WILLIAM FINN (Music and Lyrics) is the writer and composer of Falsettos, for which he received two Tony Awards®, Best Book of a Musical (with James Lapine), and Best Original Score. He has also written and composed In Trousers, March of the Falsettos, and Falsettoland (Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Musical, two Los Angeles Drama Critic’s Awards, two Drama Desk Awards, the Lucille Lortel Award, and Guggenheim Fellowship in Musical Composition). Finn wrote the lyrics to Graciela Daniele’s “Tango Apasionado” (music by the great Astor Piazzolla) and, with Michael Starobin, the music to Lapine’s version of The Winter’s Tale. His musical Romance in Hard Times was presented at the Public Theater. Recently, he wrote Painting You for Love’s Fire, a piece commissioned and performed by the Acting Company, based on Shakespeare’s sonnets. For television, Finn provided the music and lyrics for the Ace Award–winning HBO cartoon Ira Sleeps Over, Tom Thumb and Thumbelina, Poky Little Puppy’s First Christmas, and, with Ellen Fitzhugh, two Brave little Toaster cartoons. Finn has written for Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and The New Yorker. A graduate of Williams College, where he was awarded the Hutchinson Fellowship for Musical Composition, Finn now teaches a weekly master class at the NYU Tisch Graduate Program in Musical Theatre Writing. His most recent projects include Elegies, A Song Cycle (Lincoln Center), and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which ran on Broadway and has been produced nationally and internationally as well.
RACHEL SHEINKIN (Book) Broadway: The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Tony®, Drama Desk awards); Off-Broadway: Striking 12 (Lucille Lortel nomination), Off-Off: Serenade. Regional: Guthrie, Little House on the Prairie; Center Theater Group, Sleeping Beauty Wakes (Los Angeles Ovation Award); London: Blood Drive. Residencies, fellowships, commissions include: Eugene O’Neill National Theater Center, Baryshnikov Dance Foundation, MacDowell Colony, Manhattan Theatre Club, Deaf West, McCarter Theatre, Playwrights Horizons. Sheinkin is a volunteer mentor for TDF’s Open Doors program, a visiting instructor at Yale School of Drama, and adjunct faculty member of NYU’s Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program.
REBECCA FELDMAN (Conceived by) is the conceiver of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee for which she won a Lucille Lortel Award, Drama Desk, and Tony Award® nomination for Best Musical. She directed its world premiere at Barrington Stage Company in the summer of 2004. Feldman is an associate producer on Transparent, the Musical Finale and served as staff writer on the finale as well. She is currently developing an episodic drama with Big Kid Pictures, called La Coyote, which has been selected to the WeForShe’s 2019 Writeher List. She is an alumna of the Lincoln Center Director's Lab as well as the AFI Directing Workshop for Women where she won the Jean Firstenburg Award for Best Short. Her short films include My First Time Driving (AFI Jean Firstenburg Award, Best Short at Lake Arrowhead Film Fest, Best of Shorts at Outfest), A/V CLUB (TV Pilot, NYTVF), Uber Alice (Woodstock Film Fest), Dead Cat (Producer, Tribeca Film Fest), and Irving (Official Selection Rhode Island Film Fest, Official Selection USA Film Fest, Ft. Lauderdale Film Fest, Atlanta Jewish Film Fest).
JAY REISS (Additional Material) is a playwright. He is a Juilliard graduate and provided additional material to the book for The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Reiss appeared in the original workshops, Off- Broadway cast, and Broadway cast of the musical as “Vice Principal Douglas Panch.”
THE FARM was founded in 2000 by Artistic Director Rebecca Feldman. It is a collective of writers and performers, including Jay Reiss, Dan Fogler, and Sarah Saltzberg. The Farm’s interest is in the role of improvisation in creating new work for the theater. The Farm initially designates a two-week intensive period in which to discover, develop, and rehearse a play from the impulses borne mainly out of the pressure of a deadline. Previous projects include Super (at Atlantic Theatre Studios), Why I Hate Florida (workshop at White Wave in DUMBO), and C-R-E-P-U-S-C-U-L-E (at the Present Company Theatorium in October 2002), on which The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is based. The character and original dialogue of “Beth Marguiles,” “Vice President Douglas Panch,” “Mr. Barfee,” and “Logan Schwarzengrubenierre” were created by Rebecca Feldman, Jay Reiss, Dan Fogler, and Sarah Saltzberg, respectively.
DANNY MEFFORD (Director and Choreographer) has choreographed three Tony Award® winners for Best Musical: Kimberly Akimbo, Dear Evan Hansen (also Olivier Award, Best Musical), and Fun Home. Direction: a national tour of Shrek and the upcoming projects The Gorgeous Nothings and The Fitzgeralds of St. Paul. Choreography highlights: Titanic at City Center, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and Much Ado About Nothing for Shakespeare in the Park in NYC, February House, Miss You Like Hell, Good Person of Szechwan, and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson at the Public Theatre, an international tour of The Sound of Music, and more. TV: Dickinson on Apple TV+, Fleischman Is in Trouble on FX, and Rise on NBC. He has an MFA in acting from Brown University/Trinity Rep.
ROBERTO SINHA he/him (Music Director) Broadway: Hells Kitchen, New York, New York, Hamilton, Kinky Boots, It Shoulda Been You, Violet, Bullets Over Broadway, Big Fish. Tours: Hamilton (Philip Tour), Kinky Boots, Elf, Cinderella. Selected: In The Heights (The MUNY), Galileo (Berkeley Rep), Real Women Have Curves (A.R.T.), Chess (ECF Benefit), Kiss My Aztec! (Hartford Stage), Red Eye of Love (AMAS). Education: Penn State, MFA music directing under Dan Riddle; Florida State, BM piano performance. Love to JS.
PAUL TATE DEPOO III (Scenic Design) is a scenic, projection, and production designer based in NYC. Broadway: The Great Gatsby (Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award), Spamalot, The Cottage (OCC nomination). Resident designer for the Kennedy Center’s Broadway Center Stage: Nine, tick, tick… BOOM!, Sunset Boulevard, Guys and Dolls, The Who’s Tommy, The Music Man, Footloose, Next to Normal, and 50 Years of Broadway. Additional highlights: Cynthia Erivo & Friends (Kennedy Center, PBS), Usher: My Way – The Vegas Residency (Caesars Colosseum, Dolby Live Park MGM), Usher: Rendez-vous à Paris (La Seine Musicale), Titanic, Dear World (City Center Encores!), Dancing with the Stars: Live (2023, 2024), Così Fan Tutte (Santa Fe Opera), Turandot (Oper Im Steinbruch, Austria), Sweeney Todd (OD Company, Seoul), Grand Hotel (Helen Hayes Award), A Little Night Music, and Crazy for You (Signature Theatre). Upcoming productions: Take the Lead (Paper Mill Playhouse), Murder on the Orient Express (The Old Globe). pauldepoo.com
EMILY REBHOLZ (Costume Design) Broadway: Gutenburg! The Musical!, Jagged Little Pill (Tony Award® nomination), Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, Getting the Band Back Together, Indecent, Oh, Hello on Broadway, If/Then, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. Off-Broadway work includes Lincoln Center Theatre, Roundabout Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, The Public Theater, LAByrinth Theatre Company, Playwrights Horizons, Second Stage, and NY City Center, among others. Rebholz has designed opera at the Santa Fe Opera House and Opera Theater St. Louis. Her work has been seen internationally on the West End and extensively through U.S. regional theaters. MFA: Yale
DAVID WEINER (Lighting Design) is thrilled to be making his Kennedy Center Broadway Center Stage debut for The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Weiner last worked with director/choreographer Danny Mefford on last season’s NY City Center Encores production of TITANIC. Broadway: The Great Society, The Price, Misery, Romeo and Juliet, Dead Accounts, Grace, Godspell, The Normal Heart (Tony Award® for Best Revival, Play), Reasons to Be Pretty, Butley, The Real Thing (Tony Award® for Best Revival, Play), Dinner at Eight, Betrayal. Off-Broadway: The Public Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, Second Stage Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan Class Company, New York Theatre Workshop, Theatre for a New Audience, Vineyard Theatre, Atlantic Theater Company. TV: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Architecture: numerous Michelin-starred hospitality projects including award- winning restaurants Tatiana (David Geffen Hall), Saga, Crown Shy, Cote (NY, Miami, Singapore), and Naminori.
HALEY PARCHER (Sound Design) is a Seattle- based sound designer. Recent design credits include—Broadway: Monty Python’s Spamalot; Regional: Something Rotten (Stratford Theatre Festival), Cabaret (The Old Globe), Beauty and the Beast, The Wiz, Into the Woods, Sweeney Todd, White Christmas, and Something’s Afoot (5th Avenue Theatre), Blue (Washington National Opera), Mamma Mia (Village Theatre), How Can I Love You (Cave B), and We’ve Battled Monsters Before (ArtsWest). Previous designs for Broadway Center Stage at the Kennedy Center include Nine, Bye Bye Birdie, tick, tick... BOOM!, Monty Python’s Spamalot, Sunset Boulevard, and Guys and Dolls.
SEONJAE KIM sun in the sky + letter j (Associate Director) is a NYC-based director from Seoul, South Korea. Favorite credits include KPOP (Associate, Broadway), Bald Sisters (Salt Lake Acting Company), Wild Goose Dreams (SpeakEasy Stage Company), The Wolves (Atlantic Acting School), Jar of Fat (Ma-Yi), Shrek: The Musical (Associate, National Tour), and Hot Asian Doctor Husband (Theater Mu). Kim created Riot Antigone, a Riot Girl musical adaptation of Antigone, produced at La MaMa, Ars Nova and published in Reclaiming Greek Drama for Diverse Audiences (Routledge). Kim’s short film Good Taste premiered at the Oscar®-qualifying Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival before embarking on a national festival tour. She is currently developing Mommy: A One Woman Cho, a solo play written and performed by Margaret Cho. One of Broadway Women Fund’s 2024 list of “Women to Watch.” NYTW Usual Suspect. Graduate of Northwestern University. Find her at @sunintheskyletterj or seonjaekim.com.
NIANI FEELINGS she/ her ( Associate Choreographer) is thrilled to be a part of the Bee, a show that holds a special place in her heart! She most recently served as assistant choreographer of the Broadway revival of Once Upon a Mattress, following her season as the Inaugural Ann Reinking Encores! Choreography Fellow at New York City Center. Performance credits include the first National Tour of Mean Girls, The MUNY, North Shore Music Theatre, Starlight Theatre, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Boston Conservatory alum. Huge thanks to Danny for his trust and humor, my teachers, family and friends for their endless support, and to Jenni Barber for indulging a young theater lover as she became a theater maker. @niani_
JONATHAN BAUERFELD (Associate Music Director) is a composer, arranger, orchestrator, and music director. Specializing in new work, he been a member of the music team in various capacities for numerous Broadway shows, tours, and workshops, including Hamilton, The Who’s Tommy, King Kong, and The Radio City Christmas Spectacular. Recent music directing credits include Galileo (Associate MD, Berkeley Rep), Mother Road (MD, Berkeley Rep), Split (MD, Transport Group), and The Gospel According to Heather (MD, Add’l Vocal Arrangements, Off-Broadway). Bauerfeld’s original musical with collaborator Casey Kendall, The Jury, was recently produced Off-Broadway at A.R.T. New York’s Gural Theater, and was a finalist for the Richard Rogers Award, NAMT, and the Eugene O’Neill conference. His short musical, Book Lovers, written with collaborator Talaura Harms, is available through MTI in two languages and has been produced around the world. He is a graduate of Northwestern University and member of the advanced BMI MT workshop.
GEOFF JOSSELSON, CSA (Casting) Previously for the Kennedy Center: Guys and Dolls, Sunset Boulevard, Monty Python’s Spamalot, tick, tick... BOOM!, Bye Bye Birdie, Nine. Broadway credits include: Into the Woods (Artios Award), Sweeney Todd, Monty Python’s Spamalot, The Velocity of Autumn. Off-Broadway includes: Kinky Boots, Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors, Altar Boyz, Southern Comfort, Yank! Select Regional and Off-Broadway Theater companies: Alley Theatre, Arena Stage, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Baltimore Center Stage, Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Civilians, The Irish Repertory Theatre, The Old Globe, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Paper Mill Playhouse, Pasadena Playhouse, Pittsburgh CLO, Pittsburgh Public Theatre, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Signature Theatre, South Coast Rep, Studio Theatre, Village Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, and the York Theatre Company.
MUSIC THEATER INTERNATIONAL (MTI) Music Theatre International (MTI) is one of the world’s leading theatrical licensing agencies, granting theatres from around the world the rights to perform the greatest selection of musicals from Broadway and beyond. Founded in 1952 by composer Frank Loesser and orchestrator Don Walker, MTI is a driving force in advancing musical theatre as a vibrant and engaging art form. MTI works directly with the composers, lyricists, and book writers of these musicals to provide official scripts, musical materials, and dynamic theatrical resources to over 100,000 professional, community, and school theatres in the US and in over 150 countries worldwide. MTI is particularly dedicated to educational theatre and has created special collections to meet the needs of various types of performers and audiences. MTI’s Broadway Junior® shows are 30- and 60-minute musicals for performance by elementary and middle school–aged performers, while MTI’s School Editions are musicals annotated for performance by high school students.
M AT T H E W L AC E Y (Production Stage Manager) is thrilled to return to the Kennedy Center. Broadway Center Stage: Nine, Spamalot, Sunset Boulevard, Guys & Dolls, The Music Man; Broadway/ National Tour: Spamalot, MJ The Musical , Tootsie (C h icago & Broa dway), Sponge Bob Square Pants, Sunset Boulevard, Waitress, An American In Paris, On the Twentieth Century, Motown The Musical, Ghost The Musical , Flashdance (tou r), Relatively Speaking, Arcadia, La Bête, A Little Night Music , Chicago , Swing!, Urinetown . Of f- Broadway: Stomp, Mnemonic, Johnny Guitar, World of Mirth, Pete ‘n’ Keely. Regional/Dance: Theatre Raleigh (Bull Durham), Radio City Christmas Spectacular, St. Louis Muny, Kansas City Starlight, and American Ballet Theatre. Graduate of the Sargent Conservatory at Webster University.
MICHAEL DOMUE (First Assistant Stage Manager) returns to the Kennedy Center once again with this incredible SM Team! Previous Kennedy Center productions: Nine, Monty Python’s Spamalot, Sunset Boulevard; Company; A Streetcar Named Desire; Master Class and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Broadway: Monty Python’s Spamalot. Other Stage Management Credits: New York Spring Spectacular; Heart and Lights; Christmas Spectacular (Radio City Music Hall); Coriolanus (Delacorte); Twelfth Night & As You Like It (Public Works), Urge for Going, Knives and Other Sharp Objects, Last Cargo Cult and Ruby Sunrise (Public Theater), Mile Long Opera (High Line), Marie and Rosetta (Atlantic), New York Stage and Film, Old Globe, Actors Theatre of Louisville/Humana Festival, Trinity Repertory Company, Totem Pole Playhouse (17 Summer Seasons!). Production Management Credits: NYC Free (Little Island), Carnegie Hall (5 seasons). Website: UpstateManhattanRoasters.com
WILLIE PORTER (Second Assistant Stage Manager) is thrilled to be back at the Kennedy Center for her fourth Broadway Center Stage production. Broadway: Spamalot, Almost Famous, MJ: The Musical, Moulin Rouge!, The Music Man. Other: Nine, Spamalot, and The Music Man (Kennedy Center), Evita (NYC Center), Radio City Christmas Spectacular, and nine seasons at The Muny.
BROADWAY CENTER STAGE (Jeffrey Finn, Artistic Director & Executive Producer) is a theater initiative launched in 2017 showcasing beloved musicals exclusively created and produced for the Kennedy Center. The mission of the series is to collaborate with the best artists and creative teams direct from Broadway to offer unique programming that can only be seen at the Kennedy Center. The inaugural season featured sold-out productions of Chess starring Karen Olivo, Ramin Karimloo, Raúl Esparza, and Ruthie Ann Miles; In the Heights starring Anthony Ramos, Ana Villafañe, and Vanessa Hudgens; and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying starring Skylar Astin and Betsy Wolfe. BCS shows have been hailed by the Washington Post as “a premiere addition to the Kennedy Center’s programming and a magnet for top Broadway talent.” Other productions include: Little Shop of Horrors starring Megan Hilty and Josh Radnor; The Music Man starring Norm Lewis and Jessie Mueller; The Who’s Tommy starring Casey Cott, Christian Borle, and Mandy Gonzalez; Footloose starring J. Quinton Johnson; Next to Normal starring Rachel Bay Jones and Brandon Victor Dixon; Guys and Dolls starring James Monroe Iglehart, Jessie Mueller, Steven Pasquale, and Phillipa Soo, which won the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Production; Sunset Boulevard starring Stephanie J. Block, Derek Klena, Auli’i Cravalho, and Nathan Gunn; Monty Python’s Spamalot starring James Monroe Iglehart, Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer, Michael Urie, and Alex Brightman; tick, tick…BOOM! directed by Neil Patrick Harris and starring Brandon Uranowitz, Denee Benton and Grey Henson; Bye Bye Birdie starring Christian Borle, Krysta Rodriguez and Richard Kind; and Nine, directed and choreographed by Andy Blankenbuehler, starring Steven Pasquale. Broadway Center Stage initially presented partially staged concert musicals, but with the growing success of the series, the shows are now produced as fully staged musicals, which proudly feature the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra. In November 2023, the Broadway Center Stage production of Spamalot transferred to the St. James Theatre on Broadway and ran for a total of 24 weeks.
