Leslye Headland (Playwright) is an Emmy®-nominated writer, producer and director. She returns to Second Stage Theater, which produced her play, Bachelorette, in its Uptown Series, and her play, The Layover, off-Broadway at the Kiser Theater. Headland began her career writing and directing the “Seven Deadly Plays” series, which included both Bachelorette and Assistance, with IAMA Theatre Company. Her directorial debut was an adaptation of “Bachelorette,” starring Kirsten Dunst, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012. Headland served as writer, producing director and showrunner for Netflix’s acclaimed series “Russian Doll” (co-created by Natasha Lyonne and Amy Poehler). The series was nominated for three Primetime Emmy® Awards and nine Creative Arts Emmy Awards, winning three for production design, cinematography, and contemporary costumes. She recently directed and executive produced the pilot for the Freeform series “Single Drunk Female.” Headland’s additional TV writing/directing credits include pilots for HBO, ABC and NBC, as well as “Terriers” (FX), “BluntTalk” (Starz), “SMILF” and “Black Monday” (Showtime), and “Heathers” (Paramount). Headland’s other film credits include writing the 2014 remake of About Last Night, starring Kevin Hart and writing/directing Sleeping with Other People, starring Jason Sudeikis, which also premiered at Sundance in 2015.

Trip Cullman (Director). Broadway: The Rose Tattoo, Choir Boy, Lobby Hero (Tony nom., Best Revival), Six Degrees of Separation (Tony nom., Best Revival), Significant Other. Select Off Broadway: I Can Get It For You Wholesale (Best Revival, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle) (CSC); The Lonely Few, Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow, YEN, Punk Rock (Obie Award), A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Gynecologic Oncology Unit At Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Of New York City (MCC); Days Of Rage, The Layover, The Substance of Fire, Lonely I’m Not, Bachelorette, Some Men, Swimming In The Shallows (Second Stage); Unknown Soldier, The Pain Of My Belligerence, Assistance, A Small Fire (Drama Desk nomination, Best Direction), The Drunken City (Playwrights Horizons); Choir Boy (MTC); Murder Ballad (MTC and Union Square Theatre); The Mother, I’m Gonna Pray For You So Hard (Atlantic); Roulette (EST); The Hallway Trilogy: Nursing (Rattlestick); The Last Sunday In June (Rattlestick and Century Center); Dog Sees God (Century Center); US Drag (stageFARM); and several productions with The Play Company. London: The Colby Sisters of Pittsburgh, PA (Tricycle). Select regional: Berkeley Rep, Geffen, Arena, Alliance, Old Globe, La Jolla, South Coast Rep, Bay Street, Williamstown Theater Festival.

Donald Margulies (Playwright) won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Dinner with Friends and was a finalist twice for Sight Unseen and Collected Stories. His many plays include Long Lost, The Country House, Shipwrecked! An Entertainment, Brooklyn Boy, The Loman Family Picnic, What’s Wrong With This Picture?, Found a Peanut, Coney Island Christmas, God of Vengeance, the Tony Award-nominated Time Stands Still, and the Obie Award-winning The Model Apartment. His work has been seen on- and off-Broadway at MTC, Primary Stages, Roundabout, and the Public Theater; and at major regional theaters across the United States and in cities all over the world including London, Beirut, Tel Aviv, Stockholm, Tokyo, Mumbai, Berlin, Vienna, Sydney, Bucharest, Copenhagen, and Paris. Mr. Margulies has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation and has been a fellow at MacDowell and the Hermitage Artists’ Retreat. Honors include the two Dramatists’ Guild/Hull-Warriner Awards, the Sidney Kingsley Award for Achievement by a playwright, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theatre Award, the William Inge Award, and the Thornton Wilder Prize. In 2019, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The film of his screenplay, The End of the Tour, premiered at Sundance and was nominated for Film Independent Spirit and USC Scripter Awards. A proud lifetime member of both the Writers’ and Dramatists’ Guilds, he is a Professor in the Practice of English and Theater & Performance Studies at Yale University.

KATE WHORISKEY (Director) is a prolific theater director whose work has been seen on Broadway, off-Broadway and regionally. On Broadway, she directed Clyde’s, Sweat and the revival of The Miracle Worker. Off Broadway credits include The Apiary, Letters from Max, All the Natalie Portmans, Ruined, Songs for a New World, Her Requiem, How I Learned to Drive among others. She has directed acclaimed productions at theaters across the country including the Goodman, the Geffen, South Coast Rep, Sundance Theatre Lab, Shakespeare Theatre, the American Repertory Theatre, the Huntington, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Baltimore Center Stage, and Arena among others. Her opera direction has been seen at the Chatelet in Paris and Teatro Municipal in Brazil.

REED BIRNEY (George) has been working in film, television, and theater for decades. Among his earliest credits are Albert Innaurato’s Broadway comedy Gemini in 1974 and Arthur Penn’s Four Friends in 1981.

A celebrated member of the New York theatre community, Reed has won a Tony and numerous other awards and nominations for plays including The Humans, Casa Valentina, Man from Nebraska, Uncle Vanya, Blasted, and Circle Mirror Transformation. Most recently he starred opposite his son Ephraim Birney in Chester Bailey at Irish Rep, and in the highly successful run of Donald Margulies’ Lunar Eclipse at Shakespeare & Company.

On television, he can be seen recurring opposite Kim Kardashian in the current season of “American Horror Story.” He was also recently seen in Peacock's “Poker Face,” and “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.” Other TV credits include HBO’s “Succession” and Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” as well as the Apple TV+ series “Home Before Dark.” He is also well known for his performance as Vice President Donald Blythe in the Netflix series “House of Cards.”

In film, Reed received a Gotham Award nomination for his performance in the Bleecker Street feature Mass opposite Ann Dowd, Jason Isaacs, and Martha Plimpton. The film’s cast was also honored with the Robert Altman award at the Independent Spirit Awards. Reed also appeared in The Menu opposite Ralph Fiennes. Other recent film credits include the Universal/Blumhouse thriller The Hunt and Netflix’s The Forty-Year-Old Version and Lost Girls, as well as Strawberry Mansion. Later this year he will be seen in Kevin Costner’s epic western, Horizon: An American Saga.

Reed lives in New York.

Lisa Emery (Em) is an award-winning actress, best known for her role of Darlene Snell in Netflix’s crime drama “Ozark” alongside Jason Bateman and Laura Linney. Additional television credits include “The Walking Dead: Dead City,” “Blindspot,” “Madam Secretary,” “The Sinner,” “Jessica Jones,” and “Elementary.” She was last seen on stage in the Broadway revival of Six Degrees of Separation in 2017. She has also been seen in Second Stage Theater’s production of Lonely, I’m Not in 2012, following her role in Atlantic Theater Company’s double bill of The Collection & A Kind of Alaska: Two Plays by Harold Pinter in 2011, for which she was nominated for a Drama Desk Award.