Caridad Svich (Artistic Director of New Musical Development) is a playwright, translator, screenwriter, and lyricist whose recognitions include a 2012 OBIE for Lifetime Achievement and a 2018 Ellen Stewart Career Achievement Award from ATHE. Her signature plays include 12 Ophelias, Iphigenia Crash Land Falls on the Neon Shell That Was Once Her Heart, Red Bike (NNPN Rolling World Premiere), Guapa (NNPN Rolling World Premiere), Spark (National Latino Playwriting Award), and The House of the Spirits (ATCA Primus Prize). Currently running at Repertorio Espanol in NYC are her plays Eva Luna (world premiere: 2022) and In the Time of the Butterflies. Among her projects in development is a new musical about Pablo Picasso with director Gordon Greenberg, composer Stephen Schwartz and actor Antonio Banderas for Trafalgar Entertainment.

Michael Heitzman (Artistic Director of New Musical Development) is a longtime Lucille Lortel Theatre collaborator, and acclaimed writer and director. His re-imagined production of 42nd Street was at The Ordway and Drury Lane/Chicago (Jeff Award nominee, Best Director). Recent directing credits: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat starring David Archuleta (TCA), Beauty and the Beast (TCA, Ordway, PCLO, NSMT, La Mirada), Newsies, Big River, and Legally Blonde (Broadway Sacramento), SHREK and Disney’s The Little Mermaid (NSMT, IRNE Award nominee, Best Director), VICES (Jeff Award nominee, Best Director) As a writer, Michael received a Grammy nomination for co-writing “Throw That Girl Around” from the Broadway musical Swing! For TV, he co-wrote the comedy pilot “Scott Free,” developed Barwood Films and Grammnet, purchased by Paramount Pictures. He is a proud member of The Dramatists Guild, BMI, WGAe, and SDC.

Kimille Howard (Artistic Director of High School Playwriting Fellowship) is a New York based director, deviser, writer and filmmaker. She is an Assistant Stage Director at the Metropolitan Opera and recently worked on the new James Robinson production of Porgy and Bess. She is the newly appointed Artistic Director of the Lucille Lortel Theatre’s NYC Public High School Playwriting Fellowship and a cofounder of the Black Classical Music Archive.  Select directing credits: Joseph Bologne’s The Anonymous Lover (Wolf Trap Opera), Death By Life (White Snake Projects), In The Open by Mona Monsour (Western Connecticut State University), Soil Beneath by Chesney Snow (Primary Stages/59E59), $#!thole Country Clapback by Pascale Armand (Loading Dock Theatre), The Fellowship Plays (Lucille Lortel Theatre Foundation), A Light Staggering by Jeesun Choi (Ensemble Studio Theatre), Tidwell: or the Plantation Play by Rodney Witherspoon II (Samuel French OOB Short Play Festival – winner), Low Power by Jon Kern (EST), BLACK GIRLS ARE FROM OUTER SPACE by Emana Rachelle (National Black Theatre), Skeleton Crew by Dominique Morisseau (TheatreSquared) and TRIGGERED by Gabriel Jason Dean (Cherry Lane Theatre). Kimille was awarded Best Director at the 2016 Thespis Festival for Its All About Lorrie by Joseph Krawczyk at the Hudson Theater and remounted the production for a commercial run at The American Theater of Actors in 2017. Her work has also been seen at The Circle in the Square Theatre Circle Series, The Queens Theatre, Juilliard, The Flea, The Lark, JAGFest, NYU, Sea Dog Theater, and Atlantic Acting School, CLASSIX/The Lewis Center, among others. Broadway: Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations (Assistant Director). She has worked with Des McAnuff, Rebecca Frecknall, Ruben Santiago Hudson, Emily Mann, Stephen Wadsworth, Lorca Peress and more. Recent Fellowships: New York Theatre Workshop 2050 Fellowship and the Manhattan Theatre Club Jonathan Alper Directing Fellowship. She has produced shows at the HERE Arts Center, FIAF, and more. She is a current member of The New Georges Directors Jam, a participant in New York Stage and Film’s inaugural NYSAF NEXUS project, and a former Resident Director at the Flea Theater. She is the Series Producer for American Opera Project’s Music As the Message.