Meet the Team

Creative Team

Joshua Vranas

Book, Music, Lyrics

JOSHUA VRANAS is a musical theater songwriter and storyteller. His works include My Pet Dragon (with book and lyrics by Maggie Moe) and Theseus and the Minotaur and the Other Six (with book and lyrics by Clare Fuyuko Bierman).

His songs have been featured at Lincoln Center's Broadway's Future Songbook, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre's Village Voices, and the Cutting Room. Joshua was a top 5 nominee for the Marvin Hamlisch International Music Awards in 2021 and has been honored with the Horace W. Goldsmith Fellowship (2020) and the Frederick Loewe Award from ASCAP (2019).

Most recently, Joshua had a sold-out concert for My Pet Dragon at Joe's Pub. He is a graduate of the NYU Tisch Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program (Cycle 30) and lives in New York City with his husband and his rabbit.

www.joshuavranas.com

Jade King Carroll

Director

Jade King Carroll is a director specializing in new play development and the Producing Artistic Director of Chautauqua Theater Company. She has directed more than 60 classical and contemporary productions at theaters including New York Theatre Workshop, McCarter Theatre Center, Atlantic Theatre, Alley Theatre, Hartford Stage, and Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C.

Her credits include Amerikin, Proof of Love, Detroit ’67, Having Our Say, Red Velvet, and productions of August Wilson’s work. She has worked on every play in Wilson’s Century Cycle. Her audio work includes Audible, Marvel, and Broadway Podcast Network. She has taught, guest lectured, and directed at Juilliard, Rutgers, NYU, and Princeton, and received awards from the August Wilson Estate and SUNY New Paltz.

Sujin Kim-Ramsey

Music Director

Sujin Kim-Ramsey most recently served as Assistant Music Director and Keyboard 1 for the Broadway production of CATS: The Jellicle Ball at the Broadhurst Theatre (2026). She previously music directed KPOP The Musical for both its Broadway production at Circle in the Square Theatre (2022) and its Off-Broadway premiere at Ars Nova (2017), making history as one of the first women of Asian descent to debut as a music director on Broadway.

Additional credits include Associate Music Director for CATS: The Jellicle Ball (Perelman Performing Arts Center, 2024), Music Supervisor for the pro-wrestling rock musical The Last Match (East Coast Tour, 2024), Music Director for The Apple Boys (Bucks County Playhouse, 2025), and Music Director/Arranger for I and You (McCarter Theatre Center, 2025). She also performed an original concert work at Carnegie Hall in April 2023.

Kim-Ramsey holds degrees in Classical Composition from Yonsei University, Jazz Composition from Berklee College of Music, and Musical Theatre Writing from NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

Addie Saltz

Casting Director

Addie Saltz (she/her) is a multifaceted director, casting director, and educator based in NYC. Previous directing credits include EGON (East Village Basement), Little Women (Lake Worth Playhouse, Award for Best Limited Engagement), The Grown-Ups (Carnegie Mellon University), and more.

Currently, she is serving as the Assistant Director of Slam Frank at the Orpheum Theater Off-Broadway. A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University's School of Drama, her work focuses on human connection, the need to laugh, and doing things a little silly sometimes.

IG: @addiesaltz | addiesaltz.com

Cast

Jenn Colella

Stacy

Jenn Colella recently starred in SUFFS as Carrie Chapman Catt on Broadway, for which she garnered a Drama League Award nomination for Most Distinguished Performer. Jenn starred in the Tony Award-winning smash hit musical Come From Away as Captain Beverley Bass in a performance that garnered her Outer Critics Circle and Drama Desk Awards and a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, as well as Craig Noel, Helen Hayes and Dora Awards for pre-Broadway productions. Jenn won a Grammy Award for her work on the Dear Evan Hansen cast recording.

She has been previously seen on Broadway in If/Then, Chaplin, High Fidelity and Urban Cowboy (Outer Critics Circle Award nomination), and Off-Broadway in SUFFS (Outer Critics Circle Award nomination), Beebo Brinker Chronicles, Lucky Guy, Slut and Closer Than Ever. Jenn’s select regional credits include Come From Away (La Jolla Playhouse, Ford’s Theatre, Toronto), Peter Pan (Sacramento Music Circus & PCLO) and Side Show (Kennedy Center).

TV credits include Feed the Beast, Elementary, All My Children, Rescue Me, The Good Wife, The Code, Madam Secretary, FBI: Most Wanted, Evil, Beast In Me, and she currently plays Captain Alison Kershaw on Elsbeth on CBS. She has been seen on film in Uncertainty with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and stars in the live capture film of Come From Away on Apple TV+.

She is a proud adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University and Pace University. Jenn Colella holds an MFA from The University of California, Irvine and an Honorary Doctorate degree from Columbia College.

The Producing Team

Nikita Chernin and Ash Marie Alina, lead producers of Nearly Neighbors, are passionate about this show because they've each spent most of their lives talking to people too much, overthinking small moments, and being strangely fascinated by the lives happening on the other side of the wall.

They hope you enjoy Nearly Neighbors. They also hope you call your neighbor, text your mother, and stop pretending not to see that one person in your building when you get in the elevator together.

Nikita Chernin

Lead Producer

Nikita Chernin is a New York City-based theater maker, working as a producer, stage manager, and production manager on new work including Slam Frank, Dirty Books, I'm Still Not That Girl, Take Me to Dollywood, An Axemas Story and other projects that generally begin with someone saying, "this might be impossible," which, unfortunately for him, is exactly the kind of sentence he loves to hear.

His background in stage management and production management means he loves rehearsal rooms, color-coded spreadsheets, solving problems before anyone else notices them, and the very specific thrill of making a hundred impossible things happen at once while pretending everything is completely under control.

Outside of theater, he works in food advocacy with Project Hospitality, contributing to the growth of Staten Island's largest food pantry. During his time there, he helped more than double the organization's volunteer base and expand its impact by over four times, increasing access to food across some of the borough's most underserved communities. He also collaborates with NYC Votes on voter outreach initiatives, supporting engagement efforts in the 2025 New York City mayoral election, which drew more than 2 million voters citywide, marking the highest turnout in over 50 years.

He believes the theater industry is, in many ways, deeply broken. Too many opportunities depend on money, access, and already knowing the right people. He is interested in blowing that wide open and building something more collaborative, more accessible, more community-driven, and a little less obsessed with who gets invited into the room.

None of this would be possible without his parents, who came to this country as immigrants with almost nothing and somehow built an entire life from scratch. They remain his biggest supporters, inspirations, and proof that if you care enough about something, work hard enough, and are just stubborn enough, you can build what does not yet exist.

Ash Marie Alina

Lead Producer

Ash Marie Alina is New York-based producer, actor, and creative who thrives on turning big ideas into reality. With a background in performance, she brings an actor-first mentality to producing, championing projects that prioritize authenticity, collaboration, and emotional truth.

She is the founder of Blank Canvas Collective, a career development and creative support platform for actors, offering branding guidance, professional tools, and community-driven programming designed to help artists build sustainable, empowered careers.

Her producing work spans live performance, events, and original content, often blending theatricality with immersive and reality-inspired formats.

Ash is passionate about building spaces where artists feel seen, supported, and creatively energized, because surviving New York is one thing, but making something meaningful here is the real win.