Ariel Mitchell '09

After leaving Severn, Ariel went on to Brigham Young University where her first “real” play, A Second Birth, about an Afghan girl who was raised as a boy was produced. This play was awarded the KCACTF Harold and Mimi Steinberg 2013 National Student Playwriting Award, third place for the 2013 David Mark Cohen Award, the 2011 Vera Hinckley Mayhew Award, and a publication with Samuel French. It received its New York City premiere in March 2019. Ariel went on to New York University where she earned her MFA in Musical Theatre Writing in 2015. She has written several plays and musicals including Give Me Moonlight, a play inspired by Scotty's Castle in Death Valley, Where You Are, a musical coming of age love story about a girl with the power to read herself into maps, and The Shower Principle, a play in three acts about the female vs. male experience of first parenthood. Ariel has been named a New Musical Inc. 2017 New Voices Project Finalist and has been featured in several developmental opportunities such as Prospect Theater Company’s Fall 2015 Musical Theatre Lab and The Catwalk Residency Program. Recently, she has moved back to her childhood home with her husband, Taylor and her two inquisitive sons, Theodore (3) and Phineas (10 months).