Shelley Butler (
Director) has worked extensively with writers on new plays and musicals accumulating over thirty Broadway, Off-Broadway, and regional credits to date. Recent productions include the world premiere of Lucas Hnath’s
A Doll’s House, Part 2 at South Coast Repertory,
Wrecked by Greg Kelleres at CATF,
Fruiting Bodies by Sam Chanse for Ma-Yi Theater,
The Magician’s Daughter by Lila Rose Kaplan for Geva, and the Japanese premiere of
Beautiful: The Carole King Musical at the Imperial Theatre in Tokyo. Ms. Butler spent two seasons as artistic associate in charge of new play development for Hartford Stage and three seasons as artistic associate for Great Lakes Theater Festival. She has developed over two dozen new plays and musicals at companies including Ars Nova, Primary Stages, E.S.T., WP Theater, Yale Repertory Theatre, The Old Globe, Milwaukee Rep, Hartford Stage, South Coast Repertory, Denver Center Theatre Company, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Geva, Pioneer Theatre Company, New York Stage and Film, Dallas Lyric Stage, Partial Comfort, New Georges, Dixon Place, The Playwright’s Realm, Keen Company New Dramatists, and the Lark. Ms. Butler is the recipient of a Drama League Fall Directing Fellowship, a 2018 Drama League Directing Resident, a 2005 Director’s Guild of America Trainee, a member of SDC, the Lincoln Center Directors’ Lab, and the WP Directors Lab.
Craig Lucas (Playwright) Stage works include Missing Persons, Reckless, Blue Window, Prelude to a Kiss, God’s Heart, The Dying Gaul, Stranger, Small Tragedy, Prayer For My Enemy, The Singing Forest, Ode To Joy, I Was Most Alive With You. Screenplays include Longtime Companion (Sundance Audience Award), The Secret Lives of Dentists (NY Film Critics Best Screenplay Award), Reckless, Blue Window, The Dying Gaul. Libretti include: The Light in the Piazza, Two Boys, Orpheus in Love, 3 Postcards, An American in Paris, and Amélie. He directed the world premiere of The Light in the Piazza, Harry Kondoleon’s plays Saved or Destroyed and Play Yourself, the films The Dying Gaul and Birds of America. He received the Excellence in Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, the Laura Pels/PEN Mid-Career Award, the Greenfield Prize, LAMBDA Literary Award, Hull-Warriner Award, Flora Roberts Award, Steinberg/ACTA Best Play Award among others. He has three Tony nominations.
