BEST OF FESTIVAL SHOWS

Jen Bender is currently the Resident Director of Broadway's The Lion King. She directed the 1st national tour of Wonderful Town and was the Assistant Director of Avenue Q (Broadway and Las Vegas), The Wedding Singer, and Steel Magnolias, starring Christine Ebersole. Her directing credits include numerous new works, readings, cabarets, and concerts at Theatre Row, Makor, The Knitting Factory, Birdland, and Ars Nova.

She is a producer and founding member of the New Voices Collective, a non-profit organization which provides a forum for a community of artists to develop new works and explore new directions. Recent concerts at the Upper West Side’s Symphony Space have included world premieres by composers John Kander, Jason Robert Brown, Stephen Schwartz, Stephen Flaherty, Andrew Lippa, Joseph Thalken, Jeff Blumenkrantz, and Steve Marzullo and featured performances by Rebecca Luker, Brian d’Arcy James, Julia Murney, Andrea Burns, Will Chase, Daniel Reichard, among others.

One of the founding producers of the New York Musical Theatre Festival, Jen directed Sammy Buck and Dan Acquisto’s Like You Like It during their inaugural season. She is also on the faculty of KAMP NYC, an intensive training program for musical theatre students ages 12-17.

Jen is a graduate of the theatre department at Northwestern University.

Jules Feiffer, one of America's most influential cartoonists, is also a playwright, novelist, screenwriter and author of children's books. His Pulitzer prize-winning trademark cartoon style typically features sparely drawn, neurotic characters, appearing against blank backgrounds, and emoting or agonizing over news events and personal problems. His cartoon strip, Feiffer, appeared in the Village Voice from 1956 to 1997, and in 1996 a retrospective exhibition of his work appeared at the Library of Congress.

Feiffer's work in other genres is characterized by the same talent for social satire and commentary. His 1967 play Little Murders received the London Theatre Critics, Outer Circle Critics and Obie Awards. Feiffer's other plays include the Obie-winning White House Murder Case, Knock Knock, Elliot Loves and Anthony Rose.

From 1949 to 1951 Feiffer drew a Sunday cartoon-page feature called "Clifford," which ran in six newspapers. Feiffer then served a two-year stint in the Signal Corps.

After he got out of the Army, he turned out a book of cartoons called Sick, Sick, Sick, which in 1958 was awarded The Oscar as the best short-subject cartoon of the year. Critic Gilbert Millstein has depicted Feiffer as being "alone and unafraid in a world made of just about all of the intellectual shams and shibboleths to which our culture subscribes."

Feiffer's is also a novelist and children's author.  His books include, Harry the Rat with Women, Ackroyd, A Barrel of Laughs, A Vale of Tears, I Lost My Bear, George, and I’m Not Bobby!  His children's book The Man in the Ceiling was selected by Publishers Weekly and The New York Public Library as one of the best children's books of 1993. He is also author of the screenplays for Little Murders, Carnal Knowledge and Popeye.

Feiffer is the only cartoonist to have a comic strip published by The New York Times. His cartoons have also appeared in The New York Times Sunday Magazine and The New Yorker.

In May of 1997, he became a Senior Fellow in the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

John G. Schultz is the Executive Director of Young Audiences New York which works to enrich students' creative, emotional, and intellectual lives as a preeminent provider of innovative and high-quality arts education in New York City public schools and institutions. John has long been a promoter and champion of the arts in the New York City community.

Before joining Young Audiences New York, John served as the Executive Director of the MCC Theater, a NYC based company which produces such challenging and unique works as the Tony Award® winning Frozen. Prior to that position, he was Executive Director of Composers Recording, Inc., a company devoted to the discovery, recording, and preservation of new music by American composers. Earlier he was Managing Director of L'Orchidee, Inc., where he was responsible for overseeing management of legendary soprano Jessye Norman's career. Before that, John served as the National Sales and Marketing Director for Qualiton Imports, Ltd., an importer and distributor of international classical/jazz recordings.

After graduating from The Julliard School, Mr. Schultz founded and headed Kuma Music, a company representing musical artists throughout Asia and the world.