driven by everyday language and vivid theatricality, that explore quotidian moments and big ideas.
Lauren Holmes is a playwright and producer from Dedham, Massachusetts. She’s the recipient of the 2024 Princess Grace Award in Playwriting/New Dramatists Residency, a Venturous Playwrights Fellowship 2025 nomination, and a 2024 Woodward Residency. She recently adapted Olga Ravn’s novel The Employees for a production at Theaterlab. Her work has been developed at Theaterlab, LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, and The Brick. Before becoming a playwright, Lauren worked on political campaigns, in the private sector, and for the United Nations in Italy and New York. She draws on these experiences to write dark, comic plays about work, class, families of happenstance, and seekers of hidden knowledge. They’re grounded in realism, but full of ghosts, invisible dogs, aliens, and other spirits. MFA in playwriting from Hunter College. laurenholm.es
Chad Kaydo is a queer playwright from Ashtabula, Ohio, who writes intimately observed plays obsessed with friendship, mortality, and the existential questions hidden in the quotidian. The Omnivores will produce his play I'm Repeating Myself at the Brick February 27 to March 15. A member of the Clubbed Thumb 2024-2025 Early Career Writers’ Group, Chad is developing Where Is Miss Stone? with Clubbed Thumb as a finalist for the 2022 Biennial Commission. Chad’s work has also been supported by Fresh Ground Pepper, HB Studio, Playhouse on Park, the Quickening Room, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and Theater Masters. As Playwright in Residence at the Brick, he produces and hosts Quick + Dirty, a development series at Brick Aux for short works by new collaborators. M.F.A., Hunter College. chadkaydo.com
Favorite rehearsal snack: Goldfish crackers—always a hit.
Diana Ly is a Vietnamese-American screenwriter and playwright based in New York. She grew up as an expat in the Philippines before studying Computer Science at Stanford and subsequently working at Google. She received her MFA in Playwriting from Hunter College. The Omnivores and The Sống Collective production of her play Sex and the Abbey at the Brick in 2024 was warmly recommended by Helen Shaw in the New Yorker. She recently completed the Universal Pictures Writers Lab and the Orchard Project’s Greenhouse Lab. Her work has been supported by NYSCA Support for Artists, NYTW’s Mondays@3 Series and LPAC+The Brick’s Rough Draft Festival. Diana was previously a Women in Film|Black List Feature Resident, a Project Involve Fellow at Film Independent, and a member of The Sống Collective’s inaugural Việt Writers Lab. Diana writes about women and people of color coming into their own power, agency and artistry.
Ian Robles is a Puerto Rican theatre-maker who writes theatrical, bold and chaotic plays about colonialism, failure and the resilience of the human spirit. Recent Tow Playwright-in-Residence at Teatro Círculo (2023-2024). His play Lío had its world premiere at Teatro Círculo on March of 2024 and was nominated for 6 HOLA Awards, including Playwriting. Finalist for The Orchard Project’s 2022 Adaptation Lab and The Bushwick Starr 2022 Reading Series. 2023 O’Neill (NPC) semifinalist. Recipient of the Abniel Marat Award for best playwright at FUERZAfest 2018. His works have also been produced at Teatro LATEA, Teatro Pregones and the Julia de Burgos Performance and Arts Center. Member of the LatinX Playwrights Circle and the Puerto Rican theatre company La Bicicleta. MFA in Playwriting, Hunter College ’23.
Phillip Christian Smith is a member of New Dramatists 2023-2030, Sloan Commission 2024-2025, Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellow 2024-2025, a Roe Green Commission with Cleveland Playhouse, a Fire This Time Festival Playwright, Fresh Ground Pepper PGPG, a Tennessee Williams Scholar at Sewanee (current staff), Playwrights Realm and Lambda Literary Fellow, Winter Playwrights Retreater, The Outrage: A Queer Writers Residency. Florida Rep PlayLab, Valdez Conference. O’Neill, PlayPenn, Trustus, and BAPF Finalist. Co-Literary Director of Exquisite Corpse Company. He teaches acting at Pace University and Hunter College, where he has also taught playwriting. MFA Yale School of Drama, MFA Hunter College. https://www.phillipchristiansmith.com/