Lucy Thurber is the author of ten plays: Where We’re Born, Ashville, Scarcity, Killers and Other Family, Stay, Bottom of The World, Monstrosity, Dillingham City, The Locus and The Insurgents. The Insurgents was commissioned by Contemporary American Theater Festival and produced at their 2011 Festival. Bottom of The World opened the 2010/11 season at The Atlantic Theater. A reworking of Killers and Other Family played Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in 2009, directed by Caitriona McLaughlin. Lucy wrote the text for QUIXOTE, conceived and directed by Lear deBessonet, a site-specific performance with the Psalters made for and with The Broad Street Community; also with Lear deBessonet and produced by 13P, Monstrosity. The Atlantic Theater Company opened its 2007/08 season with Scarcity. Rattlestick Playwrights Theater has produced three of her plays, Where We’re Born, Killers and Other Family and Stay. Monstrosity was workshopped at Encore Theatre Company (San Francisco). She was the recipient of the 2000-01 Manhattan Theatre Club Playwriting Fellowship. She was a guest artist at Alaska’s Perseverance Theatre twice, where she helped to adapt both Desire Under The Elms and Moby Dick. She has had readings and workshops at Steam Boat Springs, Manhattan Theatre Club, The New Group, Primary Stages, MCC Theater, Encore Theatre Company, PlayPenn, Williamstown Theatre Festival, The O’Neill with WET, New River Dramatists and Soho Rep. She was one of three playwrights in residence at The Orchard Project, summer 2007. Scarcity was published in the December 2007 issue of American Theatre magazine. She is published by Dramatists Play Service. Thurber is a member of New Dramatists, 13P, MCC Playwrights’ Coalition. She has been commissioned by Playwrights Horizons, and she is currently writing a new play under a commission from Yale Rep. She is the recipient of the 1st Gary Bonasorte Memorial Prize for Playwriting 2008 and a proud recipient of a Lilly Award. Lucy currently teaches at NYU and Sarah Lawrence College.

MIGDALIA CRUZ is an award-winning playwright who has written more than sixty plays, operas, screenplays, and musicals.  Her work has been produced across the U.S. and abroad at various venues including: Mabou Mines, Classic Stage Company, Playwrights Horizons, INTAR, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Monarch Theater, En-Garde Arts, HOME, Shaliko Company, New York Shakespeare Festival’s Festival Latino, Theatre For The New City, and the W.O.W. Cafe (New York); Ateneo Puertorriqueño (PR); National Theater of Greece(Athens); Foro Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (Mexico City); Old Red Lion (London, England); Vancouver Players (Vancouver, B.C.); Latino Chicago Theater Company (Chicago); Houston Grand Opera (Houston); American Repertory Theatre (Cambridge); Cleveland Public Theatre (Cleveland); Frank Theatre (Minneapolis); Théâtre d’aujourd hui (Montreal); American Music Theatre Festival (Philadelphia); Intersection for the Arts/LATA (San Francisco); and Cornerstone Theater Company (Los Angeles), among others. She has been nurtured by Maria Irene Fornés’ Playwrights’ Laboratory at INTAR; Royal Court Theatre/New Dramatists Exchange ’94 (London); Steppenwolf Theatre’s New PlaysLab (Chicago); Bay Area Playwrights’ Festival ’94, Festival Latino’93 at Teatro Mision (San Francisco); the Sundance Institute; Midwest PlayLabs; Mark Taper Forum’s New Play Festival; Omaha Magic Theatre; “Songs from Coconut Hill” Theater Festival ’05; South Coast Rep’s HPP ’04, and was writer-in-residence at Latino Chicago Theater Company from 1991-98. Her plays include: Salt, Fur, Miriam’s Flowers, Lucy Loves Me, Dreams of Home, Telling Tales, ¡CHE-CHE-CHE!, Latins In La-La Land, Cigarettes and Moby-Dick, Lolita de Lares, Yellow Eyes, and Running For Blood: No. 3 (a radio play). She wrote book and lyrics for the musicals Rushing Waters, Welcome Back To Salamanca and When Galaxy Six and The Bronx Collide; the libretto for an opera, Street Sense; and lyrics and monologues for Frida: The Story of Frida Kahlo. Her plays and monologues are published by NoPassport Press, Theatre Communications Group, U. of Arizona Press, Routledge Press, Penguin Books, Arte Publico Press, Applause Books, Smith & Kraus Publishers, and Third Woman Press. She taught playwriting at U.of Iowa/Playwrights’ Workshop, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Princeton University, and at Amherst College, and guest lectured at Yale University, Wesleyan University, Mount Holyoke College, and Columbia University. She received commissions from Mabou Mines, NYSF’s Public Theater, Crossroads Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, Latino Chicago Theater Company, Arena Stage, WNYC-radio, Ballet Hispanico, DUO and INTAR. Migdalia was awarded the 2013 Helen Merrill Distinguished Playwright Award (NYCommTrust), and is a 1996 recipient of the Kennedy Center’s Fund for New American Plays award for Another Part Of The House. Her play, The Have-little was the runner-up for the 1991 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and SALT was a 1997 runner-up. She participated in Obsidian Theatre of Toronto’s International Playwrights Festival in 2009, won a 2016 NYFA grant, 2005 Massachusetts Cultural Council grant, and a 1994 Connecticut Commission on The Arts grant for playwriting. At Classic Stage Company, she was a 1994 PEW/TCG National Artist in Residence. Migdalia was a 1997-98 Sackler Fellow at Connecticut Rep/UConn, a 1991 & 1995 NEA Playwriting Fellow, a 1988 McKnight Fellow, and received her MFA degree from Columbia University. She is an alumna of New Dramatists. She was born and raised in the Bronx.

Recent Projects: The Book of Miaou: Don’t Drink Everything Your Mother Pours You @ Princeton University, a commission in conjunction with the Fornés Symposium in April 2018; Macbeth, a new translation for OSF’s PlayOn! Project will be presented at Actors’ Shakespeare Company in Boston & the African-American Shakespeare Company in San Francisco in Fall 2018 & in NYC in 2019; El Grito del Bronx at Brown University(4/14), NYU/Tisch (4/08), at the Milagros Theatre (OR) 4/09, and at the Goodman in a co-production with Teatro Vista & CollaborAction (IL), 7/09; FUR presented at UNM@ Albuquerque, 3/08. She developed Two Roberts: A Pirate-Blues Project at the Lark (NY) with a 2010 NYSCA grant; is inspired by Petronius’ (69a.d.) & Fellini’s (1968) Satyricon to write Satyricoño about 21^st C. America; and is at work on a play about Chekhov, his marriage to Olga, & his death by consumption as he wrote the Three Sisters, called Never Moscow. She co-taught with experimental theater artist, John Jesurun, for the Monarch Theater @LaMama (NY) in 2010; Telling Tales was produced in Santurce, P.R., Interacto (1/13); and Lucy Loves Me, was produced by INTAR in 2/13. She was a co-facilitator for Rising Circle’s 2014 INKtank for emerging writers of color. She has also translated four plays for the LARK’s Mexico/U.S. Word Exchange, 2008-2013. 2015: FRIDA @ Michigan Opera Theatre; A Cold Spring Awakening at Half-Moon Theater’s “all you can eat” play festival @ the Culinary Institute of America (Poughkeepsie, NY); Yellow Eyes @ Visión Latino (Chicago); Latins In La-La Land at the College of Wooster (OH). 2016: FUR @ Hero Theatre’s Festival Irene (L.A.) & Venus Theatre (D.C.); Lolita de Lares @ Urban Theater Company (Chicago).  Summer of 2018, she will teach her third  Fornés Playwriting Workshop in Chicago, June 25-July3 under the auspices Notre Dame’s Latino Studies Program, administered by Anne Garcia-Romero & she will also lead the 2018 LaMaMa/Umbria Playwrights’ Retreat in Spoleto, Italy, August 2-12.

Laurence O’Keefe is a composer, lyricist and bookwriter for Broadway, film and television.  Larry also co-produced the LA and NY productions of Heathers, which received a Drama Desk nomination for music and the BroadwayWorld.com Album Award for Best Off-Broadway Cast Album.  Larry and Nell Benjamin won the Olivier Award for co-writing Legally Blonde: The Musical, which ran 2 1/2 years on the West End and has toured the UK. Blonde received seven Tony Award nominations, two US national tours and several award-winning international productions, including Australia’s Helpmann Award for Best Musical.

Larry wrote the score for Bat Boy: The Musical, which won the Lucille Lortel Award, two Richard Rodgers Awards and the New York Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Musical, and has received over 500 productions worldwide, including the West End, Tokyo, Seoul, Berlin and Edinburgh.

Larry and Nell’s other shows include The Mice (prod. by Hal Prince at the Prince Music Theatre in Philadelphia and the Ahmanson in Los Angeles), Sarah, Plain And Tall (Lortel Theater, O’Neill Theatre Conference, Dallas Theatre Center), Cam Jansen (Lamb’s Theatre), and the upcoming Life Of The Party (first commissioned by LaGuardia HS of the Arts).

Larry won the Ed Kleban Award, a Jonathan Larson Foundation Grant and the Richard Rodgers New Horizon Award for his lyrics and music. Television credits include songs and scores for “The Daily Show”, “Defiance”, “Johnny And The Sprites”, Disney Channel and PBS. A graduate of Harvard and USC, Larry teaches master classes at Harvard, Yale, NYU and elsewhere.  Larry and Nell live in New York City with their 2-year-old daughter and her collection of very small pianos.

MICHAEL KORIE is a Tony-nominated American lyricist and librettist. Writing for musical theater, he created the lyrics to composer Scott Frankel’s music for Grey Gardens, Far From Heaven, Doll, Happiness, and Meet Mister Future. Their scores have been nominated for Tony and Drama Desk Awards, received The Outer Critics Circle Award, and have been produced on Broadway, Playwrights Horizons, Lincoln Center Theater, throughout the USA, in Europe and South America. In winter of 2016, Grey Gardens will make its London premiere. For opera, Korie adapted John Steinbeck’s novel for the libretto to The Grapes of Wrath, composer Ricky Ian Gordon, and created the original librettos to operas with composer Stewart Wallace including Harvey Milk, Hopper’s Wife, Where’s Dick?, and Kabbalah. His opera works have been produced at San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Minnesota Opera, New York City Opera, BAM Next Wave Festival, Carnegie Hall, and Disney Los Angeles Symphony Hall. Upcoming operas include a new collaboration with composer Jeanine Tesori. Korie collaborated with co-lyricist Amy Powers on the lyrics to the musical Doctor Zhivago composed by Lucy Simon and produced in Australia, Korea, Scandinavia, and on Broadway in 2015.  He is currently creating a new musical for Disney Theatricals. Korie has enjoyed collaborations with playwrights Doug Wright, Richard Greenberg, Michael Weller, Donald Marguiles, John Weidman, and with directors Michael Greif, Des McAnuff, Christopher Alden, Susan Stroman, and Richard Foreman. Concert works include Gay Century Songbook with composer Larry Grossman at Carnegie Hall, and Positions 1956 with composer Conrad Cummings at The Knitting Factory and Urban Arias. Korie’s lyrics have received the Edward Kleban Prize, Jonathan Larson Award, and the ASCAP Richard Rodgers Award. His songs with composer Scott Frankel were featured at The Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage Broadway Today. He serves on the council of The Dramatists Guild, chairs the Opera Librettists Committee, and moderates the musical theater division of the Dramatist Guild Fellows Program. He teaches lyric writing at Yale.  See Michael’s website at http://michaelkorie.com.