Stephen Agosto, Co-Executive Director, is an award-winning producer, director and educator currently serving as Director of Theater at Walnut Hill School for the Arts in Natick, MA. Most recently, Stephen was Line Producer at two-time TONY Award winning theater, Goodspeed Musicals. Since 2022, Stephen has developed and guided 10 productions to the Goodspeed Opera House Stage including Anne of Green Gables, 42nd Street (CT Critics Choice 2023 Outstanding Musical Production), Summer Stock (world premiere starring Corbin Bleu, opening on Broadway Spring 2026), and The 12 (dir. John Doyle). He also helmed the teams for Goodspeed’s Terris Theater Developmental Productions overseeing the world premieres of Private Jones (by Marshall Pailet), A Complicated Woman (dir. Jeff Calhoun), Ask For the Moon (dir. Darko Tresnjak), and Maggie (in conjunction with the producing team from Come From Away). Previously, Stephen worked for Paper Mill Playhouse as a member of the TONY Award winning artistic team that shepherded such new musicals as Newsies (Broadway transfer), A Bronx Tale (Broadway transfer), Bandstand (Broadway transfer), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (world premiere), The Sting (starring Harry Connick Jr.), Unmasked: The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Half Time (directed and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell) to name a few. He is the recipient of the MTI Young Directors Fellowship (Dear Edwina, world premiere), a nominee at the New York Musical Theatre Festival (Best Director; Crazy, Just Like Me by Drew Gasparini), and member of both AEA and SDC unions. Selected directing and creative credits include Modotti at Theatre Row (Off-Broadway); Crazy, Just Like Me at The York Theatre (Off-Broadway); Turn of the Screw at The Public Theatre (Concert); Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, and A Christmas Story (Associate Director) all for Paper Mill Playhouse; The Drowsy Chaperone and Lucky Stiff for The Blue Hill Troupe; Triangle Logic and Einstein and Mileva for Crosshatch Theatre NYC; and Separate: Battle Songs of Youth at Ars Nova.
In addition to his long career in commercial theatre, Stephen has simultaneously worked as an educator and arts education advocate. In January 2017, Stephen drafted the Musical Theater Common Prescreen, a universal set of guidelines for college entrance that now boasts over 100 participating Musical Theatre programs and impacts over 20,000 students annually. Additionally, Stephen annually partners with online arts platform, Acceptd, to facilitate and host national round table discussions on equity in collegiate arts training. His contributions to arts education advancement include programming and curriculum consultation for numerous educational institutions such as the New York City Department of Education and the Maine Arts Academy. For five years Stephen served as Director of Musical Theatre at Talent Unlimited High School in Manhattan where he and his students were Circle in the Square “Teens on Broadway” honorees, recipients of “Special Honors” from the Gershwin Theatre Awards, and recipients of The Shubert Organization High School Theatre Award (Top Honors). For 10 years he served as an adjunct Professor of Theatre at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University and is a frequent expert instructor for universities across the country in the area of Song Interpretation and Performance. Stephen taught at the prestigious Paper Mill Playhouse Summer Conservatory for 12 years and served as Conservatory Director in his last three. Beginning at age eight, Stephen performed professionally as both a dancer and in musical theatre. Most notably he was seen in tours of Beauty and the Beast (2nd National) and Godspell (2001). Stephen holds a BFA in Acting from DePaul University and a Graduate Certificate from The Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre.
