Creative Team

Jack O’Brien is a three-time Tony & Drama Desk Award winning director, member of the Theatre Hall of Fame, and author of Jack Be Nimble, a memoir published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2013. Jack won the Tony for Best Direction of a Musical and Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Musical for his 2003 Broadway production of Hairspray. He received the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play and Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Play for Henry IV and The Cost of Utopia I, II, & III.

In 2019, Jack directed the Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons starring Annette Bening and Tracy Letts. The production was nominated for three Tony’s including Best Revival of a Play, a nomination for Annette Bening and Benjamin Walker. Jack is directing the World Premiere of Alan Fox’s Safe Space, at the Bay Street Theatre starring Mercedes Ruehl and Rodney Richardson.

Additional Broadway credits include Porgy & Bess (Tony & Drama Desk Nom.); Damn Yankees; Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes; The Full Monty (Tony Nom. & Drama Desk Winner); Tom Stoppard’s Inventions of Love (Drama Desk Winner); Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (Tony Nom.); Catch Me If You Can; Dead Accounts; Macbeth; It’s Only a Play; The Front Page; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory;  Broadway revival of Rogers & Hammerstein’s Carousel (2018); Tom Stoppard’s new play The Hard Problem at Lincoln Center (2018).

Off-Broadway, Jack directed Two Shakespearean Actors (Tony Nom.) Hapgood (Lucille Lortel Award Winner), and Pride’s Crossing – all at Lincoln Center – as well as More to Love at the O’Neill, Manhattan Theater Club's Labor Day, and City Centre Encores! production of St. Louis Woman. 

He has also directed various operas including Il Trittico (Metropolitan Opera); Mozart's The Magic Flute (San Francisco Opera); Puccini’s Tosca (Santa Fe Opera); Aida; Cosi Fan Tutti (Houston Grand Opera). 

Jack’s work as Artistic Director of San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre includes: Love & Hours; Nora Ephron’s Imaginary Friends; Twelfth Night; Tom Stoppard’s The Seagull; The Magic Fire; The Hostage; The Doctor is Out; Hamlet; Uncle Vanya; The Cocktail Hour. He is responsible for creating the Globe’s annual musical How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, which boasts a wildly successful transfer to Broadway and beyond.

For PBS’s American Playhouse television series, Jack directed: An Enemy of the People; I Never Sang for My Father; All My Sons; Painting Churches; Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth, which aired live from the stage of the Old Globe.

His production of The Good Doctor and Broadway revival of Most Happy Fella were also produced for PBS, and Jack’s Street Scene was televised on Live from Lincoln Center.

JERRY MITCHELL (Director/Choreographer) received the Tony Award for Best Choreography twice — initially for the revival of La Cage aux Folles and more recently, for the Tony Award-winning Best Musical, Kinky Boots, for which he was also nominated as Director.

Jerry was most recently represented on Broadway as Director/Choreographer of Pretty Woman, now open in Hamburg as well. He directed the Gloria Estefan Broadway musical, On Your Feet! and its international tour, recently presented in London’s Coliseum Theatre and was nominated for an Olivier Award for his choreography in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which he also directed and co-produced in London.

In the 35 preceding years, Jerry has been involved with more than 50 Broadway, West End and touring productions, including choreographing You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown; The Full Monty (Tony nomination); The Rocky Horror Show; Hairspray (Tony nomination and the NBC live television broadcast as well); Gypsy; Never Gonna Dance (Tony nomination); Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (Tony nomination); La Cage aux Folles (Tony Award); Imaginary Friends; Legally Blonde (Tony nomination), which he also directed on Broadway and in London; Catch Me If You Can; and Kinky Boots.

His currently developing a new musical entitled Becoming Nancy (opening its pre-Broadway production at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia) and preparing for the London revival of Hairspray. He also choreographed both the Off-Broadway productions and films of Hedwig & The Angry Inch and Jeffrey.

Twenty five years ago, Jerry conceived and created Broadway Bares, a comedy burlesque show performed annually for the charity Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, for which he continues to serve as Executive Producer.