ABOUT ME
Photos: Jake Wasserman
EMILY M. DZIOBA (she/her) is a dramaturg, administrator, and playwright based in New Jersey. As an artist and producer, Emily almost entirely supports new play development and is extremely passionate about creating quality, accessible theatre. Emily's goal in any project or position is to connect audiences with resonant stories that they will identify with and cherish. She feels a strong connection to breaking down the racial, economic, and gendered gatekeeping that hinders engagement with theatrical work. You can read her artistic statement here.
Currently, Emily is a Collective Dramaturg and Program Director at The New Jersey Play Lab, a home for new play development for New Jersey-based writers and dramaturgs. In their different programs, Emily offers dramaturgical insight to writers at all career levels; most notably, she created, launched, and leads The Storyteller Studio, a program for emerging writers and dramaturgs. She has served as a dramaturg for the Garden State New Play Festival (in partnership with Jersey City Theater Center), and facilitates sessions of the PlayGym playwriting forum.
Emily is the proud Literary Manager at Premiere Stages, having worked to organize their Play Festival submissions and selection process since 2022. In addition to her work managing 800+ submissions annually, she offers dramaturgical support to commissioned playwrights, facilitates feedback for amateur writers and students in workshops, and creates audience engagement displays for the Main Stage productions.
Emily has been fortunate to serve as the Dramaturg over the last several years for Art House Productions' History Play Commisson, supporting writers with archival research and structural feedback as they create new plays based on true events. She has also worked with the New York City-based non-proft Theater Masters, providing dramaturgical feedback to "Take Ten" MFA festival playwrights and the Visionary Commission playwrights. Emily is an original member and former Managing Director of The Strides Collective, a Philadelphia-based theatre company that develops work by emerging playwrights that embraces the queer experience.
Emily is a script reader for the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, 1319 Press, She NYC Arts, and the Austin Film Festival. She is a proud member of LMDA (The Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas), and was honored to be a participant in the 2022 Kennedy Center Dramaturgy Intensive, under the mentorship of Mark Bly.
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Also a playwright, Emily was recently named the winner of NewYorkRep's 2026 Curtain Rising Award with her play "make one left purlwise". It received an AEA 29 hour workshop in June 2026, directed by Dev Bondarin. She was named as a finalist for the 2026 Art House INKubator Program for PROJECT LIBERTY, a full-length play she is developing about Ellis Island and Hudson County. Her writing on chronic illness was workshopped and performed at the 2025 NJ Theatre Alliance's "Healing Voices" showcase at Premiere Stages.
As an educator, Emily enjoys working with arts students of all ages. Most recently, she has worked with high school artists across Hudson County as a playwriting facilitator with Jersey City Theater Center. She has previously supported the Union Catholic Performing Arts Company as their resident dramaturg, and offered educational content to adult and youth learners at George Street Playhouse.
A proud graduate of Drew University, Emily received her BA in Theatre Arts with Specialized Honors. Emily's most notable undergraduate project is serving as the dramaturg on an original devised piece, 4320p: IMMERSION, conceived under the mentorship of Tectonic Theater Project Master Teachers Barbara Pitts McAdams and Scott Barrow, and Dr. Lisa Brenner and Chris Ceraso of Drew. Emily presented her thesis research on 4320p at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education's annual conference as a 2019 Dramaturgy Debut Panelist.
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Emily loves her beagle Theo, enjoys knitting, rewatching MAD MEN, and baking.