Theater J Leadership
Hayley Finn (she/her/hers) is an accomplished director and producer with over twenty-five years of experience in professional theatre across all aspects of the profession, including producing, directing, casting, education, fundraising, and has been instrumental in creating national partnerships for theatres across the country. Prior to joining Theater J, she was the Associate Artistic Director at the Playwrights’ Center, where worked with some of the nation’s leading playwrights and in her tenure produced over 1,000 workshops. She also served as a Co-Artistic Director of Red Eye Theater from 2019-2023 where she co-produced and curated the New Works 4 Weeks Festival—an annual four-week festival that commissions 11 artists each year to make new performance works—and co-led the fundraising and development of a new 150-seat black box theater in Minneapolis.
She has directed nationally and internationally, including at Cherry Lane Theatre (New York, NY), Curious Theatre Company (Denver, CO), the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (Edinburgh, Scotland), Ellis Island (New York), Guthrie Theatre (Minneapolis, MN), HERE Arts Center (New York, NY), History Theatre (St. Paul, MN), Flea Theater (New York, NY), The Kitchen (New York, NY), LAByrinth Theater Company (New York, NY), Marin Theater Company (Mill Valley, CA), New Dramatists (New York, NY), O’Neill Theater Center (Waterford, CT), Pillsbury House (Minneapolis, MN), People’s Light (Malvern, PA), Public Theater (New York, NY), Playwrights’ Horizons (New York, NY), Red Eye Theater (Minneapolis, MN), Six Point Theater (St. Paul, MN), South Coast Repertory Theater(Costa Mesa, CA), and the Nine Gates Festival in Prague. Finn was Assistant Director on several Broadway productions, including the Tony Award-winning production of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge.
Finn is an Alumna of the Drama League Director’s Program, recipient of the Ruth Easton Fellowship, TCG Future Leader Grant, National Endowment for the Arts support, and a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant. She received her BA and MA from Brown University.
David Lloyd Olson (he/him/his) has spent over a decade managing nonprofit theaters, most recently serving as managing director of Quintessence Theatre Group in Philadelphia where he oversaw the organization’s largest ever fundraising campaign and the doubling of their annual foundation support. He was manager of the executive office and board engagement at the Shakespeare Theatre Company where he supported the transition of the theatre’s artistic directorship from Michael Kahn to Simon Godwin. He was a founding company member of Pointless Theatre in Washington DC where he served for ten years as managing director, during which time the company was awarded the John Aniello Award for Outstanding Emerging Theatre Company at the Helen Hayes Awards. He was an Allen Lee Hughes management fellow at Arena Stage and served as a Fulbright English teaching assistant in Valmiera, Latvia. He has twice been the recipient of a DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities fellowship program grant and was on the host committee of the 2016 Theatre Communications Group national conference. He attended the University of Maryland where he received a B.A. in theatre from the College of Arts and Humanities and a B.A. in government and politics from the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences.