Max Vernon is a 3 time Drama Desk nominee, Out100 Honoree, and recipient of the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Musical, Richard Rodgers Award, Jonathan Larson Grant, New York Stage and Film's Founders Award, New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship, and the JFund Award from the Jerome Foundation. They have been a Dramatist Guild Theatre Fellow, MacDowell Fellow, and an artist in residence at Berkeley Rep, Ars Nova, Kimmel Center (viaThe Public Theater), Disney Creative Entertainment, and Rhinebeck Writer’s Retreat, among others. Their musical, The View UpStairs, ran 105 performances Off-Broadway and will have sixteen new productions around the world in 2017-2019; original cast recording on Broadway Records. Their other musical, KPOP, enjoyed a sold-out, extended run at Ars Nova this past October and was the most nominated Off-Broadway show of the 2017-2018 season. Max is also an acclaimed cabaret artist. Notable concert performances include a sold out 6 month residency at Joe’s Pub of the Public Theater (“Existential Life Crisis Lullaby”), Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.maxvernon.com

Rona Siddiqui is an award-winning composer/lyricist, orchestrator and music director based in NYC. She is the recipient of the 2020 Jonathan Larson Grant and the 2019 Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award, and was recently RONAHS6.JPG named one of Broadway Women's Fund's Women to Watch. Her show Salaam Medina: Tales of a Halfghan, an autobiographical comedy about growing up bi-ethnic in America, had a developmental workshop at Playwrights Horizons November 2019. She has also received the ASCAP Foundation Mary Rodgers/Lorenz Hart Award, and the ASCAP Foundation/Max Dreyfus Scholarship. She performed her concert Rona Siddiqui: Halfghan on a Mission at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Her musical One Good Day (book & lyrics by Liz Suggs) was selected for the ASCAP/Dreamworks Musical Theatre Workshop with Stephen Schwartz in L.A. and was named one of the Best New Musicals of 2014 by the Festival of New American Musicals. Rona composed the music for an original 20-minute musical about Afghanistan, The Tin, which was selected to be part of the Samuel French OOB Short Play Festival in 2012. Her musical Treasure in NYC (book & lyrics by Laura Kleinbaum), an immersive musical adventure for autistic children, has been produced at The Cell. She has been commissioned to write songs for Wicked's 16th Anniversary Commemoration, Flying Free, Broadway Inspirational Voices, The Civilians, the NYC Gay Men's Chorus, MuseMatch, 52nd St. Project, and the web series Amateur Dicks. She has been a featured songwriter in concert venues such as 54 Below, Joe's pub, and New York City Center. Original scores she has written for plays include Middletown, The Vagina Monologues, The Good Person of Szechuan, The Clean House, and Love Song of J Robert Oppenheimer. As a music director, Rona received the award for Best Music Direction in 2012 from the Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Other music directing credits include A Strange Loop (Playwrights Horizons) for which she received an AUDELCO nomination, Bella: An American Tall Tale (Playwrights Horizons) for which she received an AUDELCO nomination, and Who's Your Baghdaddy or How I Started the Iraq War (St. Lukes Theater). She received her Masters from NYU’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program.