Staff

David Winitsky is the Founder and Executive Artistic Director of the Jewish Plays Project, the nation’s leading development house for contemporary Jewish theater. Since founding the JPP, he has been a Storahtelling/LabShul Maven, a 2014-17 UpStart National Fellow, a 2013 LABA Artist Fellow, and a 2011 PresenTense New York City Fellow. Currently, he is a Fellow at UJA’s  Institute for Jewish Executive Leadership at Columbia Business School. David held leadership positions at Playwrights Theater of New Jersey (Producing Director), What Exit? Comedy Theater (Co-Artistic Director), and the Obie Award-winning HERE Arts Center (General Manager), in addition to positions in commercial theater (Broadway on Broadway, Chicago, Rent, Miss Saigon, etc.)

In 2021, David was on sabbatical from the JPP and is the Interim Producing Artistic Director at the Kitchen Theatre in Ithaca, NY, where he navigated this leading Finger Lakes region non-profit through the pandemic wilderness, including producing two new play development workshops and the World Premiere, outdoor production of SHAPE by Kara-Lynn Vaeni. In Ithaca, David also is in his fourth year as a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Near Eastern Studies, where he teaches the course “Sitcom Jews: Ethnicity and Culture on TV and Stage, 1948-Present”. It’s a fun class.

As a freelance artist, David has directed or assisted on Broadway, off-Broadway, and regionally at Papermill Playhouse and Chicago’s famous Steppenwolf Theater. NYC: Displaced Wedding (New Worlds Theatre Project). A Wonderful Flat Thing (14th St Y), Brooke Berman's Until We Find Each Other (Best of Festival, MITF). Regional: Settlements (upcoming, Interact Theatre, Philadelphia), Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba (Children’s Theatre of Charlotte) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Our Dad is in Atlantis and The Fantasticks.  

With the JPP, David has developed 49 plays, 27 of which have gone on to production and further development in New York, London, Tel Aviv and around the U.S. He has directed new plays by Renee Calarco, Lindsay Joelle, David Rush, Colin Greer, Lauren Feldman, and a host of others, and created innovative arts programs in JCCs in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Chicago, Charlotte, Houston, Washington DC, Fairfax VA, Hartford, New Haven, San Francisco and Palo Alto.

As a consultant, he has helped raise over a million dollars for arts education, underserved youth, and FSU programs, and has developed an expertise in Presbyterian organizations in Elizabeth, NJ.

David holds an MFA in Directing from Northwestern, where he studied with Tony Winners Frank Galati, Mary Zimmerman, Tina Landau and Anna Shapiro. He received his BA in Mathematics from Cornell.

More important than all of this, David is the proud husband of Elizabeth Samet, and thankful father of Ezekiel (21) and Alexander (18), and resides in South Philadelphia (Go Eagles!).

Joshua Benghiat
Resident Designer & Associate Artistic Director

Josh is a father and husband residing in Brooklyn, NY. His lighting design work includes theater, opera, concert halls, dance, broadcast, and live events. Theatrical design and associate work spans Broadway, Off-Broadway, and regional including Center Theatre Group, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Alliance Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Syracuse Stage, McCarter Theatre, Barter Theatre, and Geva Theatre Center. Josh currently designs concerts for the Lincoln Center White Light Festival and is the lighting designer for The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. As part of Lincoln Center’s Restart Stages, he lit the Jaffe Drive venue, including Continuum, curated by Nick Kendall. He serves as Associate Artistic Director of the Jewish Plays Project, playing an active role in new play development, lending both dramaturgical and design support to new and emerging works. Josh is a long-time associate to Allen Lee Hughes, most recently for TONI STONE and A SOLDIER’S PLAY.

Josh teaches at the Yale School of Drama. He received an AB from the University of Chicago and an MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
www.BenghiatLighting.com

Heather Helinsky
Contest Dramaturg

Heather Helinsky is a dramaturg that playwrights have recognized as “especially adept at freeing energies in unexpected ways. She encourages discovery.” She is based in Philadelphia and the Literary Manager for Playwrights Foundation/Bay Area Playwrights Festival. She now has fifteen years of experience as a professional dramaturg, specifically in the area of new play development and focused on advocating for women playwrights and writers of color.

As a freelancer, she works with playwrights and manages her own small consulting business developing new work throughout the year. She reads and evaluates scripts for Sundance Theatre Lab, O'Neill's Artistic Council, Great Plains Theatre Conference, Seven Devils, and KCACTF and has worked on new plays in development on various festivals since 2010. Nationally, her dramaturgical work has been seen at the American Repertory Theatre, Arizona Repertory Theatre, Best Medicine Rep, Borderlands Theatre Company, Denver Center Theatre Great Plains Theatre Conference, The Kennedy Center, The Lark, Miracle Theatre in Portland, Moscow Art Theatre’s American Studio, Omaha Community Playhouse, Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, Philadelphia Theatre Company, Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis, Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre, Pittsburgh Public Theatre, Salt Lake Acting Company, Telluride Playwrights Festival, Woolly Mammoth and Venus Theatre Company. For Theatre Philadelphia, she served as a Barrymore Judge for two seasons, reviewing 60-80 productions a year.

She moves fluidly between classical dramaturgy and new play development; she has been the Literary Manager of the Pittsburgh Public and PICT Classic Theatre as well as part of the National New Play Network’s rolling world premiere of Caridad Svich’s Guapa. As an educator, she’s mentored emerging dramaturgs at KCACTF Regions 4, 6, 5, 7, & 8 and was the National Dramaturgy Coordinator for KCACTF in ’12 & ‘13. Since 2016, she also reads for Kennedy Center playwriting awards and helps select the students for the Undergraduate Playwrights Workshop.

She has been a Visiting Professor of Dramaturgy at the University of Arizona (‘07/08), Carnegie Mellon School of Drama (‘12/’13), and adjunct work at Brooklyn College ('15) and Lesley University ('16 & '17) and a guest workshop with Yale dramaturgs in spring '19. She was the 2008 recipient of the Beatrice, Benjamin, and Richard Bader Fellowship for the Visual Art of Theatre at Houghton Library and also was a fellow in the NCI O'Neill Critics program in 2016. Her M.F.A. in Dramaturgy and Theatre Studies is from the American Repertory Theatre/Moscow Art Theatre Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard. Member of LMDA since 2006, and serves on LMDA's board as VP of Freelance since 2018.

William Steinberger
Artistic Producer

William Steinberger is thrilled to join the JPP as Artistic Producer. He has previously worked with the JPP on the 2019 Hartford Jewish Playwriting Contest and at the 14th Street Y for “The Mah Nishtanah Plays.” As a director, Will has developed new plays at Hartford Stage, the Drama League, Berkshire Theatre Group, New Light Theatre Project, All For One Theater, the Wilma, 59E59, The Flea, The Tank, Bethany Arts Project, Judson Church, Passage Theatre, Czech Center NYC, Theatre Horizon, InterAct, FGP, Uglyrhino and several universities. Will is also proud Artistic DirectorCo-founder of InVersion Theatre, which has produced nine full-length works. He has assistant directed for Darko Tresnjak, Doug Hughes, David Auburn, Michael Wilson, Vivienne Benesch, Kip Fagan, Lee Sunday Evans, Robert O’Hara, Maria Mileaf, Kristin Marting and others. Will’s dramaturgy has been featured in The Wall Street Journal.He has worked on the artistic staffs of Hartford Stage, the Wilma and Passage Theatre and recently produced Andy Bragen’s Notes on My Mother’s Declinefor PlayCoABTP at NYTW Next Door. Will is a Resident Director at the Flea, past Manhattan Theatre Club Directing Fellow and member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab. 
WSteinberger.com 

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Judy Bowman
Felica Kobylanski
Deborah Radin
Barbara Wind
David Winitsky

Advisory Board

Robert Sherman: Executive Director, Jewish Education Project (New York, NY)

Randy Ellen Lutterman: Vice President of Arts and Culture, JCCA (New York, NY)
http://www.jccmaccabiartsfest.org/contact/
http://americantheatrewing.org/program/springboardnyc/ 

Dede Jacobs-Komisar: Giving Manger, Huntington Theater (Baltimore, MD) 

Elizabeth Samet: Creative Director and Senior Vice-President, Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia, PA)
www.elizabethsamet.com

Rabbi Joel Soffin, Retired Clergy, President Jewish Helping Hands (New York, NY)
http://jewishhelpinghands.org/
https://mindleaps.org/