2021 Writers Grove Bios
AGENT 355
Book by Preston Max
Allen & Jessica Kahkoska
Music & Lyrics by
Preston Max Allen
PRESTON MAX ALLEN (Book, Music & Lyrics) is a playwright, composer, and
lyricist whose work has been featured at the New Amsterdam Theatre, Lincoln
Center, New York Musical Festival, Signature Theatre, Musical Theatre Factory,
Feinstein's/54 Below, Joe's Pub, Laurie Beechman Theatre, York Theatre, Gallery
Players, and Second City Chicago. Preston conceived and wrote book, music, and
lyrics for We Are The Tigers (Album
now streaming; L.A. Stage Alliance Ovation winner for Best Lyrics/Composition,
nominee for Best Production), Never
Better (NYMF Developmental Reading Series), and The Rage: Carrie 2, An
Unauthorized Musical Parody (Jeff Nominee, Best New Musical). His play Modern Gentleman was featured as part of
the 2020 PRIDE PLAYS Festival (dir. Blayze Teicher). Additional projects
include music/lyrics/book for Agent 355
(dramaturg/co-book Jessica Kahkoska, Marion Fellowship Award Winner),
music/lyrics for A Very Netfl*X Christmas
Musical: Now Streaming Live! (book by Edward Precht), book/lyrics for Franklin Pierce: Dragon Slayer (composer
Will Buck), music/lyrics for Bradical And
The Pink Socks, and music/lyrics for The
Hunted: Encore (LA Webfest Outstanding Score). Preston is a member of the
Ars Nova Play Group (2019/20), graduate of the Second City Chicago Comedy
Studies Program, and an alum of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop.
Above all, he is the proud father to his cat, Hero.
www.prestonmaxallen.com | IG: @prestonmaxallen | Twitter: @prestonmaxallen
JESSICA KAHKOSKA
(Book) is a writer and
dramaturg/researcher. Her projects include Agent
355 (with Preston Max Allen, New York Stage and Film), In Her Bones (2020 Colorado New Play Summit, Denver Center for the
Performing Arts), The Death Of Desert
Rose (with Elliah Heifetz, 2019-2020 Dramatists Guild Foundation
Fellowship, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat), NIA (dir. Sarah Wansley, University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Wild
Home: An American Odyssey (with Notch Theatre Company, Red Line
Arts-In-Society Grant, 2020 NEA ArtWorks Grant recipient), Letters To The President (dir. Michael Bello, The Great Hall at
Cooper Union), and Of Spacious Skies (dir.
Scott Levy, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College). Her writing
has been additionally developed and presented at Ars Nova ANT Fest, Joe’s Pub
at the Public Theatre, Columbia Digital Storytelling Lab, New York Theatre
Barn, Chautauqua Theater Company, Musical Theatre Factory, Village Theatre,
Phoenix Theatre Company, and the North Fork Valley Creative Coalition.
Dramaturgical work includes new play/musical development Off-Broadway (Safeword., We Are The Tigers) and regionally (the Athena Project, Creede Repertory Theatre).
Curatorial/multidisciplinary projects include "Call An Elder/Tune-in
Tuesday concerts" (collaboration with Laura Nova, the NYC Department for
the Aging), "Healing, Reconciliation, and the Taylor Collection Santos
Story” (with Anita Rodriguez and Miguel Gandert, 3x3 Collaboration from
Isolation, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College). BA:
Northwestern University, MBA (in process): State University of New York (SUNY)
New Paltz.
www.jessicakahkoska.com | IG: @jkos13 | Twitter: #jessiepaigekos
ALIEN OF EXTRAORDINARY ABILITY (AOEA)
Book by Rotana
Tarabzouni
Music & Lyrics by
Rotana Tarabzouni & Hayley Gene
Penner
ROTANA TARABZOUNI (Book, Music & Lyrics) is a Saudi
Arabian performance artist, singer and songwriter. Born and raised in Saudi
Arabia, she moved to Los Angeles five years ago to pursue music after quitting
her job at Saudi Aramco, the largest oil company in the world. She is currently
working on her one woman show/musical, Alien
of Extraordinary Ability (named after her immigration status), and her
debut album which just released her latest singles “Sin Again” and “Stuck in
America.” Rotana describes herself as an initiator, an erotic being, and a
liberator. As an artist that reckons daily with the experience of “other,” she
is determined to give movement, sound, beauty and witness to that experience.
After premiering her one woman show at FORM, a world renowned festival
featuring artists and poets like Aja Monet and Florence and The Machine, she
received the attention of publications like GQ
noting that Rotana “delivered one of the most spine-tingling performances of
the entire FORM festival.” She has also collaborated with brands including
Fendi, Miu Miu, Lucky Brand, and more. Rotana has been named one of BBC’s 100
most powerful women and covered by GQ,
LA Weekly, Huffington Post, Vice Arabia,
Vogue Arabia, NPR, and AJ+. Her
performances have spanned cities globally including Paris, Abu Dhabi, Los
Angeles, New York, and at the Sundance Music Festival. Straddling a profound
love for her home and the determination to be free, Rotana’s music speaks to
the journey of self-realization in the face of Saudi tradition, God, sexuality,
family and the immigrant experience.
IG: @iamrotana
AT BUFFALO: A NEW MUSICAL
Book, Music & Lyrics by Dr. Amma Y. Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin, Khalil Sullivan & Joshua Williams
DR. AMMA Y. GHARTEY-TAGOE KOOTIN (Book, Music & Lyrics) Born to Ghanaian immigrants in
Tuskegee, Alabama and raised in Kansas, “Dr. Amma” is a scholartist*, writer,
performer, and producer who transforms historical material about black identity
into performances for the stage and screen. Named a 2019 TED Fellow, she
bridges the worlds of academia and arts/entertainment—having worked for
A&E® Networks/The History Channel, National History Day, Inc., and as a
professor. Her current projects are an historical musical about black
performers in the 1901 World’s Fair entitled, At Buffalo, and a book about the relation between laughter and the
American slave experience, entitled Laughing
after Slavery: The Performances and Times of Laughing Ben Ellington. Her
hyper-collaborative creative research projects have garnered numerous
fellowships and awards including a 2019 MAP Fund Grant, an Innovative Seed
Grant (CU-Boulder), a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, a Ford Foundation
Fellowship, etc. She is also a co-recipient of a 2020 Honorable Mention for the
National Council on Public History’s Outstanding Public History Project Award
for her co-direction of [the Georgia Incarceration Performance Project]. Her
educational work for the History Channel's Peabody award-winning documentary Save Our History: Voices of Civil Rights
received a 2006 Beacon Award. The History Channel also selected Dr. Amma to
join the ranks of Ang Lee and Gloria Estefan as one of 37 extraordinary
immigrants/children of immigrants whose stories are currently featured at Ellis
Island’s Museum of Immigration. Dr. Amma holds an A.B. in Afro-American Studies
from Harvard University and an M.A./Ph.D. in Performance Studies from NYU’s
Tisch School of the Arts.
www.drammaworks.com | IG: @realdramma | Twitter: @realdramma
KHALIL SULLIVAN (Book, Music & Lyrics) Inspired by the expressive freedom and
creativity birthed in the Harlem Renaissance, the blues and folk traditions of
the African American working class, and the vocal and songwriting stylings of
Tracy Chapman, Michael Jackson, and Bobby McFerrin, Maryland native Khalil
Sullivan Muhammad is a musician, scholar of popular music and popular
performance. He is also the Band Leader, Composer, and Lead Vocalist for the
six-piece ensemble MAD NOISE, which received the distinction of being selected
by the U.S. State Department's American Music Abroad (AMA) program to take part
in a diplomatic music tour to Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Equatorial
Guinea in December 2015. The ensemble has won several awards in the SF Bay
Area, including Best Band in the Bay (SF Bay Guardian, 2011, 2012, & 2013),
Best Hyperliterate Busking Outfit (SF Weekly, 2011), Best Local Band (Daily
Californian, 2011); and have performed at a variety of local music clubs,
venues and alternative spaces including Yoshi’s (SF), Great American Music Hall
(SF), Hotel Utah (SF) The Uptown (Oakland). In his spare time, he also plays
guitars for San Francisco, CA-based punk band, The Truants. Sullivan Muhammad
holds an A.B. in English (Theatre minor) from Princeton University.
Madnoisemusic.com | IG: @khalilsullivan
JOSHUA WILLIAMS (Book, Music & Lyrics) is a writer,
theatre director, teacher, translator and scholar. In 2007, New York Magazine named him "a star
of tomorrow" on the basis of his forthcoming novel, Bird in Blue. His plays have been produced or developed at Theatre
Intime, Princeton University, the Capital Fringe Festival, UC Berkeley, CU
Boulder, the New York Musical Theatre Festival, CAP 21, Ars Nova's ANT Fest,
SUNY Buffalo, the Rhinebeck Writers' Retreat and Play Ground San Francisco/
Thick House. His play Ornithology was
recently commissioned by EST/Sloan. He was a 2012-2013, 2014-2015 and 2015-2016
member of the PlayGround San Francisco Writing Pool and had three of his short
plays read at Berkeley Repertory Theatre and one published in The Best of
PlayGround. In 2011, he directed the North American premiere of Ebrahim
Hussein's Kinjeketile at UC Berkeley.
Currently a visiting professor of English at Brandeis University, Williams’
academic research concerns the political figure of the animal in East African
theatre and performance. His articles, essays and reviews have appeared in ASTR Online, Theatre Journal, The
Johannesburg Salon, Theatre Survey,
African Theatre, Performance Research, Africa
is a Country, HowlRound, Brittle Paper and The Los Angeles Review of Books. Williams holds an A.B. from
Princeton University in Comparative Literature with certificates in African
Studies and Creative Writing, an M.A. from the School of Oriental and African
Studies at the University of London, also in Comparative Literature, and a
Ph.D. in Performance Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
www.jdmwilliams.com | IG: @jdmwilliams
EPIC
Book, Music, & Lyrics by Jorge Miguel Rivera-Herrans
JORGE MIGUEL
RIVERA-HERRANS (Book, Music & Lyrics)
Jorge “Jay” Rivera-Herrans is a class of 2020 graduate of the University of
Notre Dame from Dorado, Puerto Rico. After spending his high school years
preparing to study medicine in college, Jay switched from his Pre-Med major to
a major in Film, Television, and Theatre to pursue his dreams of becoming a
playwright. After receiving pushback for his sudden change, Jay teamed up with
Professor Matt Hawkins to write and develop a musical titled My Heart Says Go about a med school
dropout who runs away to California to chase his dream of being a
singer/songwriter. The musical debuted to a sold out run at the University of
Notre Dame. My Heart Says Go is now
in development with Apples and Oranges Arts as well as The Goodman Theatre. On
top of playwriting, Jay also enjoys acting. He played Usnavi in the South Bend
Civic Theatre’s production of In The
Heights, Melchior in the University of Notre Dame’s production of Spring Awakening, and Indigo in Notre
Dame’s production of My Heart Says Go
(at the time titled Stupid Humans).
He also received a callback for the role of John Laurens/Phillip Hamilton in Hamilton and was brought by Hamilton
Casting to New York City, where he attended two days of dress rehearsals and
met the touring cast. Some notable accolades include the 2018 BroadwayWorld
award for Best Actor in a musical in South Bend for his role as Usnavi in In The Heights, as well as another
nomination for the same award for his role as Melchior in Spring Awakening. Jay is currently in the process of writing his
second major project, EPIC, a musical
adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey. He
recently received the first-ever Career Launch Fellowship with Show Shepherd, a
New York-based musical theatre consulting firm that specializes in the
development of new pieces.
https://jorgeherrans.wixsite.com/jr-h | IG: @jayherrans
THE LESSON
Book by Ty Defoe
Music by Avi Amon
(& Nolan Doran)
Lyrics by Nolan Doran
(& Avi Amon)
AVI AMON (Music & Lyrics) is a Turkish-American composer, sound artist, and educator. Recent
credits include: The Copper Children with
Shariffa Ali (Oregon Shakespeare Festival), Stew
with Zora Howard and Colette Robert (Soho REP), The Fisherman dir. Zoey Martinson (HBO Films), The Black History Museum (HERE Arts), SALONIKA (Berkeley REP) and The White City with Julia Gytri (Yale
Institute, O’Neill NMTC), and several sound installations in a 100-year-old
grain silo in Buffalo, New York (w/ Torn Space Theater, featured at the Prague
Quadrennial). Avi’s work has also been developed or presented by Actors Theatre
of Louisville, Ars Nova, Atlantic Theater, BAM, The Civilians, Edinburgh
Fringe, JACK, Juilliard, Lincoln Center, La Mama, Playwrights Center, Prospect
Theater, and Spoleto Festival USA, among others. In development: Heroine’s Guide with Claire Kiechel
(Spotify/Gimlet), Rated Black with
Kareem Lucas (Woolly Mammoth), Inshallah/Mashallah:
a 3-D-audio opera re-imagining of the 1,001 Nights (Target Margin Theater), and
scores for several films. He is a Jonathan Larson Grant and New Music USA Grant
winner, a Dramatists Guild Fellow, and has been an Artist in-residence with
Princeton, Exploring the Metropolis at JCAL, Hi-ARTS, Judson, New Dramatists,
and Weston Playhouse, among others. Avi is the resident composer at the 52nd
Street Project and teaches a variety of collaborative art-making courses at NYU
Tisch.
www.aviamon.com | IG: @aviamon | Twitter: @amonavi
NOLAN DORAN (Music & Lyrics) is a Collaborative Theatre Artist (writer, director, and producer)
who creates new works across theatre and film and is a 2019-2020 Dramatist
Guild Foundation Musical Theatre Writing Fellow. In addition to The Lesson, his recent works include, My Eclectic Life (HERE), Woody – A New Fairy Tale (Main Street
Musicals winner), The Spectrum (Azalea
Film Festival winner), The King (L.A.
Indie Film Festival winner) and music for Ayodele Casel’s While I Have the Floor (Spoleto Festival). Broadway and Off-Broadway
credits: Co-Producer and Assistant Director for, Head Over Heels with songs of the Go-Go’s, Associate Director for
Michael Moore’s The Terms of My Surrender,
Assistant Director of the star-studded one-night concert Stronger Together: Hillary on Broadway and Assistant Director of Jamboree starring Sutton Foster and
Jonathan Groff at City Center. Recently, Doran was Executive Producer alongside
Liesl Tommy, Halle Morse, Julie Boardman and Jennifer Mudge for Broadway For
Biden’s In Our America concert
starring Glenn Close, Jennifer Hudson, Samuel Jackson John Water and over 150
Broadway stars; Executive Producer of Artists
For Change for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee; Producer for
#Arts4America in collaboration with Arts For Biden-Harris; Co-Producer of The Secret Life of Bees; Executive
Producer of The Golden Girls Musical
Parody – Pride Edition for World Pride at HERE and is the Co-Producer of The Museum of Broadway coming in 2021.
Doran holds an M.F.A. from The Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program at NYU
Tisch. Check out his channel on Broadway on Demand, or visit nolandoran.com.
www.noaldoran.com | IG: @nolandoran.nyc | Twitter: @nolandoran
TY DEFOE (Giizhig)
(Book) is from the Oneida and Ojibwe
Nations and is an interdisciplinary artist, actor/writer, and Grammy Award-winner.
Ty aspires to an interweaving approach to artistic projects with social
justice, indigeneity, indiqueering, and environmentalism. Ty’s global cultural
arts highlights: the Millennium celebration in Cairo, Egypt; Ankara, Turkey,
International Music Festival; and Festival of World Cultures in Dubai. Awards:
Global Indigenous Heritage Festival Award, a Robert Rauschenberg Artist in
Residence, Jonathan Larson Award, TransLab Fellow, Cordillera International
Film Festival Finalist. Works authored & created: Red Pine, The Way They Lived, Ajijaak on Turtle Island, Hear Me Say My
Name, Trial and Tears, River of Stone, Wind Changes Direction (Crystal
Bridges at The Momentary). Ty is co-founder of Indigenous Direction (with
Larissa FastHorse), core member of All My Relations Collective, showing GIZHIBAA GIIZHIG | Revolving Sky at
Under the Radar's Incoming at the Public Theater. Degrees from CalArts, Goddard
College, + NYU Tisch. Movement Direction: Mother
Road, Dir. Bill Rauch (OSF); Manahatta,
Dir. Laurie Woolery (OSF + Yale Rep); and Choreographer for Tracy Lett’s The Minutes (Broadway). Netflix: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and made his
Broadway debut in Young Jean Lee’s Straight
White Men, Dir. Anna Shapiro. Lives in NYC + loves the color clear. He|We|
www.tydefoe.com | IG: @tydefoe | Twitter: @tydefoe
MISSING PEACE
Book, Music, & Lyrics by Kalani Queypo & Kyle Puccia
KYLE PUCCIA (Book, Music & Lyrics) is a Platinum
selling songwriter, composer and musician. His co-write, "Kids In Love,"
debuted at #1 on Billboard's Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart. Kyle earned a
Swedish Grammy nomination in 2018 and his songs have charted on Billboard's Top
40 Hot Dance Club Play & Top 10 UK Commercial Pop Charts. Kyle has composed
dozens of scores for Microsoft and T-Mobile commercials and he's garnered song
placements on such TV shows/films/brands as HBO, World Of Dance, Pretty Little
Liars, Legacies, The Titan Games, Love Island, Siesta Key, The Vineyard and Naomi & Ely's No Kiss List. He's music-directed and/or created
vocal arrangements for TV's Lucifer
(Netflix), LA workshop productions for Rock
Of Ages and Romy & Michele's High
School Reunion, The Musical.
www.kylepuccia.com | IG: @kylepuccia | Twitter: @kylepuccia
KALANI QUEYPO (Book, Music & Lyrics) Before moving to Los Angeles, Kalani
trained in New York City, and was featured on stages all over the country such
as the Goodspeed Opera House, Arena Stage, Trinity Repertory Company, Mark
Taper Forum, The Wilma, and The Ordway. He can be seen in the Oscar-nominated
Terrence Malick film, The New World,
Steven Spielberg’s Emmy-winning Into the
West and Slow West (Sundance
GRAND JURY PRIZE). Television credits include Jamestown (three seasons series regular), Saints & Strangers, Fear
the Walking Dead, Mad Men, Nurse Jackie, Bones, and Hawaii Five-0. Kalani is currently filming the new CBC series, Trickster. A short film written and
directed by Kalani, Ancestor Eyes,
screened at nearly 40 festivals and won 14 awards including the Rhode Island
International Film Festival’s Directorial Discovery Award.
www.kalaniqueypo.com | IG: @KalaniQueypo | Twitter: @KalaniQueypo
SALAAM MEDINA: TALES OF A HALFGHAN
Book, Music & Lyrics by Rona SiddiquiRONA SIDDIQUI (Book, Music & Lyrics) is an award-winning composer/lyricist,
orchestrator and music director based in NYC. She is the recipient of the 2020
Jonathan Larson Grant and the 2019 Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award, and was named
one of Broadway Women's Fund's Women to Watch. Her show Salaam Medina: Tales of a Halfghan, an autobiographical comedy
about growing up bi-ethnic in America, had a developmental workshop at
Playwrights Horizons November 2019. She has also received the ASCAP Harold
Adamson Lyric Award, the ASCAP Foundation Mary Rodgers/Lorenz Hart Award, and
the ASCAP Foundation/Max Dreyfus Scholarship. She performed her concert Rona Siddiqui: Halfghan on a Mission at
the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Her musical One Good Day (book & lyrics by Liz
Suggs) was selected for the ASCAP/Dreamworks Musical Theatre Workshop with
Stephen Schwartz in L.A. and was named one of the Best New Musicals of 2014 by
the Festival of New American Musicals. Rona composed the music for an original
20-minute musical about Afghanistan, The
Tin, which was selected to be part of the Samuel French OOB Short Play
Festival in 2012. Her musical Treasure in
NYC (book & lyrics by Laura Kleinbaum), an immersive musical adventure
for autistic children, has been produced at The Cell. She is honored to be part
of the 2020/21 MTF Maker and Ars Nova Vision Residencies. She has been
commissioned to write songs for Wicked's
16th Anniversary Commemoration, Flying Free, Broadway Inspirational Voices, The
Civilians, Pittsburgh CLO, the NYC Gay Men's Chorus, MuseMatch, 52nd St.
Project, and the web series Amateur Dicks.
She has been a featured songwriter in concert venues such as 54 Below, Joe's
pub, and New York City Center. Original scores she has written for plays
include Middletown, The Vagina
Monologues, The Good Person of Szechuan, The Clean House, and Love Song of J Robert Oppenheimer. Rona
music directed the Off-Broadway Pulitzer Prize-winning A Strange Loop for which she received an Obie along with the cast
and creative team (Playwrights Horizons), Bella:
An American Tall Tale (Playwrights Horizons), and Who's Your Baghdaddy: Or How I Started the Iraq War (St. Lukes
Theatre). She has orchestrated for Broadway Records, Broadway Backwards, NAMT
and Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera. She received her Masters from NYU’s Graduate
Musical Theatre Writing Program.
Ronasiddiqui.com | IG: @crazyfingers10 | Twitter: @RonaSiddiqui
SOVIET REBEL GIRL
Book, Music, & Lyrics by Andy Roninson
ANDY RONINSON (Book, Music & Lyrics) is a composer-lyricist and
orchestrator. 2019 Larson Grant Recipient, '19-'20 Dramatists Guild Fund
Fellow, 2017 Johnny Mercer Foundation Songwriters Project participant. BMI
Musical Theatre Workshop: Harrington Award for Creative Excellence, Robert B.
Sherman Scholarship. Creator, host, and co-writer of the podcast Take A Ten, which featured a new
ten-minute musical every month. Four episodes published and licensed by MTI,
and one episode published and licensed by Concord. Awards for episodes include
Best Musical (2x) at TNNY's Sound Bites Festival, the City Theatre National
Award for Short Playwriting, and the top prize at the Samuel French
Off-Off-Broadway Short Playwriting Festival.
Andyroninson.com | IG: @AndyRoninson | Twitter: @AndyRoninson
SUNWATCHER
Book & Lyrics by Isabella Dawis
Music by Tidtaya Sinutoke | ![]() |
TIDTAYA SINUTOKE
& ISABELLA DAWIS Thai-born, NYC-based composer Tidtaya Sinutoke and Filipina-American lyricist/bookwriter
Isabella Dawis received the 2020 Weston-Ghostlight New Musical Award for Half The Sky (www.halftheskymusical.com),
the story of an Asian American woman climbing Mount Everest. Half The Sky was recently adapted into
an episodic radio play for the 5th Avenue Theatre’s 20/21 Digital Season.
Isabella and Tidtaya’s chamber musical Sunwatcher,
about Japanese female astronomer Hisako Koyama, is in development with the
Civilians’ R&D Group. Their work together has been showcased and supported
by the 5th’s First Draft program, Theater Mu, Theater Latté Da, the O'Neill
Center, New York Theatre Barn, the Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, the Kurt Weill
Foundation’s Lotte Lenya Competition Songbook, and Broadway Buskers. Isabella
and Tidtaya recently served as mentors for the American Theatre Wing’s High
School Musical Theatre Songwriting Challenge.
Tidtaya is a recipient of the Composer-Librettists Studio at New Dramatists, Johnny Mercer Songwriter Projects, Robert Rauschenberg Residency, EtM Con Edison Composer-in-Residence, MTF’s MAKERS Cohort, the Jonathan Larson Grant and the Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award. A proud member of ASCAP, Dramatists Guild, and Thai Theatre Foundation. MFA: NYU.
Isabella’s playwriting has been supported by the Bushwick Starr, the 24 Hour Plays, Central Square Theater, New England Conservatory, and the Schubert Club. 2019-2020 Rockwell Scholarship, Primary Stages Einhorn School of Performing Arts. B.M. summa cum laude piano performance, University of Minnesota; Classical Voice, New England Conservatory.
tidtayasinutoke.com | isabelladawis.com
UNTITLED NEW MUSICAL
Book by Jake Bernstein
Music & Lyrics by Jonathan
Brielle
JAKE
BERNSTEIN (Book)
is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author. He was a senior
reporter on the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists team,
which broke the Panama Papers story. In 2017, the project won the Pulitzer
Prize for Explanatory Reporting. Bernstein was an executive producer on
the The Laundromat, a Netflix film based on his book, Secrecy
World: Inside the Panama Papers, Illicit Money Networks, and the Global Elite (Henry
Holt, 2017). He earned his first Pulitzer Prize in 2011 for National Reporting,
for coverage of the financial crisis. He has done radio, television, and
podcasting, including three highly-rated This
American Life episodes. Bernstein has written for The New York
Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Guardian, The
New York Review of Books, and Vice, and has appeared on the BBC, NBC, CNN,
PBS, and NPR. He was the editor of The Texas Observer and is
the coauthor of Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American
Presidency (Random House, 2006).
JONATHAN
BRIELLE
(Music & Lyrics) on Broadway:
wrote the music and lyrics for Foxfire with Jessica Tandy
(Tony Award) Hume Cronyn, and Keith
Carradine; Off-Broadway: Himself and Nora (book,
music, lyrics); Outer Critics Best Musical Nomination, Minetta Lane Theatre
2016; Circle Repertory Company, NY: dozens of scores as Composer in
Residence; Regional: Himself and Nora: American Theater
Group, James Joyce Center, Ireland and The Old Globe; Nightmare Alley (book,
music, lyrics): Geffen Playhouse; 40 Naked Women, A Monkey and Me (book,
music, lyrics) The Eugene O’Neill Cabaret Conference. Las
Vegas: Enter The Night (book, music, lyrics) Stardust
Hotel 12 years; MadHattan (book, music, lyrics) New York, New
York Hotel; US Tours: Rugrats, Live! (Executive Music Supervisor); Goosebumps,
Live! (Producer, Music) TV: Wonderama (music,
lyrics); Charitable Organizations: Executive Vice President of the
Johnny Mercer Foundation (JMF), creating programs in New York, Newark, Los
Angeles, Miami and Atlanta. Writer/Producer in Residence of the Johnny Mercer
Writers’ Grove at Goodspeed Musicals and oversees the JMF Songwriting Project
at Northwestern University. Jonathan is the former National Projects
Director of the Songwriters Guild of America and is the founder of a new
platform featuring new Broadway bound musicals with Forever Free musical
theater education for grades K-12: www.valamusicals.com.
UNTITLED NEW MUSICAL
Book, Music, & Lyrics by Zack Zadek
Project Created/Conceived with Sammi Cannold
ZACK ZADEK (Book, Music & Lyrics) is a Brooklyn-based
composer/lyricist and songwriter with Warner/Chappell. He is a two-time
MacDowell Fellow, UCross Fellow, VCCA Fellow, Dramatist Guild Foundation
Fellow, and was named by Playbill as “a contemporary musical theatre writer you
should know.” Zack won the Weston New Musical Award for his book, music, and
lyrics to Deathless (dir. Tina
Landau) which was produced at Goodspeed Musicals in 2017. His work has been
developed and presented at The Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, The Kennedy
Center, Lincoln Center, Signature Theatre, Roundabout, The 5th Avenue Theatre,
TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, The Playwright’s Center, The Lark, Vineyard Arts
Project, Finger Lakes Musical Theatre Festival, Mitten Lab, Johnny Mercer
Writers Colony, NYMF, and in the UK at The London Theatre Workshop and
Edinburgh Fringe. Zack received the inaugural New Voices award from Disney/NMI
and is a two-time Kleban Prize finalist, three-time Jonathan Larson Grant
finalist, and is a founding member of Musical Theatre Factory. As a songwriter
he has co-written and released records with artists on every major label group.
He currently holds commissions from Mike Bosner, Arena Stage, and Ars Nova/Jill
Furman and is a writer-in-residence at SPACE on Ryder Farm, The Orchard Project
Greenhouse, The Civilians, and Ars Nova.
www.zackzadek.com | IG: @zackzadek | Twitter: @zackzadek
SAMMI CANNOLD (Concept) is a director who is one of Forbes Magazine's 30 Under 30 in
Hollywood & Entertainment, class of 2019. Recent theater credits include Evita (New York City Center), Endlings (New York Theatre Workshop,
A.R.T.), Ragtime on Ellis Island, Violet on a moving bus (A.R.T.), and Allegory (La Jolla Playhouse WOW).
Upcoming projects include Carmen (Lincoln Center w. MasterVoices), a
documentary film, two feature films, and a limited series. Associate director
credits include the Broadway production of Natasha,
Pierre... (dir. Rachel Chavkin). Sammi has also served as an Artistic
Fellow at the A.R.T., a member of Cirque du Soleil's Creative Cognoscenti, and
a Sundance Institute Fellow and developed work with Playwrights Realm, The
Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, New York Stage and Film, Cirque du Soleil, and
Nickelodeon. She holds a B.A. from Stanford University and an M.A. from Harvard
University.