Jessica is a director, playwright, teacher, and the co-founder and Artistic Director of Strange Sun Theater. This year her 10 minute play, Tunnel was produced at Hubbard Hall,upstate NY, and her play, Garden of Memories had a reading at LaMama. She is currently at work on a new play based on The Oresteia.  Selected Directing NYC- (new work): The Improbability of Modern Day Mastodons, Closer Than You Think, The Drowning Girls, Cooking Breakfast for the One I Love, The Alley, Love(d) in 4 shorts, Quilt: A Musical Celebration (reworking). Other Directing Credits: Ragtime, Merrily We Roll Along, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Twelfth Night. www.jessicabashline.com

Marjorie Bicknell is a working playwright, director and actress. She holds a BA in Theatre and English Literature from Mundelein College in Chicago and an MA in Speech with a concentration in Theatre/Oral Interpretation from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Marjorie has studied playwriting at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, and the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia, where she was a member of the theatre’s Playwrights Circle. Her first full-length play, an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, was produced at Theatre Center Chicago by Pary Production Company. The production was the recipient of three Joseph Jefferson Citations. Marjorie is also the author of The Family Room, winner of the 2003 Pennsylvania Playwright Award and The Boys Club, a winner of the 2012 TNT POPS! new play contest. Other full-length plays include: Joint Custody, Queen of New Orleans and Rough Draft. Marjorie is a member of The Dramatists Guild and a founding member of The Playwrights Alliance of Pennsylvania. When not working in theatre, Marjorie is a freelance advertising copywriter and creative consultant. She has won over 40 industry awards for her work on clients such as Bell Atlantic (Verizon), Chase Financial, Jenny Craig MCI and Prudential Insurance.

Having noticed that winter in The People's Republic of Austin (Texas) consisted of many sunny days with temperatures in the 60s and 70s, he decided in 1970 to settle there and thrive. Highlights of his life thus far include: acting professionally for four decades, play directing during the 80s, founding and guiding Theatrical Productions Inc., marrying the nicest woman west of the Mississippi, and writing PELLET AND BLUE. He sustained only one real lowlight­ the sudden death of his beloved wife Jeanette 7.5 years ago. Tom wishes Scrap Mettle and its audiences all the best.

Stephen Cedars is a writer, director and teacher originally from south Louisiana.  In New York, his work has been seen through the NY Fringe Festival, Incubator Arts Project, Brick Theatre, the Downtown Urban Theatre Festival, chashama, Theatre for the New City, and through several years of community programming which he co-produced in south Williamsburg through Brooklyn Arts Council funding.  Additionally, his plays have been produced throughout the country, and have been published by Original Works and IndieTheatreNow.  Amongst his awards are the Theater Masters Visionary Playwright Award, a Fellowship with the Target Margin Institute for Collaborative Theater Making, a Residency with America-in-Play, and the John Golden Playwriting Prize.  He has taught myriad subjects in the liberal arts to kids grade 2 through 12, and is a creative writing instructor with Writopia Labs.  He earned his MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU, which he attended as a Rita and Burton Goldberg Fellow.

A member of the Dramatists Guild of America, Doug wrote the books for two musicals produced by Vital Children’s Theatre in New York: The Tempest (music and lyrics by Brian Allan Hobbs) and As You Like It (music and lyrics by Paul Johnson). His play Just A Rumor (co-written with Gary Lyons) was a Eugene O’Neil semi-finalist, and has had readings at New York’s Abingdon Theatre Company and London’s Menier Chocolate Factory. His play The Fierce Urgency Of Now was produced by Arouet in Seattle, was given a Stage2Page reading at Abingdon Theatre Company, is being published in Adirondack’s Anthology of LGBTQ Plays, and will be included the 2016 Fresh Fruit Festival. Other work includes Goddess of The Hunt; The Gruesomely Merry Adventures of NELL DASH, An Irrepressibly Cheerful Capitalist With A Vengeance; Confessions Of A Serial Egg Donor; Fable (A Fable About A Musical Fable); and The Phillie Trilogy. He also wrote the one-woman show Let Me Entertain You, Again, for actress Lane Bradbury (the original Dainty June in Gypsy, starring Ethel Merman), which has been performed at the Strasberg Institute in Los Angeles, Abingdon’s Sunday Series, The Midtown International Theatre Festival, and Feinstein’s/54 Below.

Jack Feldstein is a playwright and neon animation filmmaker and director. Originally from Australia and a graduate of the National Institute of Dramatic Arts in playwriting, he now lives in New York City. His playscripts "A House Like Any Other" and "Three Months with Pook" have won prizes in Australia and in Britain with the BBC International Radioplay Writing Competition. Jack's plays have been staged with productions in Australia and New York.  He is an artist member of the Workshop Theater in Midtown 312 W36th Street, where he develops his plays. He now lives in New York City and his philosophy is "search for an interesting life". For more information please see his website at JackFeldstein.com or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Feldstein

Mercedes graduated Cum Laude from Marlboro College in 2012 with a concentration in AMERICAN STUDIES/Theatre. For her senior thesis Mercedes wrote, directed and produced a show of her original plays entitled “The Gun Behind the Door.” Mercedes is set to graduate from Northwestern University’s Writing for the Screen and Stage MFA program in June 2016. Since enrolling in Northwestern, Mercedes’ plays The House Call and After All These Years have received readings at the Chicago Dramatists. Her play Grove Street is a finalist for the Brooklyn based Scrap Mettle reading series. Her original pilot FUN!TV! was a finalist for the Northwestern University sitcom grant. Over the summer Mercedes worked as a marketing intern for the site specific theatre company The Living Room Playmakers for their production of “Under The Table” in collaboration with Cards Against Humanity. In her second year of Northwestern, Mercedes acted as a co-producer of MasterClash, a Northwestern University reading series designed to bridge MFA writers and directors. Her play Taught. will receive its world premiere at The American Theatre for Actors in New York this fall. Mercedes is ecstatic to have Grove Street in Scrap Mettle's 2016 development series.

Casey is a playwright, composer, musician, designer, educator and father from Albuquerque, New Mexico. He studied Dramatic Writing at the University of New Mexico where he earned an M.F.A. in 2009. He also studied playwriting at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic in 2007. He writes plays and screenplays for adults as well as young audiences. His productions include Tinkertown (a musical for Young Audiences; Cardboard Playhouse, 2016), Vampire Hamburger (a musical for Young Audiences; Cardboard Playhouse, 2013), The Phone Call (a ten-minute play, The Vortex Theatre, 2013), Little Red (Tricklock Theatre Co., 2012), The Cotton Plantation (Buran Theatre Co. 2010), Lawrence Welk Visits a Colorado Coal Camp (Studio/Stage, 2010), The Big Come (University of New Mexico, 2009) and Greek Row Tragedy (University of New Mexico, 2009). In 2010 his 10 minute screenplay The Treehouse was produced by the Duke City Shootout Festival and won an award for Best Editing. His publications include Little Red (Indie Theatre Now, NY), The Cotton Plantation (Indie Theatre Now, NY) and Rosario & the Bull (Brooklyn Publishers, Cedar Rapids, IA). He is currently a member and Resident Composer of Buran Theatre Co. (New York, NY).

Jacob Rice’s plays have been produced at Actors Theatre of Louisville, La MaMa ETC, Nuyorican Poets Café, Soho Playhouse, Atlantic Theatre Stage 2, and others. His play Chemistry won the 2015 Producer's Pick at the Cincinnati Fringe Festival and the 2014 Excellence in Playwriting Award at the New York International Fringe Festival. Jacob is the winner of the 2012 Seymour Brick Memorial Prize for Playwriting and a finalist for the 2015 Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center National Playwrights Conference. Education: Columbia University. Jacob is thrilled to be part of Scrap Mettle!

Gregory Uzelac is a nomadic writer and satirist born to immigrant parents in New York City and currently based in Brooklyn. Mr. Uzelac graduated from Northwestern University's Creative Writing for the Media Program (CWMP) as has written several scripts for screen and stage as well as numerous essays and short stories. When not writing about (or incessantly discussing) social politics, religion, and adverse media consumption, Mr. Uzelac performs stand-up comedy or plays ABBA: Gold on repeat until the night terrors stop. His misadventures and musings can be followed on Medium, Twitter, and Instagram at @greguzelac.