JAMES VALCQ is a musical theatre composer, lyricist, and librettist, best known for his contributions to The Spitfire Grill, which won the Richard Rodgers Production Award presented by the American Academy of Arts and Letters and recieved Best Musical nominations from the Outer Critics Circle and Drama League, as well as two Drama Desk nominations. Also Off-Broadway, Valcq wrote the book, music, and lyrics for Zombies from The Beyond, which opened to great critical acclaim in 1995. Both The Spitfire Grill and Zombies from The Beyond have become staples in regional theatres, particularly The Spitfire Grill, one of the most frequently performed recent musicals with more than 350 productions to date, not only in every major American city but in Canada, Germany, South Korea, Australia, and Japan as well. Other New York credits include Fallout Follies at the York Theatre, Songs I Never Sang For My Father at the Village Theatre, and The Last Leaf, a collaboration with Tony-nominee Mary Bracken Phillips. He holds an MFA from NYU’s Musical Theatre Program and a BFA (on full scholarship) from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In addition to musicals, Valcq has composed song cycles and choral pieces which have been performed in the U.S. and Europe.

FRED ALLEY (1962–2001) was an American musical theatre lyricist and librettist who died unexpectedly just as his work gained national recognition. His collaboration on the musical The Spitfire Grill with composer James Valcq won the American Academy of Arts and Letters' prestigious Richard Rodgers Production Award for 2001. Alley was the co-founder and artist-in-Residence at American Folklore Theatre (AFT) in Door County, Wisconsin, a theatre with a seasonal audience of 50,000 performing original musicals that further the knowledge and appreciation of the heritage of the United States with local and regional settings and themes. He was honored posthumously with the 2002 Mark R. Sumner Award for distinguished achievement in the U.S. outdoor drama movement. Alley was also an actor and singer who performed on the AFT stage for 20 consecutive seasons. His tenor voice can be heard on his recordings The Lake, Door Christmas, and the posthumously released collection It Would Be Enough For Me.

LEE DAVID ZLOTOFF is a producer, director and screenwriter best known as the creator of the TV series MacGyver. He started as a screenwriter writing for Hill Street Blues in 1981. He then became a producer of Remington Steele in 1982. He wrote and directed the 1996 film The Spitfire Grill, on which the musical is based upon, and won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize. 

DAVID SAINT is now in his fifteenth season at as the Artistic Director of the George Street Playhouse. Most recently he directed Ken Ludwig’s The Fox on the Fairway; the NJ premiere of the Broadway hit God of Carnage; the world premiere of Joe DiPietro’s Creating Claire; Boyd Gaines, Rachel Dratch, Kathleen McNenny and Stephen DeRosa in A.R. Gurney’s Sylvia;  Marlo Thomas and Keith Carradine in Arthur Laurents’ New Year’s Eve; Matthew Arkin in Donald Margulies’ Sight Unseen; Jack Klugman and Paul Dooley in Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys; William Finn’s landmark musicalFalsettos, the film noir musical Gunmetal Blues, Inspecting Carol, the world premiere of Arthur Laurents’ 2 Lives;The Last Five Years, Lend Me a Tenor, the world premiere of Charles Evered’s Celadine starring Amy Irving and Jonathan Larson’s tick, tick…BOOM!. Mr.Saint’s  time in New Brunswick has been marked by collaborations with such artists as Uta Hagen, A.R. Gurney, Arthur Laurents, George Grizzard, Chita Rivera, Eli Wallach, Frances Sternhagen, Anne Meara, Dan Lauria, Stephen Sondheim and Jack Klugman.

An ardent advocate for new work, Mr. Saint created the Next Stage Festival of New Plays at George Street where the recent Broadway hit and Tony Award-winner Proof by David Auburn was developed before moving on to Manhattan Theatre Club and Broadway, becoming the longest-running play in two decades and the most produced play in the nation during the 2002-03 season. Another success story emerging from the Festival is The Spitfire Grill, which won the prestigious Richard Rodgers Award for New American Musicals and was produced under Mr. Saint’s direction at Playwrights Horizons in New York, winning Drama Desk, Drama-League and Outer Critics Circle award nominations, before becoming one of the most produced plays in the nation during the 2004-05 season, generating more than 100 productions across the country. Another new work which began its life at George Street Playhouse is The Toxic Avenger, the musical by Joe DiPietro and David Bryan that moved to New York, won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best New Musical, and has gone on to multiple productions worldwide.

Mr. Saint has directed on Broadway, off-Broadway, and at most of the leading regional theatres around the country. Recent credits include directing the first national tour of the recent Broadway revival of West Side Story, A.R. Gurney’s new play The Fourth Wall at Primary Stages, starring Sandy Duncan, as well as the world premiere of Mark St. Germain’s The God Committee at Barrington Stage. Other regional credits include Manhattan Theatre Club, Playwrights Horizons, McCarter Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Paper Mill Playhouse, Bay Street Theatre, Walnut Street Theatre, and SeattleRepertory Theatre, where he served as Associate Artistic Director to Daniel Sullivan, directing many productions including the West Coast premiere of Wendy Wasserstein’s An American Daughter. Other productions include two Anne Meara plays: After-Play, in New York and Los Angeles, and Down the Garden Paths, which began at George Street Playhouse and moved to New York; the national tour of The Cocktail Hour, with Fritz Weaver and Elizabeth Wilson; Fame: The Musical; The Fourth Wall, with Betty Buckley and George Segal; Fourplay, with Elaine May and Gene Saks; Sons and Fathers, with Holly Hunter; and the West Coast premiere of Lend Me a Tenor, as well as world premieres by such authors as Jonathan Larson, Peter Parnell, Jonathan Marc Sherman, Aaron Sorkin, Wendy Wasserstein and others. Mr. Saint was recently a panelist for the Philadelphia Theatre Initiative for the Pew Charitable Trust, has taught at Bennington College, and directed the short film Celebrity. He is the recipient of the Alan Schneider Award, Helen Hayes Award, Los Angeles Drama Critics Award, and several Drama-Logue Awards.