Artistic Director

Paulette Haupt was a co-founder and served as Artistic Director for the National Music Theater Conference at the O’Neill Theater Center from 1978 to 2017. In that capacity, she selected and guided the development of more than one hundred musicals, including Maury Yeston, Mario Fratti and Arthur Kopit's Nine, Enid Futterman and Howard Marren's Portrait of Jennie, Joe Masteroff and Edward Thomas' Desire Under the Elms, Patrick Cook and Frederick Freyer's Captains Courageous, John Jiler and Ray Leslee's Avenue X, Polly Pen's Christina Alberta's Father, Brian Crawley and Jeanine Tesori's Violet, Andrew Lippa's The Wild Party, Stuart Ross and Debra Barsha's Radiant Baby, Kirsten Child's The Bubbly Black Girl......., Richard Maltby and David Shire's Take Flight, Jeff Whitty, Jeff Marx and Robert Lopez's Avenue Q, Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik's The Nightingale, and Quiara Alegria Hudes and Lin-Manuel Miranda's In the Heights.

She was an associate producer for Polly Pen's Goblin Market off-Broadway, and has commissioned, developed and produced new works for OPERA America, The National Alliance for Musical Theater and Columbia Artists Management.

Since 2001, Ms. Haupt has commissioned, developed and produced new works with her New York Company PREMIERES, including several works by Richard Rodger Award recipients. In 2008, PREMIERES presented three original commisssioned works by Ellen Fitzhugh and Michael John LaChiusa (Tres Ninas), Laura Harrington and Jenny Giering (Alice Unwrapped), and Michele Lowe and Scott Davenport Richards (A Thousand Words Come to Mind). Inner Voices: Solo Musicals premiered at the Zipper Theater in May 2008 to critical and audience acclaim. PREMIERES' next Inner Voices was presented in association with Primary Stages at 59 East 59th Street Theater in April of 2010, which included Cheri Steinkellner and Georgia Stitt's Mosaic and David Simpatico and Josh Schmidt's Whida Peru: Resurrection Tangle. In 2012, PREMIERES presented its next production of Inner Voices with Borrowed Dust by Martin Moran and Joseph Thalken, Arlington by Victor Lodato and Polly Pen, and Farhad or the Secret of Being by Nilo Cruz and Jim Bauer. Our fourth production of Inner Voices took place at TBG Theatre in New York in the fall of 2014. This production was a double bill of newly commissioned works and included Grace by Charlayne Woodard and Kirsten Childs, and The Other Room by Mark Campbell and Marisa Michelson. The fifth production of Inner Voices took place at the TBG Theatre in October 2016 with a triple bill of commissioned works including Just One Q by Ellen Fitzhugh and Ted Shen, The Pen by Dan Collins and Julianne Wick Davis, and The Booty Call by Saheem Ali and Michael Thurber. The sixth production of Inner Voices took place in October and November of 2018 and included commissioned works by Deborah Zoe Laufer & Daniel Green, Daniel Zaitchik, and Jeff Blumenkrantz.

For more than three decades, Ms. Haupt was a music director and conductor of operas and musicals worldwide, including Man of La Mancha, Sweeney Todd, Kiss Me Kate, Savage Land at The Kennedy Center, Once Upon a Mattress on an extensive tour of India and Sri Lanka, The Music Man in Beijing, China, Christina Alberta's Father at The Vineyard Theatre, and Lucy Lapses at Playwright's Horizons.

In 2002, she was the associate conductor for the Grammy nominated recording of Joe Masteroff and Edward Thomas' Desire Under the Elms, and conducted Irving Berlin's White Christmas at the Buell Theater with the Denver Center Theater Company in 2007. In 2009 Ms. Haupt was the conductor/music director for a Broadway Highlights Concert in T’Bilisi in The Republic of Georgia, featuring a cast of 40 Georgian teenagers and an orchestra of 40 Georgian teenage musicians. As a pianist, she has appeared worldwide in concerts with many opera and musical theater singers, and was the only "Plaidette" ever to perform in Stuart Ross' Forever Plaid in New York.

Ms. Haupt served a three-season term as Tony Nominator and Voter from 2009 to 2012.