Delacroix Writers:
The Retreat

From 2007-2017, Gary Garrison was the Executive Director of the Dramatist Guild of America – the national organization of playwrights, lyricists and composers headed by our nation’s most honored dramatists. For the last five years, he was the Director of the Dramatist Guild Institute – a premier educational institution dedicated to the continued education of dramatists throughout the country. Prior to his work at the Guild, Garrison filled the posts of Artistic Director, Producer and full‑time faculty member in the Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, where he produced over forty-five different festivals of new work, collaborating with hundreds of playwrights, directors and actors. As a playwright, Garrison’s plays include The Mayworkers, The Unexpected Light On Azadeh Medusa, Too Quick to Pick, Ties That Bind, Skirting the Issue, Caught Without Candy, Game On, The Sweep, Verticals and Horizontals, Storm on Storm, Crater, Old Soles, Padding The Wagon, Rug Store Cowboy, Cherry Reds, Gawk, Oh Messiah Me, We Make A Wall, The Big Fat Naked Truth, Scream With Laughter, Smoothness With Cool, Empty Rooms, Does Anybody Want A Miss Cow Bayou? and When A Diva Dreams. This work has been commissioned by or featured at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, City Theatre of Miami, Boston Theatre Marathon, Primary Stages, The Directors Company, The Theresa Rebeck Writers Residency, Manhattan Theatre Source, StageWorks, Open Door Theatre, Pulse Ensemble Theatre, Expanded Arts and New York Rep. His recent work as guest artist or master teacher of playwriting involve such institutions as the Marfa Intensives, Convivio Writer’s Conference (Postignano, Italy) Sewanee Writer’s Conference, The Kennedy Center Summer Playwriting Intensive, CityWrights, The Inkwell, Source Theatre in D.C., Baltimore Playwrights Festival, New Hampshire Playwrights Festival, Last Frontier Theatre Conference, Southeast Theatre Conference, Northwest Theatre Conference, Boston Playwrights and has taught at Boston University, West Georgia College, University of Oklahoma, New York University, The University of Texas, Goddard College, Texas State University, Texas Tech, University of Southern Mississippi and the Dramatists Guild Institute. He is the author of the critically acclaimed, The Playwright’s Survival Guide: Keeping the Drama in Your Work and Out of Your Life, Perfect Ten: Writing and Producing the Ten‑Minute Play, A More Perfect Ten and two volumes of Monologues for Men by Men. In April of 2014, The Kennedy Center instituted the National Gary Garrison Ten-Minute Play Award given to the best ten-minute play written by a university dramatist and in the spring of 2016 awarded him the Milan Stitt Outstanding Teacher of Playwriting in the country.

Randy Greenberg is a producer and senior entertainment industry executive with an emphasis on business affairs, marketing and distribution business, as well as product strategy and operations. Over the past 25 years, Greenberg has been involved in the green-lighting, marketing and distribution of 200+ films, and his strategies have produced over $5 billion in theatrical box office. Over the past decade, Greenberg has served as Producer and CEO of The Greenberg Group, a global entertainment content and investment strategy advisory and marketing/distribution consultancy. In addition, Greenberg has executive produced three feature films - “The Meg” for Apelles Entertainment and Gravity Pictures, a part of CMC. The film was released worldwide by Warner Bros. and Gravity Pictures in August 2018, and achieved over $530 Million at the Worldwide Box Office, making it the #1 U.S/China Co-Production ever in terms of worldwide box office, Universal Pictures and DreamWorks' Pictures' “Cowboys and Aliens” (2011) and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, Hyde Park Entertainment and Omnilab Media's “Dylan Dog: Dead of Night” (2011). In addition in Fall 2021, Greenberg was the Co-Executive Producer on the Netflix animated family/co-viewing TV series "A Tale Dark & Grimm".

Prior to The Greenberg Group, Greenberg co-founded the Resolution Talent & Literary Agency in 2012 with offices in Los Angeles and New York. Before that, Greenberg was the EVP Marketing & Business Affairs for comic book entertainment company, Platinum Studios. Greenberg was also the Head of / Senior Vice President International Theatrical Marketing and Distribution at Universal Pictures, VP International Theatrical Markteting at MGM/UA Pictures and an Account Executive & Publicist at Dennis Davison Associates (DDA) International Public Relations working for clients such as Carolco Pictures, Morgan Creek, 20th Century Fox, Miramax Films, Avenue Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures to name a few.

During his tenure at Universal Pictures, where Greenberg was brought in to turn the division turned into a $1+ Billion-dollar revenue operation, Greenberg's $2.7B at the international box office during this tenure produced the company's 2nd and 3rd best years (at the time) at the international box office, including $1B in gross revenue in a single year (only the 2nd time the company had accomplished this milestone).

Greenberg has been an instructor at UCLA Extension for the foundation class, The Business of Entertainment, for the past decade.

Greenberg is currently Executive Producing "THE MEG 2: THE TRENCH" the sequel to the 2018 box office hit film "THE MEG" which began production in January 2022 in London. In addition, Greenberg is in development on "ERACED", a bio-pic based on the life of African-American race car driver and mechanic Charlie Wiggins. Finally, Greenberg is the CEO for a social media start-up called HYYPE SPACE - the social media destination for Challenges, which will debut in June 2022.

Ahsan Akbar is a writer based in London, and the Founder-Director of the Dhaka Literary Festival in Bangladesh, which is now in its 10th year and the largest literary festival in the country. Ahsan's festival has attracted over 500 international speakers including Nobel laureates, Booker, Pulitzer and Oscar winners, such as VS Naipaul, Adonis, Vikram Seth, Tilda Swinton, Ben Okri, Ahdaf Soueif, William Dalrymple.

Akbar’s collection of poems is included in the English literature syllabus of SOAS, University of London. He is a frequent contributor to international newspapers and journals, such as The Guardian, The Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, The Spectator, The Dhaka Tribune, Scroll, The Telegraph, etc. He is currently digitising the Bandung File - a series of Channel 4 documentaries from 1984-98, and working with screenwriters to develop film and TV scripts.

Sara Norcott is a writer, editor, story consultant, idea-generator, and content creator with a BA in Communications and an MFA in Writing for Stage & Screen. With over 10 years of experience in creating content for businesses and brands, including Fortune 500 and 100 companies, she approaches storytelling and editing with precision, excellence, and an emphasis on how a story and its characters resonate with an audience. Her training also includes script coverage, developing resources for screenwriters, and being a content editor for Jen Grisanti in her resources, teleseminars, and as a part of NBC's former Writers on the Verge program. She has worked as a part of the production crew on NBC's The Voice, and has experience in table reads, acting, and voice overs. Sara works with writers via story notes, proofreading and editing services, and personalized story consulting for both television and film.

To us, Philippe Berrier stands unique in adventure-embracing life and in film-making. As a very young man, he left his comfortable parental home in France to fight against the Soviets with the Mujahidin in Afghanistan in the early 1980s. Remarkably, he survived. And told his story, in book form. Later, he committed himself to a West African prison for twelve days to make a vérité documentary. As a prisoner. Remarkably he survived, and told the story, in film form. He also has four children. And has survived. And tells a beautiful story of that too.

His passions seems boundless, infectious, inspirational.

If story-telling is a journey to the heart of one’s own truth, Philippe's philosophy ‘Même pas peur’ (fearless) will shed radiating light on any story-tellers’ journey. Anthony West and he are at odds with regard to what ’Truth in Story Telling’ means. Philippe’s participation in this retreat will center around their contrasting views and likely really quite animated debates. You may agree with one, feel drawn to both, reject both. Either way, we feel strongly that Philippe’s participation will rank highly in the enrichment derived from this retreat.

Mississippi. For those old enough, it’s a 1988 film that underlined divisons of all kinds in the US South. In common parlance, derogatory words are legion against the state, the region, its people. Maybe that’s why it’s a perfect place for a passionate bridge-builder, injustice fighter, and teacher of documentary film-making, as it happens, in Oxford, the home of the University of Mississippi.

Michael Fagans and Anthony West met at a film festival organised by Joe Travolta in California. Both have traveled intercontinentally, extensively. Michael is a photojournalist of more than 20 years, and a documentary filmmaker for more than 10 years, He is the author of three books on photography and has earned multiple professional accolades. He has led fund-raising efforts for diverse charities fighting human trafficking in California. Currently his work is focusing on race, relations and conciliation efforts in the deep South.

If you want more light shed on your own truth, Michael holds up a lantern.

Ralph Pezzullo is a New York Times bestselling author, and award-winning playwright and screenwriter. He is also the host of the popular podcast “Heroes Behind Headlines,” which is ranked #8 on Apple Podcasts, news and documentary.

His books have been published in over twenty languages and include Jawbreaker (with former CIA operative Gary Berntsen), Inside SEAL Team Six (with Don Mann), The Walk-In, At the Fall of Somoza, The Chopin Manuscript (winner of the 2008 Audio Book of the Year), Plunging Into Haiti (winner of the 2006 Douglas Dillon Prize for American Diplomacy), Eve Missing, Most Evil, Zero Footprint, Left of Boom, Full Battle Rattle, Saigon and the SEAL Team Six thrillers Hunt the Wolf, Hunt the Scorpion, Hunt the Falcon, Hunt the Jackal, Hunt the Fox, Hunt the Dragon, Hunt the Viper and Hunt the Leopard.

His plays, all of which have been produced in New York City, include Dear Friends, On That Day, Eating the Shadow, The Education of One Miss February, From Behind the Moon, Ghosts in the Dining Room, Bad Moon Rising, Gauguin’s Parrot, Asylum, Hide Mother in My Heart, Spain, and Okeechobee Split. Tail of the Tiger was awarded Best New Play by the National Arts Club, and The American Wife was recently produced at the Park Theatre in London.

He has also written for television and film, creating screenplays for all the major film studies and working with directors Oliver Stone, Antoine Fuqua, James Foley, Francois Girard, George Gallo, Yves Simoneau and others. His screenplay, An Unacceptable Person, was the recipient a Writer’s Guild East Foundation New Screenplay Award. And his screenplay Flashback won the best screenplay at the New York Film Festival.

He currently lives in Los Angeles.