LAUREN M. GUNDERSON is one of the most produced playwrights in America since 2015 topping the list thrice including 2022/23. She is a two-time winner of the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award for I and You and The Book of Will, the winner of the Lanford Wilson Award and the Otis Guernsey New Voices Award, a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and John Gassner Award for Playwriting, and a recipient of the Mellon Foundation’s Residency with Marin Theatre Company. She studied Southern Literature and Drama at Emory University, and Dramatic Writing at NYU’s Tisch School where she was a Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship. She is the author of Broadway bound play BILLIE JEAN, about tennis icon Billie Jean King.  Her play The Catastrophist, about her husband virologist Nathan Wolfe, premiered digitally in January 2021. She co-authored the Miss Bennet plays with Margot Melcon, and The Half-Life of Marie Curie premiered off-Broadway and at Audible.com. Her work is published at Playscripts (I and You; Exit Pursued By A Bear; The Taming and Toil And Trouble), Dramatists Play Service (The Revolutionists; The Book of Will; Silent Sky; Bauer, Natural Shocks, The Wickhams and Miss Bennet) and Samuel French (Emilie). Her picture book Dr Wonderful: Blast Off to the Moon is available from Two Lions/Amazon. She is the book writer for musicals with Ari Afsar (We Won’t Sleep), Dave Stewart and Joss Stone (The Time Traveller’s Wife), Joriah Kwamé (Sinister), Kait Kerrigan and Bree Lowdermilk (Justice and Earthrise), and K.ira Stone (Built for This). She is a board member of The Playwrights Foundation. LaurenGunderson.com

Margot Melcon is a theater artist, administrator and writer. She was the Director of New Play Development at Marin Theatre Company for seven years, where she dramaturged over 30 productions—including six world premieres—and administered the company’s two annual new play prizes and commissioning program. She has developed plays with TheatreWorks, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Crowded Fire Theater, Shotgun Players, Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor, the Kennedy Center, the New Harmony Project, and the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis. She is currently the Program Executive for Promoting Culture at the Zellerbach Family Foundation. Margot is a graduate of California State University, Chico.

KYLE HADEN  is excited to be returning to City Theatre, where he most recently directed the Momentum reading of Inda Craig-Galván’s Berth Breach/Breech Birth. Other City projects include directing a reading of Christa McAuliffe’s Eyes Were Blue and performing as Taylor in We Are Among Us. Other directing credits include the world premiere of Parental Advisory: a breakbeat play (Milwaukee Repertory Theater); The Royale; Hazardous Materials (Creede Repertory Theatre); the world premiere of The Devil is a Lie (Quantum Theater); Waiting For Lefty (Quintessence Theatre); The Chief (Pittsburgh Public Theater); The Realness; A Brief History of America (Hangar Theatre Company); Hamlet; The Winter’s Tale (Island Shakespeare Festival); and The Tens (Actor’s Theatre of Louisville). Kyle was named a 2018 Drama League Directing Fellow, and is a member of their Directors Council. Kyle is the former artistic director of the Ashland New Plays Festival. He currently serves as the Senior Associate Head at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama, where he is also an Associate Professor of Acting. BA: Wake Forest University, MFA: Columbia University.

MELESSIE CLARK is thrilled to be returning to City Theatre! A Pittsburgh native and graduate of Point Park University with a B.F.A. in Musical Theatre, she was recently seen as Josie Hogan in Quantum Theatre’s A Moon for the Misbegotten and the new musical, The Preacher’s Wife, with music by Titus Burgess at Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, GA. Other credits include A Sign of the Times Off-Broadway, PCLO’s Once on This Island (Mama Euralie), Into the Woods (Lucinda), Grease (Jan), Rock of Ages (Waitress #1), The Wedding Singer (Crystal/Tina Turner), The Color Purple and Gypsy (Ensemble), Pittsburgh Public Theater’s School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play (Eloise), Little Shop of Horrors (Ronnette) and Two Trains Running (Risa), An Untitled New Play By Justin Timberlake (Liz), Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company’s Dulcy (Dulcy), Quantum Theatre’s The Current War (Marguerite Westinghouse) and Kinetic Theatre’s An Octoroon (Minnie). Commercial/Voiceovers: T-Mobile, PA Lottery, Hershey Park and Sheetz. TV/Film: Archive 81 on Netflix, Anything’s Possible directed by Billy Porter and We Are Nowhere directed by Cody Spellman on YouTube. Instagram: @melessieclark

Juan Rivera Lebron is a native of Puerto Rico and has worked on film and television, off-Broadway and extensively in theaters throughout the United States. Some of the companies he has worked with include: the Guthrie Theater, American Players Theater, The Jungle Theater, The Playwright’s Center, Mixed Blood, Great Lakes Theater, The Idaho Shakespeare Festival, Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival where he was a member of the resident acting company for seven seasons. He was the recipient of the Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship funded by the William & Eva Fox Foundation and administered by TCG. His fellowship research focused on the textual and performance similarities between Shakespeare and Spanish Classical plays, and as a result, he was selected to be part of the U.S. delegation to the UNESCO International Theater Institute World Congress in Madrid, Spain. He earned his B.F.A. at Carnegie Mellon Drama, and his M.F.A. in Theater from the University of Idaho with an emphasis on experiential approaches to Stanislavsky Technique. He also holds an M.S. in Adult Organizational Learning and Leadership from the University of Idaho and teaches Business Communication at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business and online for Cornell University (eCornell). He is an Assistant Professor and the Chair of the Theater Department at Point Park University's School of Theatre, Film and Animation.

BRETT MACK is excited to be returning to City Theatre after almost twenty years!  He previously appeared in Muckle Man and Mezzulah 1946 at City Theatre.  Brett could also have been seen in Quantum’s productions of Moon for the Misbegotten and Hamlet these past two summers.  He has also recently appeared as Tom in The Glass Menagerie at Bridge Street Theatre, as Bobby Kennedy in The Great Society at the Asolo Rep. as well as Brad in The Originalist which toured at a handful of theatres:  Arena Stage, Court Theatre, Pasadena Playhouse, and finally getting a month run Off-Broadway at 59E59 Theatres.

SHAMMEN McCUNE comes to a debut with City Theater direct from The Public’s The Hobbit, playing Gandalf and ensemble characters. Including The Public and now, City Theater, around the ‘burgh, Shammen has worked with Bricolage, PICT, and PSIP and regionally to name a few, with Native Voices at the Autry, Phoenix Theater, Ensemble Theater of Cincinnati, New Harmony Theater, American Players Theater, Barter Theater, and is a co-founding member of the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company. When not onstage, Shammen can be found teaching in the Conservatory of the Performing Arts for Point Park University, directing for Arcade Comedy Sketch Lab Comedy, recording audio narration or hitting the virtual books working toward completing Intimacy Professional Training.

Alex Sheffield is so happy to be returning to the role of Lydia! She is a recent graduate of Musical Theatre at Carnegie Mellon University. Notable Credits include Young Frankenstein (Inga, Pittsburgh CLO), The Sound of Music (Ensemble, Pittsburgh CLO), Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley (Lydia, City Theatre), A Little Night Music (Anne), A Doll’s House (Nora), and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Rona Lisa Peretti). Born and raised in the UK. Sharing the stage/trying to not laugh with her best friend, Anna. Thank you, family! @AlexSheffield

EVAN VINES graduated from Carnegie Mellon in the spring, earning his BFA in Acting. His recent roles include Medvedenko in Seagull at Quantum Theatre, D in Pool No Water at New Product Company, and Jacob Engstrand in Ghosts at CMU. He also played Brian in The Wickham’s: Christmas at Pemberley last year and is happy to be returning to City Theatre to understudy the role of Laurie. 

Shannon Arielle Williams is so grateful to be back this season after her first performance with City Theatre just last year, in The Young Playwright’s Festival and her most recent being in Ghosted: Tales From Carson Street. Some of her other favorite productions have been with the Pittsburgh Public Theater in Dial M For Murder as Maxine Headley and with Barebones Blackbox Theater in Is God Is. After graduating from Point Park University with a BFA in Acting it has been a dazzling experience to continuously work with amazing cast and crew. She feels happy to come back to space and understudy for such a fantastic cast. Shannon is excited to participate in a holiday production that feeds her festive spirit. She hopes everyone enjoys the show! @shant.nn