DAVID ZELLNIK has been a proud member of EST since 1999, was a founding member of Youngblood, and is a longtime member of the Playwrights Unit. He has written three one-acts seen in the Marathon (Killing Hand, For Elise, and Blue Handed) as well as the EST Sloan mainstage play Serendib. David’s other plays include: The Letters (Developed @NY Stage and Film, EST, World Premiere, Bridge Theatre in 2019) The Udmurts (Winner: Equity Library Theatre competition, semi-finalist O’Neill; World Premiere, Defunkt Theatre Co, PDX); and Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom (New Ensemble, Defunkt).

David is the lyricist/librettist of numerous musicals. His work includes Yank! with composer Joseph Zellnik (Off Broadway 2010, 7 Drama Desk nominations; as well as Best Musical nominations from the Outer Critics’ Circle, and Lucille Lortel Foundation). It has received productions in London’s West End, Rio de Janeiro, Brisbane, as well as Chicago, Columbus, Richmond, and Louisville. An Original Cast Album is available from PS Classics.

Joseph and David’s previous musicals include an adaptation of EST’s member Arthur Giron’s “Flight” for TheaterworksUSA, creating the musical First in Flight; and City of Dreams which won the NAMT competition and was performed at the first Int’l Music Theatre Festival in Cardiff, Wales and the New York Midtown Int’l Theatre Festival.

With composer Eric Svejcar, his play with songs The F#@%king Wright Brothers was part of FringeNYC in 2018 and his episodic podcast musical Loveville High was released in 2019; it has been downloaded over 80k times. It will be released in Brazil in 2023 (in Portuguese, under the title “Amorlândia”). For Disney, he and Eric created Peter Pan Jr, which in addition to adapting the existing material, they wrote a new song for; it has been done around the world over the past 9 years. With composer Cecilia Lin, he recently wrote lyrics for The Noble Family, set to open in both Beijing and Shanghai in 2024/25 www.davidzellnik.net