Tony Award-Winning Playwright

Itamar Moses, Class of 1991

Itamar is a playwright, author, and television writer. He earned his bachelor’s degree at Yale University, and his MFA in dramatic writing from New York University. His award-winning musical The Band’s Visit is currently playing on Broadway.

“The small classes and passionate, engaged teachers at BPC brought books, theater, music to vivid life. I still look back on my three years at BPC as some of the most formative and inspiring of my life. People sometimes think that arts education is most important for kids who want to actually be artists or who are trying to figure out if they have talent they want to explore. But the real truth is that arts education is important no matter what you want to do because it develops all of the most important qualities for literally any field you might want to enter: empathy, critical thinking, nuanced language and communication, an understanding of the power of things like metaphor and imagery, ethical considerations, the benefits of humanistic thought and the dangers of non-humanistic thought, a sense of meaning and purpose above or apart from the false idols of money, power, fame, acquisition. These things are the lifeblood and lessons of art. If we want kids to know, care about, or embody these kinds of skills and values, arts education is actually the only way to do it.”