Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is a Brooklyn-based playwright and producer and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist. He received the 2024 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play for Appropriate, which recently completed an acclaimed, record-breaking, 8-month run on Broadway. Other recent theatre credits include The Comeuppance (Signature Theatre Company, NYC; Almeida Theatre, London); Girls (Yale Rep); Everybody (Signature Theatre); War (Yale Rep; Lincoln Center/LCT3); Gloria (Vineyard Theatre); An Octoroon (Obie Award; Soho Rep, Theatre for a New Audience); and Neighbors (The Public Theater). He was showrunner, executive producer, and writer for HULU/FX’s drama series, “Kindred,” based on Octavia E. Butler’s groundbreaking novel. He currently teaches at Yale University and serves as Vice President of the Dramatists Guild council and on the boards of Soho Rep, Park Avenue Armory, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and the Dramatists Guild Foundation.  Additional honors include a USA Artists fellowship, a Guggenheim fellowship, the MacArthur fellowship, the Windham-Campbell Prize for Drama, and the inaugural Tennessee Williams Award.  He is currently writing the book for the upcoming stage adaptation of Purple Rain.

Phylicia Rashad A two-time Tony Award® winner (A Raisin in the Sun and Skeleton Crew), Ms. Rashad’s directing credits include Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Our Lady of 121st Street, The Roommate, Blues for an Alabama Sky, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (2014 NAACP Theatre Award for Best Director), Immediate Family, Fences, A Raisin in the Sun and Four Little Girls. Producing credits include the recent revival of Ossie Davis’ Purlie Victorious on Broadway and PBS film, “The Old Settler.” Ms. Rashad currently serves as Dean of the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts at Howard University.

Amy Berryman is a writer, actor, and teaching artist originally from Seattle by way of West Texas. Her play Walden had its world premiere on London’s West End in 2021, directed by Ian Rickson and produced by Sonia Friedman at the Harold Pinter Theatre. Walden then had its US premiere at Theaterworks Hartford directed by Mei Ann Teo (NY Times Critic's Pick). Other plays include Alien Girls (O’Neill Finalist 2024, Center Theatre Group Writers’ Workshop Commission), God’s Flesh (MTC/Sloan Commission), The New Galileos (O’Neill Finalist 2019), Three Year Summer, The Whole of You, and Epiphany, or What Would You? (Shakespeare’s New Contemporaries Finalist). She is adapting Ben Shattuck’s book Six Walks… into a song cycle with Sam Amidon for Little Island’s 2025 summer season. Amy has a television project in development at Warner Bros and was recently awarded a MacDowell Fellowship. amy-berryman.com

Whitney White  returns to Second Stage Theater where she directed Our Dear Dead Drug Lord (New York Times Critic’s Pick) in a co-production with WP Theatre. Whitney is an Obie and Lily Award winning, as well as a Tony Award nominated director, writer and musician. She was a staff writer on Boots Riley’s I’m a Virgo and is a believer of multi-disciplinary work and collaborative processes. Recent directing: Jaja’s African Hair Braiding (Broadway), Jordans (The Public Theatre), The Secret Life of Bees (The Almeida, UK), Soft (New York Times Critic’s Pick, MCC), On Sugarland (New York Theatre Workshop), What to Send Up When it Goes Down (New York Times Critic’s Pick), The Amen Corner (Shakespeare Theatre DC), An Iliad (Long Wharf), Canyon (LA Times Critic’s Choice, IAMA), Jump (National New Play Network Rolling World Premier, PlayMakers Rep), The Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington (Steppenwolf Theatre). Original works include: Semblance (NYTW), Definition (Bushwick Starr), and Macbeth in Stride for which she won an Elliot Norton Award for Best Musical Performance (American Repertory Theatre, Under the Radar Festival at The Public Theatre). Her four-part cycle deconstructing Shakespeare’s women is currently in development with American Repertory Theater (Boston, MA) and the Royal Shakespeare Company (UK).  Whitney has developed work with: Sundance, The Roundabout, New York Theatre Workshop, The Vineyard, The New Group, Page 73, Playwrights Realm, Juilliard, Trinity Rep, NYU TISCH, Luna Stage, SUNY Purchase, Princeton University, Atlantic Theater Company Acting School, The Drama League, South Oxford, Jack, The Tank, New York Musical Festival, The Lark, and others. She also has been an Associate to: Sam Gold (Othello, New York Theatre Workshop), Daniel Sullivan (If I Forget, Roundabout), and Anne Kauffman (Marvin’s Room, Broadway). Whitney is a part of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, is a recent recipient of the Susan Stroman Directing Award, Herb Alpert Award and the Jerome Fellowship. She is an Artistic Associate at The Roundabout and an associate Artistic Director at Shakespeare DC. Past residencies and fellowships: Colt Coeur, The Drama League, the Roundabout and the 2050 Fellowship at the New York Theatre Workshop. MFA Acting: Brown University/Trinity Rep, BA: Northwestern University. Whitney will direct the upcoming Broadway production of The Last Five Years featuring Nick Jonas and Adrienne Warren.

Leslye Headland 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 film directorial debut was an adaptation of Bachelorette, starring Kirsten Dunst, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012.

Headland recently completed “Star Wars: The Acolyte” for the Disney+ streaming platform. She serves as writer, director, executive producer, and showrunner. Headland served as writer, producing director and showrunner for Netflix’s acclaimed series “Russian Doll.” 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,” “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.