Alex Manaa (she/her) is a composer/lyricist and playwright born in Alexandria, Egypt and raised in Lakewood, Ohio. Alex is passionate about accessibility in the arts, and amplifying stories that aren’t traditionally told. She hopes to be able to shine a spotlight on Arab & Persian culture, stories empowering women, socioeconomic diversity, and intersectionality across the board. She has been an AMTP workshop recipient, a 2024 Eugene O’Neill NMTC Semi-Finalist, 2024 AMTP Semi-Finalist, & 2021 NAMT Semi-Finalist. Alex is a graduate of Northwestern University (B.A., Theatre, concentrations in Playwriting and Music Theatre Writing), and recently received her M.F.A. in Musical Theatre Writing from NYU Tisch.
Vaheed Ali Talebian (he/they) is a queer Persian-American composer, writer, and performer, and started writing for theatre at the University of Virginia from which he received his B.A. in Arts Administration and Economics. He then received his M.F.A. at the NYU Tisch Graduate Music Theatre Writing Program (Max Dreyfus Award). He has since written scores for films produced at the Virginia Film Festival, and was both a NMTC 2024 Semi-Finalist and AMTP 2024 Semifinalist alongside Alex Manaa for their show The MENA Show. On stage, Vaheed made his Off-Broadway debut in Monsters of the Villa Diodati (Emergent TheatreWorks).
“Virtuosic WORK… You’ll make history with this.”
-Mindi Dickstein, “Little Women, The Musical” Lyricist
OUR ARTIST STATEMENT
Having grown up with little-to-no positive representation of our identities in the media we consumed, we’ve become committed to representing people like us and other marginalized voices in spaces we’re underrepresented. As Egyptian and Persian writers, we seek to write stories about Middle Eastern/North African (MENA) people that reject the narratives we traditionally see: that we are not a monolith, stereotype, victim, villain, or token. Above all, we aim to highlight and celebrate our cultural heritage in the modern musical theatre canon.