PAULETTE HAUPT is the co-founder and artistic director for the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Music Theater Conference.  Since 1978 she has selected and guided the development of more than one hundred new music theater works, including Desire Under the Elms, Nine, Captains Courageous, Avenue X, Violet, Andrew Lippa’s The Wild Party, The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin, Radiant Baby and Avenue Q.

She was an associate producer for Polly Pen’s Goblin Market off-Broadway, and has commissioned, developed and produced new works for OPERA America, The National Alliance for Musical Theatre, Columbia Artists Management, and the Lake George Opera Festival. 

The first woman to conduct at the San Francisco Opera, for three decades she conducted a diverse repertoire of world premieres, musical theater and operas worldwide, including Alaska, China, Russia, India, New York and the Kennedy Center.  In 2002, she was the associate conductor for the Grammy nominated recording of Joe Masteroff and Edward Thomas’ Desire Under the Elms, featuring the London Symphony Orchestra and Metropolitan Opera stars James Morris, Victoria Livengood and Jerry Hadley.

As a pianist, she has appeared worldwide in concerts with major opera and musical theater singers, and is the only ‘Plaidette’ ever to perform in Stuart Ross’ Forever Plaid in New York.