Remote video URL
Katie Walker (Love, NYC Dramaturgs creative producer) hosted the second annual Love, NYC Dramaturgs (a love letter from dramaturgs to the New York theatre community) in the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre at the Pershing Square Signature Center. The event was sponsored by the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas and celebrated the love of theatrical collaboration through a symposium.
The event celebrated the career of Ira Weitzman (Mindich musical theatre producer at Lincoln Center Theater and creator of the musical theatre program at Playwrights Horizons). Honoring Ira’s dramaturgical and producing work on shows including Into the Woods, Assassins, Once on This Island, Hello Again, Parade, Violet, and The Light in the Piazza, among others, the celebration featured performances from Pace University musical theatre students. Netza Jimenez sang “Love to Me” from The Light in the Piazza, and Morgan Robbins sang “Waiting for Life to Begin” from Once on this Island. Both performances included piano accompaniment from Emmy Award-winning composer and music director Sean Pallatroni.
The P.S. Practices Specialized panel featured Rhiannon Ling (writer/dramaturg, Expand the Canon and Rewrite the BiLine) discussing her work amplifying the stories of women and gender-expansive writers and bringing attention to bisexual representation in theatre. This panel also featured Yoni Oppenheim (dramaturg, director, co-founder of 24/6: a Jewish Theater Company) speaking about his work creating the Telephone Plays for homebound seniors.
The Love Letter to Current Collaborations panel featured Jonathan Kalb (Theatre for a New Audience resident literary advisor and dramaturg) describing his ongoing Theatre for a New Audience collaborations. The panel also featured Cooper Howell (associate director, CATS: The Jellicle Ball) speaking about the upcoming Broadway production opening on 7 April 2026.
The event was filmed by Transcend Streaming. Logo design by Philip Romano.
Event Overview
Introduction & Tribute to Ira Weitzman’s career
Introduction from Katie Walker
“Love to Me” (The Light in the Piazza) performance from Netza Jimenez and Sean Pallatroni
“Waiting for Life to Begin” (Once on this Island) performance from Morgan Robbins and Sean Pallatroni
Panel One—P.S. Practices Specialized
Panelists: Rhiannon Ling and Yoni Oppenheim
Moderator: Katie Walker
Panel Two—A Love Letter to Current Collaborations
Panelists: Jonathan Kalb and Cooper Howell
Moderator: Katie Walker
Love, NYC Dramaturgs Bios
Katie Walker (host and creative producer for Love, NYC Dramaturgs) (she/her) is a New York City-based dramaturg, director, writer, and performer from Denver, Colorado. She serves as the New York City-Metro regional vice president for the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas. She has worked with many artists and theatre companies including the Playwrights Realm, Normal Ave Productions, Strange Girlz Theatre Collective, and the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Katie assists the worldwide theatrical community as a research assistant in the historic Theatre on Film and Tape archive at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (2025 Tony Honor). She is also the assistant director for the library's brand new LPA Teen Theater Ensemble. Katie hosted and produced the first Love, NYC Dramaturgs celebration in February of 2025. Learn about her creative projects at her writer and director/dramaturg New Play Exchange profiles. Follow her on Instagram and follow the holiday Love, NYC Dramaturgs on Instagram!
Ira Weitzman (producer/dramaturg) founded and created the musical theatre program at Playwrights Horizons in 1977, and was the musical theatre associate producer (later producer) at Lincoln Center Theater from 1992-2025. During that time, he developed and/or produced over one hundred musicals, most of them new, including In Trousers, March of the Falsettos, Falsettoland, Once On This Island, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, Assassins, Hello Again, A Man of No Importance, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Violet, The Light in the Piazza, The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin, A New Brain, Parade, Elegies: A Song Cycle by William Finn, Passion, The Gardens of Annuncia, and many others. Weitzman also produced several notable revivals including Merrily We Roll Along (1985), Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel (1994), South Pacific (2008), The King and I (2015), As Thousands Cheer (1998), Lerner and Lowe's My Fair Lady (2018), Falsettos (2016), and Floyd Collins (2025).
Rhiannon Ling (she/her) is a bisexual, multi-industry artistic professional specializing in the development of community-engaged stories across mediums. Her work often revolves around gender and sexuality and its entwining with history, politics, the arts, and identity; she is passionate about amplifying the voices of those silenced, providing unity in discomfort, and sparking genuine query between opposition. O’Neill and SheNYC Arts semi-finalist. NAPSeries finalist. Recipient of the Mayor’s Arts Award, the NEA ArtWorks Grant, and the RedLine Arts in Society Grant. Proud member of AEA, LMDA, Rewrite the BiLine, Expand the Canon, Ring of Keys, RISE, Parity Productions. BFA, CAP21 Conservatory. Visit her website.
Yoni Oppenheim is a theatre director, dramaturg, translator, and the artistic director of 24/6: A Jewish Theater Company. For 24/6’s Telephone Plays he received the Multiplying Good’s Jefferson Award. Yoni is a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab and was a Target Margin Theater Institute Fellow. Dramaturgy highlights include working with: Doug Wright on Posterity at Atlantic Theater Company; Hamish Linklater on Paris, ACTORS! at Williamstown and NY Stage and Film, Jonathan Portera/Daniel Levin on To Paint the Earth in Concert directed by Marcia Milgrom Dodge; Dan Safer/Witness Relocation Company on Haggadah at La Mama, and the Arizona premiere of The Lehman Trilogy at the Phoenix Theatre Company. He recently published an article in the Inaugural Robert Wilson Yearbook. BFA in Drama: NYU-Tisch/Playwrights Horizons Theater School; Masters of Philosophy in Ibsen Studies at the University of Oslo. Follow 24/6: a Jewish Theater Company on Instagram and on Facebook. Follow Yoni Oppenheim on Instagram.
Jonathan Kalb is a professor of theatre at Hunter College, CUNY and the resident dramaturg at Theatre for a New Audience. He is a two-time winner of the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, a winner of the George Freedley Award (for an outstanding theatre book from the Theatre Library Association), and has worked for more than three decades as a theatre scholar, critic, journalist, and dramaturg. He was a columnist for New York Press, a regular critic for the Village Voice and the New York Times, and currently writes about contemporary theatre on his TheaterMatters blog. His writing has appeared in many publications, including the New Yorker, the Nation, Salon, Salmagundi, the Threepenny Review, the Brooklyn Rail, PAJ, TDR, and Theater. At Theatre for a New Audience, he has worked as production dramaturg on twenty-six productions since 2010. Before the pandemic, he curated and hosted the theatre-review-panel series TheaterMatters at HERE Arts Center and the Invisible Dog. He was also the founding editor of HotReview.org (the Hunter On-Line Theater Review), which published hundreds of reviews, essays and interviews by new and established theatre writers from 2003-2016. His books include Beckett in Performance, The Theater of Heiner Müller, Great Lengths: Seven Works of Marathon Theater, and two collections of criticism.
Cooper Howell (they/them) is a New York City-based director, producer, playwright, and former actor, originally from Salt Lake City, Utah, determined to spearhead an audience revolution—creating high-voltage, avant-garde theatre events where content rips open convention, art forms bend until it breaks, and unapologetically centers queer, trans, and people of color (POC) voices. They are the artistic director of WILDEHAUS (“Wilde” as in Oscar, “Haus” as in down boots) a new production company championing America’s radical queer performance art. Cooper is the writer of LOOP, the world’s first silent disco play—an immersive adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde experienced entirely through headphones as audiences travel scene to scene. This spring, they make their Broadway debut as associate director of Cats: The Jellicle Ball at the Broadhurst Theatre (directed by Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch), the acclaimed ballroom reimagining of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Other New York directing credits include Baldwin et Lucien (City Center), Little Kingdom by JC Pankratz (the Workshop Theater), and AriDy Nox’s Death Comes in Threes for the 2025 Breaking the Binary Festival starring Taylor Iman Jones and Samora La Perdida. They are a proud member of National Queer Theater’s artistic collective and an alum of the Theater Producers of Color (TPOC) 2025 Producing 101 program. All my love to Sawyer, my sweets.
Netza Jimenez is so excited to perform for you all tonight! He was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York and is graduating from Pace University in May with a BFA in Musical Theatre! At Pace he recently played Woof in their production of Hair in October, and he can’t wait to see what the professional world has in store for him.
Morgan Robbins (she/her) is a junior BFA Musical Theater major at Pace University and a Cincinnati native. At Pace, she has appeared as Mary Magdalene (u/s Judas) in Jesus Christ Superstar and Crissy (u/s Sheila) in Hair. She’s grateful to her teachers, friends, and family for their constant support.
Sean P. Pallatroni is an Emmy Award-winning composer, songwriter, music director, and pianist. Originally from Bedford, New Hampshire, Sean completed his undergraduate degree in Music Composition at the Hartt School of Music and holds his MFA from the Tisch School’s graduate musical theatre writing Program, New York University. Sean has written for musical theatre, classical chamber ensembles, jazz bands, choir, and orchestra, and regularly musically directs and arranges for Broadway performers and actors across New York. Currently he is an accompanist and vocal coach at Pace University’s Sands College for Performing Arts. He is the recipient of Hartt’s Edward Diamente Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Composition and winner of the Alabama Orchestra Association’s Composition Competition for his work When the Grass Was Still Green.
Event Production Crew
Leanna Keyes (film technician) of Transcend Streaming is a multi-hyphenate theatre professional working primarily in NYC, Boston, and San Francisco. Off-Broadway: Director of Photography for The Orchard, starring Mikhail Baryshnikov and Jessica Hecht. Projection Designer, Powerhouse for Manhattan Rep. Video Associate and QLab Programming, Our Class at Brooklyn Academy of Music and Classic Stage Company. Here in the city, Transcend Streaming does archival recordings, live-streaming, conferences, and more for theatres across the boroughs.
Susan Selig (assistant to the producer) worked as a stage manager from 1984 to 1993 at Ensemble Studio Theater, Open Eye Theater, the Mitzi Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center and various other theatres. She was the assistant and then the production stage manager for the original run of Ruthless: The Musical at the Players Theater. She is delighted to return to the theatre by supporting Dramaturg Day.
Philip Romano (logo design) is a graphic designer/photographer/producer/background actor/tour manager/etc. who is happy to support dramaturgs and their important work! Visit his website.
Organizations
Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas was founded in 1985 as the volunteer membership organization for the professions of literary management and dramaturgy. LMDA is a not-for-profit tax-exempt organization with members throughout North America and abroad. LMDA holds the belief that theatre is a vital art form that has the power to nourish, educate, and transform individuals and their communities and that dramaturgy is central to the process of theatremaking. LMDA promotes the creation of stories that reflect a broad spectrum of authentic experiences in our diverse global community. LMDA membership is dedicated to fostering an environment of respect, celebrating difference, and seeing the principles. Learn more at their website.
Transcend Streaming was founded by cutting-edge creators Kyra Bowie and Leanna Keyes. They bring a perfect blend of artistry and savvy, results-oriented focus to bespoke creative and professional engagements. These Brooklyn-based professionals can be your producers, your event coordinators, your stream dream team, and more—and they’re ready to show you what Transcend Streaming can bring to your next experience.
Big thank you to the Love, NYC Dramaturgs sponsors: Cindy and Jim SoRelle (HowlRound Sponsors), the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas, and Steve Massa
Special Thanks: Kim Walker, Mark Bly, Ken Cerniglia, Jake Miller and Signature Theatre Company, Susan Selig, Sara Freeman, Leanna Keyes and Transcend Streaming, HowlRound Theatre Commons, Adam Wassilchak, Brendan Leonard, Wendy Norris, Doug Reside, Roberta Pereira, the Billy Rose Theatre Division at the New York Public Library for Performing Arts, Sean Pallatroni, Greg Nanni, Philip Romano, Enzo Gattuccio, Trish Rossiene and International Cocktail Consultants, Amy Walker, Randy Walker, Emily Simonaitis, Amy Hinrichs, Ashley Campbell, Ellis Gage, and Mohammad Saboorizadeh
Comments
The article is just the start of the conversation—we want to know what you think about this subject, too! HowlRound is a space for knowledge-sharing, and we welcome spirited, thoughtful, and on-topic dialogue. Find our full comments policy here.