STEVEN LEVENSON (Book) Steven is a Tony Award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and television writer and producer. His plays include If I Forget, Core Values, Seven Minutes In Heaven, and The Language of Trees. He wrote the book for the musical, Dear Evan Hansen, which won six Tony Awards, including Best Book and Best Musical, as well as the Olivier Award for Best New Musical. He co-created and executive produced the FX series “Fosse/Verdon,” which was nominated for seventeen Emmy Awards, including Best Limited Series and Best Writing for a Limited Series, as well as for Critics’ Choice Association and Producers Guild Awards, in addition to winning the Writers Guild Award and an AFI Award for Outstanding Series. Other honors include the OBIE Award, two Outer Critics Circle Awards, and the John Gassner Memorial Playwriting Award. He adapted Jonathan Larson’s tick, tick…boom!, directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, for Netflix. He is a graduate of Brown University.

BEN PASEK & JUSTIN PAUL (Music & Lyrics) Songwriters and producers Benj Pasek & Justin Paul are best known for their Oscar, Grammy, and Tony-winning work on La La Land, The Greatest Showman and Dear Evan Hansen, each of which spawned albums that landed in the Top 10 on the Billboard 200, including multiple weeks at #1 for The Greatest Showman, which in 2018 was the world’s best-selling album. This year, they won their first Emmy Award as songwriters of Only Murders in the Building and, as a result, achieved EGOT status, joining a rarified list of artists who have won all four major showbiz prizes. Additional film and television credits include Apple’s Spirited, Sony’s Lyle, Lyle Crocodile, Disney’s live-action Aladdin, Dreamworks Animation’s Trolls, Amazon’s Harlem, Apple’s Dear Edward, NBC’s Smash, The CW’s The Flash, Amazon’s Pink: All I Know So Far (Grammy nomination), and FX’s Welcome to Wrexham. Amongst their varied stage credits, they made their Broadway debut with the musical A Christmas Story (Tony nomination), further adapted into a live telecast for Fox (Emmy nomination); and won their second Tonys for co-producing Best Musical winner A Strange Loop. Among their countless honors, they became the youngest winners ever of the Jonathan Larson Award and the first writers for stage or screen to be honored with the ASCAP Vanguard Award. In total, Benj and Justin have each won two Tonys, two Grammys, an Emmy and an Oscar across five distinct projects.

KAREN AZENBERG (Director) is now in her 14th season as Artistic Director at Pioneer Theatre Company. Favorite projects include Beautiful: The Carole King Musical (a co-production between PTC and Geva), Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, The Lehman Trilogy, the world premiere of Alabama Story, the regional premiere of Sting’s The Last Ship,  Newsies, The Play That Goes Wrong, and The Rocky Horror Show. Through Karen, PTC also hosted the first (and still only) Utah out-of-town tryout for a Broadway musical: the Tony Award-winning Shucked. Originally from New York, her work there includes Lyrics and Lyricists (92nd St. Y), Blocks (a collaboration with Jonathan Larson) Prom Queens Unchained, and choreography for Richard Greenberg’s The Dazzle (Roundabout Theatre Company). Among her other credits are over 15 productions of West Side Story and she has worked with Indiana Repertory Theatre, Geva Theatre, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Goodspeed, Theatre Aspen, and Utah Shakespeare Festival. Karen is a past president of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC) and is a proud mom to Alexander and Emelia.

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. MTI maintains its global headquarters in New York City with additional offices in London (MTI Europe) and Melbourne (MTI Australasia).