Benji Goldsmith (music & lyrics) is a composer and lyricist based in New York, NY. He holds a B.A. in Music from Yale University. Benji began performing at a young age, singing in the Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus from 2000-2005, and, as a pianist, has won competitions and performed at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall. At Yale, he has studied Musical Theater Writing with Michael Korie, Joshua Rosenblum, and Jeanine Tesori. As a Music Director and Teaching Artist, Benji has spent four summers working at Acting Manitou, a summer theater program in Waterville, ME. Most recently, Benji was the Musical Director of the Yale Whiffenpoofs, an all-senior a cappella group at Yale that is the oldest a cappella group in the United States. In addition to The Average Achievers, Benji’s current composition projects include an adaptation of the children’s book The Paper Bag Princess and an adaptation of Karen Russell’s Pulitzer-nominated novel Swamplandia! He is a recipient of the ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award.

Jonathan Karpinos (book & lyrics) is a playwright and teacher based in New York. Recent work has appeared at Freeplay (NYU), Studio Tisch (NYU), the Louis Armstrong House Museum, the Queens College Play Development Lab, the CUNY Graduate Center, PEW-ish, and the Invisible Dog Art Center. He is a graduate of the MFA program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College, where he was a writer-in-residence at the Louis Armstrong Archives and an adjunct lecturer in the English Department. While at QC he also contributed an essay on translating ancient Latin puns to the translation journal kadar koli. An improviser as well, Jonathan has worked with Chicago’s iO Theater, the DSI Comedy Theater, ComedySportz, Baby Wants Candy, and The Scene at the People’s Improv Theater, among others. He also took part in the very first mission of Improv Everywhere. He has been a teaching artist at Acting Manitou and a playwriting mentor for Hunter College High School’s Brick Prison Playhouse. In addition to The Average Achievers, his current projects include The Village of Vale (co-created with John McGrew and Joe Varca), a series of dark folk tales brought to life through art and song. A native of North Carolina, he holds a BA in Classics from UNC-Chapel Hill and currently teaches Latin at The Masters School.