34th Annual Festival of New Musicals

Shannon Burkett is an actor, writer, and producer based in NYC. Librettist/Lyricist: The Female Pope (music: Heather Christian, (NAMT 2022, O’Neill Semifinalist),  So You Wanna be a Porn Star: a story of sex love and rock-n-roll, (music: Peter Salett), and TriPerFecTa. Productions: music video (Winner: Best Music Video at Los Angeles Movie Awards) and sold-out benefit cabarets (Laurie Beechman – Breast Cancer Awareness Month). Acting: Broadway – The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (Arthur Miller, starring Patrick Stewart). Off-Broadway – The Atlantic, Playwrights, WPA, NYTW, The Flea, Soho Rep, New Georges, as well as commercial runs.  www.shannonburkett.com

Heather Christian is a Lucille Lortel, Drama Desk and Obie Award winning composer/performer making music centered shows and rituals. She is a 2021 Richard Rodgers Award winner and Sundance Institute Time Warner Fellow. Recent composing/performing credits include her own work Oratorio for Living Things (Ars Nova), Animal Wisdom (The Bushwick Starr, Wooly Mammoth, ACT) I am Sending You the Sacred Face (Theater In Quarantine), Prime: A Practical Breviary (Playwrights Horizons Soundstage). She has released 11 records, teaches vocal-based music composition at NYU, and can be seen regularly in concert halls and dive bars as Heather Christian & the Arbornauts. www.heatherchristian.bandcamp.com

Recent highlights: Perpetual Sunshine & the Ghost Girls, NAMT (2022), Richard Rodgers Award (2022), Rhinebeck Writers Retreat (2021), NYTB New Works Series (2021), 5X15, Beck Center/Baldwin Wallace (2021), NAMT 15-Minute Challenge winner (2020); The ASCAP Foundation Lucille and Jack Yellen Award (2021); Commercial musical adaptation of a major motion picture (TBA); HoT, Goodspeed Festival of New Musicals (2022), Johnny Mercer Foundation Writers Grove (2020), New York Theatre Barn New Works Series (2020); The Memory Show, LAMB Theatre (2022), New Bard, London (2016), Transport Group, The Duke on 42nd Street (2013), WaterGateMedia, Seoul (2012-2013), Barrington Stage Company (2010), NAMT (2010); Barrington Stage Company Spark Grant (2020); Polyanna, TV pilot, Grand Jury Prize, Barnstorm Media (2020); Elevator Heart, Moxie Arts (2019), USF (2018), Tisch New Musicals (2016); Fault Lines, The Kennedy Center (2018), American Opera Initiative (2017). Jonathan Larson Grant (2014). MFA Graduate Musical Theatre Writing, NYU. Dramatists Guild, ASCAP. http://saracooper.me

Steven Gallagher is a Toronto based writer, director, and actor. Blackout, written with Anton Lipovetsky premiered in 2021 in Toronto’s High Park, co-produced by The Musical Stage Company and The Canadian Stage Company. His play Stealing Sam was seen at Alberta Theatre Projects in 2021 and at the 2014 New York United Solo Theatre Festival where it was awarded Best Drama. Memorial, winner of the Trafalgar 24 Play Festival, premiered in Toronto in 2013. His musical Pollyanna, written with composer Linda Barnett, was shortlisted for the 2016 Playwrights Guild of Canada Best New Musical Award. He is the recipient of the Aubrey & Marley Dan Fund for New Musicals and a Harold Award.

Dylan Glatthorn is a Brooklyn based composer & lyricist. Original musicals: The Pelican, Edison, & Bittersweet Lullaby (licensed through MTI). Dylan has written music for nine feature films, numerous shorts, documentaries and commercials for clients such as Lindt, Nickelodeon, Oakley, Red Bull, Alessi, & PBS. Composed & arranged for Diana DeGarmo’s GEMINI; co-producer & arranger for LOLO’s X and upcoming lauren. Awards: New Hampshire Theatre Award for Best Sound Design, Clive Davis Award for Excellence in Music in Film, Best Original Score at First Run Film Festival, & two-time recipient of the Alan Menken Award. Member: ASCAP, Theatre Now’s Musical Writers Lab & The Dramatists Guild of America, Inc. www.dylanglatthorn.com

Deepak Kumar is a playwright, composer, and lyricist based in the Bay Area, CA. His work most often deals with Asian-Americans grappling with the messiness of their identities as they relate to their unique American experiences. His work has been produced by the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center (NPC22), Underscore Theatre Company in Chicago, the National Asian American Theatre Company (NAATCO), Musical Theatre Factory, and PACE University in NYC, Faultline Theatre in San Francisco, and Shotgun Players in Berkeley, CA. He is a Eugene O’Neill NMTC Semifinalist, a Bay Area Playwrights Festival Semifinalist, and a 2022 Macdowell Colony Fellow.His first show (co-written with Jord Liu), Baked! The Musical, was produced in Chicago as part of the Chicago Musical Theatre Festival where it had a sold out run and won awards for best lyrics, best lead performer, best supporting performer, and best ensemble. He has worked with Underscore Theatre Company, the National Asian American Theatre Company (NAATCO) and Shotgun Players.

Will Lacker is a New York City based playwright & lyricist originally from St. Petersburg, Florida. Original Works: The Pelican, Bittersweet Lullaby (licensed through MTI), Catch the Westbound, Edison, The Invasion, The Custodian, and Trials of a Scientific Mind. His works have been produced at theaters and festivals around the country, including The Player’s Theatre, Merkin Concert Hall, The Flea, NYC Fringe, Woodstock Fringe, Alexandra Film Festival, and Gen Con Film Festival. Will earned a BA from Marymount Manhattan, an MFA from Queens College, and is a graduate of the UCB improv school. Member: Theatre Now’s Musical Writers Lab, Dramatists Guild, and ASCAP. www.wlacker.com

Anton Lipovetsky is a composer and lyricist from Vancouver, Canada. This summer, he will complete his three-year residency at Toronto’s Musical Stage Company. His musical Blackout (commissioned by Musical Stage and written with Steven Gallagher) was featured as part of the NAMT 2021 Festival of New Musicals in New York City. Other musicals that Anton has composed include Cowboy Tempest Cabaret (Musical Stage), This Is It (Nashville Children’s Theatre), and his current commission Way Out There (YES Theatre). He has been shortlisted for the Playwright’s Guild of Canada Musical Award three times. As an actor, Anton has performed on stages throughout Canada including the NAC and the Stratford Festival. He is a graduate of Studio 58 and Stratford’s Birmingham Conservatory.

Jord Liu is a theater maker, musician, and creative technologist based in San Francisco CA whose work centers collaborative engagement with art. She has worked with Underscore Theater in Chicago, the Chicago Musical Theater Festival, the New York Musical Festival, the Musical Theater Factory and National Asian American Theater Company (NAATCO) in New York, Shotgun Players in Berkeley, and SFBATCO, FaultLine Theater and Z-Space in San Francisco.

Nikki Lynette is a social impact artist who fuses mental health activism into her performances, filmmaking, and visual art. With her musical about depression Get Out Alive she made history as the first black female playwright to be produced by American Music Theatre Project and the first AMTP work to debut at Steppenwolf. The film adaptation of Get Out Alive has won 3 awards. A proud ambassador for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), her first TEDx Talk, hosted by Princeton University, was an opportunity for her to share how her punk culture roots aided her suicide recovery.

Robin Schäfer (Composer) is a songwriter, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist who resides in Cologne, Germany. Since 2002 Schäfer has played and composed music in several original bands of various genres. In 2018 he walked away from his career in business administration to become a full-time musician. Currently, he has been focused on his own singer/songwriter project, ROBIN SHEPHERD, and the instrumental Soul-Funk band, MALAKO ZOO. He also works as a session musician and music teacher.

Lynne Shankel – As composer: bare: The Musical (additional music); Red Velvet (original music, The Old Globe), HoT (Goodspeed Festival of New Works 2022, Johnny Mercer Foundation Writers Grove 2020, New York Theatre Barn New Works Series 2020) Perpetual Sunshine & the Ghost Girls (2022 Richard Rodgers Award, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat 2021, 5×15 Festival 2021). As composer/lyricist: Postcard American Town (SDSU New Works Initiative winner 2020, New York Theatre Barn New Works Series 2019, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat 2018). 2021 ASCAP Lucille and Jack Yellen Award. Album: Bare Naked on Yellow Sound Label. Lynne teaches Musical Theatre Composition at the University of Michigan. Lynneshankel.com

Marcus Terrell Smith (Book/Lyrics) graduated from the University of Arizona with a BA in Linguistics. The following year he was accepted into the Actors Studio Drama School (ASDS) at Pace University in New York City, receiving an MFA in Acting. After graduating, he joined the national tour of Broadway’s Book of Mormon. Smith then moved to Los Angeles, where he diversified his talents as an actor on TV/Film and continued his work in theater. He is also a prolific storyteller, currently writing narrative lore for League of Legends (Riot Games) and Magic: The Gathering.

Martin Storrow believes that creativity lives at the heart of everything. A prolific artist and songwriter based in Los Angeles, Martin has released six records and a collection of poems, and has played more than a thousand concerts across the US and in Africa, Australia, and the Middle-East. His original music has been featured in film and television shows on NBC, Starz, and Netflix. King of Pangaea is Martin’s first musical, and was inspired by his lived experience.