American playwright, screenwriter and actor Jeff Whitty was BOTD in 1971. Born in Coos Bay, Oregon, he moved to New York in 1993 where he studied acting. After years as an out-of-work actor, he wrote the musical Avenue Q with composers Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, an acerbic and sexually explicit take on TV show Sesame Street, in which human actors and puppets grapple musically with issues including racism, homophobia, internet porn and what to do with a degree in English. After a successful off-Broadway run, it transferred to Broadway in 2003, becoming a critical and box office juggernaut, winning three Tony Awards including Best Musical and Best Book of a Musical for Whitty. One of Whitty’s storylines featured puppet Rod, a Republican investment banker who struggles to tell his straight roommate Nicky that he is gay, wittily riffing on the homoerotic frisson of Bert and Ernie in Sesame Street. Whitty later wrote the librettos for musical version of Armistead Maupin’s novel Tales of the City, with music by Jake Shears, and the stage version of cheerleader comedy film Bring It On. In 2018, he and Nicole Holofcener co-wrote the screenplay for Can You Ever Forgive Me?, a biopic about lesbian writer Lee Israel, who made a living forging celebrity letters with the help of her HIV-positive queer friend Jack Hock. The eventual film was a critical and commercial hit, earning Oscar nominations for Holofcener’s and Whitty’s screenplay. Whitty’s other produced plays include The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler, The Plank Project and The Hiding Place. He lives in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and was/is in a relationship with Steve Schmersal.