Andrew Loschert received his Master's Degree in Professional Writing from the University of Southern California in 2003. While there he studied under professors including Gay Talese, Noel Riley Fitch and Shelley Berman. Loschert's graduate thesis was Proving Up: The Search for the Gold of the India Maru, a narrative nonfiction book about the time he spent working for a treasure hunter searching for 100 tons of lost World War II gold in the South Pacific. To complete the research into the shipwreck, he secured a grant from the Skaggs Foundation of Oakland, California. Since moving to New York, Loschert has made a career of abridging audiobook manuscripts. With over 30 credits, he has abridged nonfiction works such as Tour of Duty by Douglas Brinkley and Trumpnation by Timothy O.Brien as well as fiction titles such as Elizabeth Kostova's Historian and Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's Brimstone, which won the 2005 Audie Award for Best Fiction, Abridged. Loschert has also continued writing, working on a new novel, Beechwood, about a young boy, an estate on the Hudson River, and 200 years of history. This is his first musical.

Rob Seitelman
Director

Rob Seitelman has traveled across the continent to end up back at home with Only a Lad. A native Southern Californian (LBC) and KROQ listener (home station of Oingo Boingo), Rob has been an avid fan for as long as he can remember. As a director, Rob has put up productions of his original works, Paradise Lost (an original musical, written with Ben Birney) and aMUSEing. He has also directed Waiting for Godot, Les Miserables, West Side Story, Into the Woods, Merrily We Roll Along, Goodnight Desdemona (Goodmorning Juliet), and The Children's Crusade among others. As an actor, Rob can be seen in The Talk of the Town at the Algonquin Hotel.

Mary Ann Ivan
Musical Director

Mary Ann Ivan has over 20 years experience as a musical director and pianist in musical theatre. With a degree in Music Therapy from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA, Mary Ann moved to NYC in 1993 where she received her MA in Music Composition from NYU. Studying privately with Joseph Church, musical director of Disney's The Lion King and The Who's Tommy, she began her Broadway career as a keyboardist and rehearsal pianist. She has played such shows as Tommy, The King and I, Jekyll & Hyde and toured with Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, My Fair Lady, and is currently with Jersey Boys. Becoming interested in composing at age 15, she now has over 600 songs, orchestral pieces, ensemble works, 4 film credits, and 11 musicals.

In addition to being a composer and theatre musical director, Mary Ann was a piano and music theatre instructor at Concordia College in Bronxville, NY and also a professor of Music Theory and Sight-Singing at Circle in the Square, Broadway Theatre School in New York City. She is the founder of Capivan Studios, located in Westchester County, NY.

Jason Summers
Choreographer

After Mr. Summers' first successful collaboration with Mr. Seitelman on the original musical Paradise Lost, he is thrilled to get another chance to work together on a musical premiere. Recent choreography credits include: Urinetown, Annie, Nunsense, and The Will Rogers Follies. Mr. Summers recently finished directing No, No Nanette in Port Washington and will soon begin production on Media Madness, a multimedia one-man play with actor/writer Darian Dauchan. Mr. Summers has been a proud member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers since 2005.

Sarah Levine
Costume Designer

Marnie Comings
Lighting Designer

Jennifer Westin
Producer

This October, Jennifer will receive her Master's Degree in Film, with a concentration in producing, from Columbia University. She has produced several short films including Twenty Dollar Drinks, starring Sandra Bernhard and Cady Huffman, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in May 2006. Her recently completed thesis film, The Dawn Chorus, will premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival August 2006.

Jennifer did her undergraduate studies in theatre at USC. After graduation, she formed her own production company, the debut production of which, a revival of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, garnered rave reviews from the likes of Daily Variety and played in LA for months. Jennifer was a finalist for the Hallmark Producer's Development Award and a recipient of the Arthur Krim Memorial Award, given annually by the producing faculty of Columbia University for excellence in producing. She was also a finalist for the 2006 Producers Guild of America Debra Hill Fellowship.