Since our founding, Southbank has hosted numerous staged readings and produced six world premieres. Starting in 2026, we are taking our commitment to new play development to the next level by creating the Southbank Compass Studio.
With our Compass Studio, Southbank seeks to make history by offering transformative opportunities to Indiana playwrights and theatre makers with a new play development lab that will work with four Indiana playwrights per year to write, develop, and ultimately produce new works. Cohort participants will include two experienced playwrights (at least two full-length play productions) and two emerging playwrights who have never had a full-length play produced.
Under the leadership of Southbank’s board Vice President, Eric Bryant, the Compass Studio will connect playwrights with theatre professionals throughout a year-long development process. Each playwright will receive sustained support through meetings, workshops, readings, feedback, and ultimately full productions of their work. Importantly, there will be no cost to the playwrights to participate.
Your donation can help bring new plays to life in Indianapolis. Contributions to the Compass Studio will support playwright mentorship, weekly workshops, staged readings, and full productions of four original plays, creating a pathway for Indiana writers to see their work come to the stage. By investing in emerging and established playwrights, you are investing in the future of theatre in our Indianapolis. Help us make history by supporting the next generation of Indiana playwrights! Donate today!
Our first group of writers were handpicked to include people with a history of working with Southbank in previous seasons and in various roles, based on playwrights’ creative potential; proven accomplishments; openness to giving and receiving feedback; and respect for the creative process.
Left to right: Lori Herrmann, Marcia Eppich-Harris, Eric Bryant (Compass leader), Casey Ross, Charlie Weimer
Marcia is an Indianapolis-based playwright, lyricist, director, and sound designer, whose plays have been produced nationally and internationally. Her plays explore the intersections of politics, philosophy, gender, family, and culture, bringing historical and intellectual questions into conversation with contemporary life.
Her full-length plays Seneca and the Soul of Nero (2024) and The Profession (2023) have been published by Next Stage Press. The Profession was a finalist for the Epiphanies New Works Festival and a semifinalist for the Athena Project’s Plays in Progress competition. Her play Seneca and the Soul of Nero was a quarterfinalist for the ScreenCraft Stage Play Contest. Her other full-length works include Seeking Nietzsche, recognized as the most impressive production of a drama by Daniel Shock in the 2023 A Seat on the Aisle MITTY awards, and Troilus and Cressida, The Musical, for which she wrote the music and lyrics. Her one-act play Shit Cake was produced at the IndyFringe Theatre Festival in 2024, and excerpts were published in Smith and Krauss’s The Best Women’s Monologues 2025 and The Best Men’s Monologues 2025.
Her short plays have been staged across the US and internationally, including productions in London and Canada. Her work has appeared in The Best Ten-Minute Plays 2022 and Fresh Words Literary Magazine, among other publications. In 2022, she was named one of central Indiana’s Top Ten Performing Arts Luminaries by On the Aisle with Tom Alvarez.
Marcia holds a PhD in Shakespeare and Dramatic Literature, an MA in English with concentrations in literature and creative writing, and a BA in Music (Vocal Performance). She is the founder and artistic director of Southbank Theatre Company, where she champions new play development and the production of thought-provoking theatre.
Casey is the artistic director and founder of Catalyst Repertory Theatre in Indianapolis, and holds a BFA, with a focus in playwriting from Hanover College. At Hanover, Ross was consistently recognized as an emerging voice in the American theatre, and awarded The Presidential Honors for the Arts award for playwriting, by Susan Dewine, in 2008. She was also granted the Tom Evans Emerging Artist grant in 2007, to produce her first IndyFringe festival original play, Gallery, while in attendance at Hanover.
Since, 2007, Ross has written and produced 15 original plays, all of which have been performed, locally, through the IndyFringe Festival or her company, Catalyst Repertory. Many of these play have won festival awards, gone on to be produced as full-scale and/or full-length productions, and won critical acclaim outside of Indiana. In 2017, Ross won the Pauline Moffat IndyFringe Best Veteran Producers award for Catalyst’s contributions of original plays.
While Ross works primarily as a playwright, she is also a dedicated theatrical producer and director and has produced over 30 plays in the Indianapolis area. Some of these productions have included, the 2026 critically acclaimed blackbox production of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, 2023’s IF Spotlight production of Tennessee Williams masterpiece, A Streetcar Named Desire, Sam Shepard musical oddity The Tooth of Crime, Nuvo’s 2016 ‘Best Play of Indy’ winning, Equus, and a fully re-written revival of 80s musical cult-classic Starmites!
In 2022, Ross was named one of the Top Ten Performing Arts Luminaries in central Indiana by On the Aisle with Tom Alvarez. Ross commands a variety of other skills such as, scenic painting, graphic design, conceptual design, costume design, cartooning, digital art, sound design, video editing, projections design, social media and marketing design, and production management.
Lori Herrmann has a BA in English from Ball State University. Her most recent production was The Loup Garou Revenge Plot, part of the Hoosier Holidays play in the IndyFringe Festival in 2026. In 2024, her piece The Marriage Contract was chosen for Indy Fringe’s Div(x) Fest. Her play, Still Life in Zombie, has been workshopped by multiple groups. She has done beginning acting work with Eric Bryant and is a member of the Indiana Writers Center’s Playwright Circle. She is interested in exploring all aspects of theatre from start to finish.
J Charles Weimer is an Indiana actor, teacher, and playwright whose plays include Wall Paper, The Doors of Janus, and The Misc. Table. He is grateful to Compass Lab for giving him the opportunity to develop as a writer. He studied playwriting at Indiana University. He has also appeared in Southbank's productions of Machinal, The Crucible, Red Velvet, and I Hate Hamlet.
Eric is a former member of Circle Lab Theatre in New York, a company known for its commitment to developing new plays. Now, Eric is a local actor, director, and teacher, and serves as Vice President of the board for Southbank. Eric has appeared onstage both in Indianapolis and New York. Favorite roles include Judas in Cold Journey in the Dark (presented at the Eugene O’Neill Playhouse), Preston in Defrost (Off-Off Broadway), Henry in We Are the King (The Lab Theater), Athos in The Three Musketeers (Biggs-Rosati National Tour), Billy in Streamers (WOB Productions, Indianapolis), Barrymore in I Hate Hamlet (Carmel Community Players), Claudius in Hamlet (Indy BardFest), Will Shakespeare in Elizabeth Rex (Indy BardFest) TJ in TJ Loves Sally 4Ever (Fonseca Theatre), and Erik in The Humans (American Lives Theatre). Eric’s directing credits include Natural Shocks for Southbank, True West for Carmel Community Players, I Hate Hamlet for Southbank, and he co-directed Wit for Main Street Productions along with Becky Schlomann. Eric’s initial foray into theatre was at IUPUI under the direction of Drs. J. Edgar and Dorothy Webb. In New York, Eric studied with Sandy Dennis, Carol Rosenfeld, Joe Daly, Michael Warren Powell, and Peg Denithorn. Eric teaches technique and scene work classes for adult actors, and is a member of the 2024-2026 Meisner Technique class cohort at the Phoenix Theatre and Cultural Center, led by Jolene Mentink Moffatt.
Are you an actor who would like to volunteer to participate in the Compass Studio? We will host weekly readings and need up to 6 actors per week to help us out! Scripts will be emailed to you Fridays for in-person readings on Sunday mornings, 10:00-12:30, at Red Door Cafe in downtown Indy. Share your availability with us, and we will schedule you and send you a calendar invitation. Our goal is to rotate actors to provide opportunities for multiple people, so if you are available every week, you might not be scheduled every week. Our aim is to give everyone who would like to participate a fair chance.
Fall 2026 – commence meetings with playwrights and actors
January 2027 – final proposals for plays to develop
October 2027 – staged readings of all four plays
February/March 2028 – Festival of New Works
