JennHartmannLuck has just been named the new Producing Artistic Director for Oregon Children's Theatre in Portland, Oregon! She and her family will be relocating to the Pacific Northwest in June 2023!
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Jenn (she/her) is a multi-hyphenate theatre artist, educator, director, producer, songwriter/composer, and arts leader who has lived and worked in Phoenix, NYC, Los Angeles, Austin, and now Portland! Notably, she is composer and co-lyricist of Gretel! The Musical, co-written with award-winning playwright Suzan Zeder, cellist Nora Karakousoglou, and story creator Jason Tremblay. Gretel! premiered at Austin’s Paramount Theatre in 2019, was produced by First Stage Milwaukee in 2020, and is available for licensing through Dramatic Publishing.
In addition, Jenn is also the composer and co-lyricist, along with Zeder, of the new folk/rock musical The Battlefields of Clara Barton, developed with the American Music Theatre Project at Northwestern University. Luck and Zeder additionally received a Kennedy Center commission in 2020 for their short piece The New Next-door Neighbor.
Jenn's newest musical for young audiences is a collaboration with playwright Roxanne Schroeder-Arce, and was commissioned by the Magik Theatre in San Antonio. The musical, Keys, was workshopped at the New Plays for Young Audiences Workshop at NYU in the summer of 2022, and recently completed a workshop at Austin Playhouse in partnership with The University of Texas at Austin and Magik Theatre.
She launched her new record label, Lucky Hart Records, with The Raise Your Voices Project! In November 2021 she released her new album: Raise Your Voices (Songs Celebrating the Kids Who Are Changing the World.) This 11-track, album of original material, which she produced, wrote, and performs on, features songs inspired by young people from across the country who are making the world a better place. Two songs from the album were named "semi-finalists" in the International Songwriting Competition and she was a featured performer at SXSW EDU in 2022.
Prior to her appointment as Producing Artistic Director at Oregon Children's Theatre, she served as Director of Partnerships and Programming for Education at the Paramount Theatre in Austin for over a decade; booking and presenting live performing arts experiences for young audiences. She was also on the Board of the International Association for Performing Arts for Youth, is a member of the SXSW EDU Advisory Board, and is a Lecturer in the Department of Theatre & Dance at the University of Texas at Austin.
She holds a BA in Theatre from Arizona State University and an MFA in Drama and Theatre for Youth and Communities from The University of Texas at Austin.
Jenn lives with her husband and two children, Lucy and Wyatt.