Matt Schatz is a writer and composer who won the 2012 Kleban Prize in Musical Theatre. His plays and musicals include The Burdens (O’Neill Conference; City Theatre; Bloomington Playwright’s Project 2019 Reva Shiner Comedy Award winner; Lanford Wilson Award nominee), Timberlake (ASCAP Workshop; PCLO Spark Festival), Georama (St. Louis Rep; Great River Shakespeare Festival; New York Musical Festival’s Outstanding Lyrics Award winner), I Battled Lenny Ross (Ensemble Studio Theatre), Where Ever It May Be (EST/Sloan Commission; PCLO Spark Festival; 2019 Woodward/Newman Drama Award finalist), Dunkfest ’88 (Ars Nova’s ANT Fest; Jonathan Larson Award Finalist), Love Trapezoid (EST/Sloan Commission; Astoria PAC Workshop) and The Tallest Building in the World (EST/Sloan Commission; Luna Stage). He’s currently working on the grunge musical No One Sings Like You Anymore (Seattle Rep Commission with director Wendy C. Goldberg), the true crime song cycle A Wicked Soul in Cherry Hill (Geffen Playhouse Writers’ Room) and a new science musical with playwright Anna Ziegler (EST/Sloan Commission). Also a writer for TV, As a TV writer, Matt has developed for Fox Television Studios, USA/Universal Cable Productions, TBS/Will Packer Productions (producer and star Jennifer Hudson and co-writer Robert Horn), Fullscreen, eOne and others.mattschatz.com

Wendy C. Goldberg is in her 14th season as Artistic Director of the National Playwrights Conference. Wendy also leads the O'Neill's National Directors Fellowship, now in its third year.

Under Goldberg's tenure, the O'Neill was awarded the 2010 Regional Tony Award, the first play development and education organization to receive this honor. In addition, Goldberg has overseen the development of more than 90 projects for the stage, many of which have gone on to great acclaim with productions in New York, London, and around the country. Among them are the 2010 and 2012 Susan Smith Blackburn Award-winning plays (Julia Cho's The Language Archive and Jennifer Haley's The Nether), two American Theatre Critics Association Citation Award-winning Plays (Lee Blessing's Great Falls and Deb Zoe Laufer's End Days), and 2009 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Drama (Lynn Nottage's Ruined), written in part while Nottage was a Writer-in-Residence at the O'Neill in the summer of 2006. In 2005, Goldberg included playwright Samuel D. Hunter, now an Obie and MacArthur Award-winning playwright, in her first season as Artistic Director when he was still a student at the MFA Playwrights Workshop at the University of Iowa. Other critically acclaimed work developed at the O'Neill during Ms. Goldberg's tenure includes Lindsay Ferrentino's Ugly Lies The Bone, Mike Lew's Tiger Style!, Deborah Zoe Laufer's Leveling Up, Adam Bock's The Receptionist, Rebecca Gilman's The Crowd You're in With, Jason Grote's 1001, and Julia Cho's Durango. In addition to re-establishing the Conference a leader in the field, Ms. Goldberg has created domestic and international collaborations with theaters such as the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, and in Ireland with the Abbey Theater and Druid Theatre Company. She is the first woman to lead the Conference in its 54-year history.

Ms. Goldberg herself is an award-winning director whose credits include world premieres, revivals, classics, and musicals at the most esteemed theaters in the country, including: Arena Stage, the Guthrie, the Goodman, Denver Center, the Alliance, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Center Stage, Actors Theater of Louisville, Signature Theater, Paper Mill Playhouse, Philadelphia Theater Company and off-Broadway at Ars Nova, The Daryl Roth 2, and McGinn-Cazale. Wendy was represented on Broadway as Creative Advisor to the long running Rock of Ages. She has directed work in every major play developmental program in the country.

As Artistic Associate at Arena Stage for five seasons, Ms. Goldberg helped to create the theater's new play initiatives and led them from their inception through 2005. American Theatre magazine has described her as "one of the most promising theater artists working today." Other than the theater's founder, Zelda Fichandler, she is the youngest director to have directed for Arena Stage in its 50 year history, making her main stage debut at the age of 26 with the revival of K2 in celebration of the company's 50th anniversary.

Ms. Goldberg is a visiting faculty member at the Iowa Playwrights Workshop and the Yale School of Drama. She has served on panels for the NEA and TCG, and has served as a judge for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize as well as a guest at the Commercial Theater Institute through the Broadway League. Ms. Goldberg has served on the Executive Board of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society for 11 years and has been a Tony Voter since 2005. She is an honors graduate of the University of Michigan (BA) and holds a MFA in Directing from UCLA's School of Theater, Film, and Television where she received the Distinguished Alumna Award in 2014.