The Creative Team
Susan Murphy
Creator/Writer/Producer
Susan is a writer and performer who blurs the boundaries of music and theatre to create “performance memoir.” These acclaimed stage works have included Becoming Fantastic, Every Desire Is a Veiled Prayer, Unexpected Places, Ladylike, and Movie Night. Her most expansive piece, Girl/Group: A Daughter’s Tale, evolved over the course of a decade and premiered as a full-length play at the world-renowned La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York. As an actor and singer, she has worked in film and on stages including the Westbeth Theatre Center, Williamstown Theatre Festival, HERE, Cherry Lane Theatre, Classic Stage Company, and Joe’s Pub. She hails from Jersey City, NJ, and holds a BFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts with a concentration in experimental performance.
Jodie Markell
Director/Writer
Jodie is a director/writer/filmmaker and an Obie award-winning actress of the New York stage. She directed the feature film Tennessee Williams’ The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, starring Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Evans, Ellen Burstyn, Will Patton, and Ann-Margret, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. The LA Times said, “A film to savor. Rich in ways that are all too rare these days.” Jodie also adapted and directed the short film Eudora Welty’s Why I Live at the P.O., which played the Seattle Film Festival/Women in Cinema, the Hamptons Film Festival, and the New Orleans Film Festival, where it received the Moviemaker Magazine Breakthrough Award. The film was invited to screen at the National Museum of Women In Arts in Washington D.C. As an actress, she has been featured in films by directors including Woody Allen, Jim Jarmusch, Ira Sachs, and Todd Haynes, and she played a recurring role on HBO’s Big Love. Jodie also teaches Directing Actors in the Columbia University MFA Film Program.
Ashlei Hardenburg-Cartagena
Writer
Ashlei is a queer German-Puerto Rican writer who was raised in the real streets of Jersey City, New Jersey. A child of divorce who struggled with mixed-ethnicity and coming out, her work often focuses on identity exploration and internal crisis. After receiving her BFA in Film from Vassar College, Ashlei worked in Production on narrative TV shows like Orange Is the New Black and Jessica Jones. Her writing received recognition from FinalDraft's Big Break Competition, WeScreenplay, and Roadmap Writers. She is an alum of the Warner Brothers Writers' Workshop and has been working as a Staff Writer on television series such as the upcoming HBOMax drama The Girls on the Bus. Ashlei is represented by First Story Entertainment.
PJ Leonard
Producer
Former Off-Broadway producer and founder of Other Side of the River Productions, PJ has served as executive producer/producer on both features and shorts, including The Immaculate Misconception starring Jayne Houdyshell, The Hit, The Fallen Faithful, Chu & Blossom starring Mercedes Ruehl, Alan Cumming, and Annie Potts, and Mysterious Circumstance: The Death of Meriwether Lewis. As a writer, his films include Speculo, directed by Obba Babtundé. He is currently in production with the feature Mississippi Scholar, which he also authored, starring Babatundé and Sonny Marinelli.
Elena Tormey
Executive Producer
Elena is a graduate of Fordham University (BA, Psychology) and a 25-year veteran in the financial industry. While pursuing a Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology at LIU, she started working for Dalcomp, a software company that serviced the Municipal Bond Industry. She was then hired by Lehman Brothers to work in Municipal Finance as a Vice President, where she remained until 2008. From 2008 to 2022 she worked for Barclays Capital in their newly added Municipal Finance Group. Born and raised in Jersey City, she first met Susan in grade school. Their enduring friendship and shared love of the arts are what have drawn her to this project.
Diane Garisto
Vocal Director
Diane grew up immersed in the musical soul of New York City. She did her first recording at the age of ten singing "Yaba-daba-doo" in a Flintstone's Vitamins commercial. From that auspicious beginning, she went on to record with such notable artists as Billy Joel, Nile Rodgers, Carly Simon, George Benson, Lori Anderson, and Malcolm McLaren. Diane sang on Paul Simon's Grammy-winning album, Graceland, and toured internationally with Steely Dan and Laura Nyro. In 2014, after a lifechanging experience of breast cancer, she made the decision to travel for exploration as well as work and has split her time since then between Europe and the US. Diane Currently performs with her band, Stoned Soul Picnic: The Laura Nyro Project.
Jon Spurney
Music Supervisor
Spurn is a composer, filmmaker, writer, and multi-instrumentalist. He has written music for At Home with Amy Sedaris, the Emmy-nominated Documentary Now! with Fred Armisen and Bill Hader, Difficult People, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. He served as musical director for the Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park production of A Midsummer Nights Dream. Spurney has performed with Elton John, Stevie Wonder, David Byrne Courtney Love, Aimee Mann, Jonathan Coulton, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, and John Cale, and also writes and directs short films for Automatic Ecstasy Productions.
Seth Saltzman
Music Advisor
Seth is Senior Vice President of Global Services at the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), where he has worked in a variety of roles since 1984. He has extensive experience working with writers and publishers on issues related to music licensing, copyrights, royalties, and other matters. Saltzman graduated from Berklee College of Music in 1981, majoring in piano and film scoring, and continues to work as a professional musician. He has conducted and played piano for hundreds of musical theater productions in New York and New Jersey. He also regularly presents musical lectures on Broadway and Hollywood composers.