Brannon Bowers
Brannon Bowers is the Co-Artistic Director of the newly created Center for New Work Development that will link the School of Drama with local Pittsburgh arts institutions to generate new works around the city. Brannon joins CMU from Northwestern University where they were the Producing Director of the American Music Theatre Project since 2016.
Brannon is on the Board of Directors for the National Alliance for Musical Theatre (NAMT) and served on the selection committee for the NAMT Festival of New Musicals for five years, three of those as co-chair. Brannon was most recently the Producing Director of the American Music Theatre Project (AMTP) at Northwestern University for 8.5 years where they developed over 45 musical projects, working with artists such as Lonny Price (Sweeney Todd, Company), Sam Pinkleton (Oh, Mary!, Natasha…Comet of 1812), Shakina Nayfack (Quantum Leap, Transparent), Dan Gillespie Sells (Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Brokeback Mountain), Kristoffer Diaz (Hell’s Kitchen), as well as 10 Jonathan Larson Award winners through an official partnership with the American Theatre Wing. Brannon commissioned & produced 6 new musicals at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe through a partnership with the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and was the producer of the Johnny Mercer Foundation’s Songwriters Project from 2017 to 2023.
Brannon is the creative producer of Get Out Alive, an autobiographical afrogoth musical by artist & activist Nikki Lynette, which they developed into a multi-award-winning independent film in 2021, was featured in the NAMT Festival in 2022, and is currently in development for the stage with Tony Award-winning producer Mara Isaacs/Octopus Theatricals. They are also a producer on Lynette’s next documentary musical project, Happy Songs About Unhappy Things, which is currently in film festivals around the country.
Brannon was one of the producers and the general manager for We Are Here: Songs from the Holocaust which sold out Carnegie Hall in January 2023 (cast included Chita Rivera, Harvey Fierstein, Shoshana Bean, Andrew Lippa, and more) and was professionally filmed at The Salt Shed in Chicago in November 2023. Brannon returned to Carnegie Hall in October 2023 as a producer and general manager for the first U.S. performance of the Korean War Memorial Concert, executive produced and conducted by the world-renowned Jong Hoon Bae.
Brannon was a guest at the inaugural Musical Theatre Writing Residency in Cove Park, Scotland, and has participated in the selection or nominating processes for the Stiles & Drew Song Prize, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, Weston/Ghostlight New Musical Award, the Johnny Mercer Writers Grove, the Chicago Musical Theatre Festival, and the National Playwrights Conference. Brannon has been a guest lecturer at Northwestern, DePaul, and Carnegie Mellon University and spoken on panels for NAMT, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, New Musicals Inc., Mercury Musical Developments, and the Segal Centre in Montreal, Canada. Prior to their time at AMTP, Brannon worked at McCarter Theatre Center where they produced readings and coordinated casting for new works by Christopher Durang, Ken Ludwig, Nilo Cruz, Heather Raffo, Dipika Guha, Sharyn Rothstein, and artistic director Emily Mann. Brannon has produced work at Steppenwolf’s LookOut Series and in the Chicago nightlife community, and has held internships at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, and Redmoon Theater. Brannon is a graduate of Northwestern University with a degree in Theatre, Gender & Sexuality Studies, and Integrated Marketing Communications.