Meet the incredible Artistic Roster!

Cooper Howell—DIRECTOR

Cooper Howell they/them (Associate Director) is a director, playwright, producer, and theater anarchist based in New York City, originally from Salt Lake City, Utah. Broadway: CATS: The Jellicle Ball (Associate Director). Off-Broadway: Little Kingdom (The Workshop Theater), Baldwin et Lucien (City Center), Courting Mayhem (Theatre4thePeople). Writer of THE LOOPthe world’s first silent disco play, which they also adapted from Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde. Regional Directing Credits: A Streetcar Named Desire (Radical Hospitality Theater), The Color Purple regional premiere (Wasatch Theater Company), RENT (Utah Rep Theater Company, also choreographer). Cooper is Co-Artistic Director of WILDEHAUS, a radical incubator for queer American work, a member of the Artistic Collective of National Queer Theater.

(congratulations on the 9 Tony nominations for Jellicle Ball, Cooper!!)

S‍idney “Syd” Rushing—PLAYWRIGHT/BIG EARL

Syd wrote and performed his one man show Brother’s Tellin’ in Los Angeles which was nominated for a NAACP Theatre award. Syd was then selected for the Mark Taper Playwright’s Program. Soon thereafter, Syd was employed at Paramount Studios where he learned under mentors in the TV industry with the nation’s top rated shows. Rushing was grateful to be a winner in the Queensbury Theatre New Work Playwright series and a recipient of the Lorraine Hansberry Distinguished Achievement Award at the Kennedy Center. He was the recipient of the Inaugural August Wilson Playwright Fellowship for 2021 and received the honor of 21st Century Voices for 2022. While in 2025 Syd became a LAMBDA Literary Fellow for Screenwriting/Playwriting and his writing will be published in Emerge magazine 2026. He is a graduate of the American Musical & Dramatic Academy in New York, the University of Mississippi, Writer’s Boot Camp Screenwriting in Los Angeles, Kingwood College and Texas State University’s dramatic writing program. Before playwriting, Syd enjoyed a career performing in hundreds of professional productions in summer stock theatre, regional theatre, tours and Off-Off Broadway. Lastly, as an educator, he has taught every grade from K-12 to college while winning Teacher of the Year three times.

(3 times!! That’s amazing!!)