Jordan Knitzer is a New York City–based composer, lyricist, and playwright whose work blends dark comedy, pop-rock spectacle, and sharp social satire. A Northwestern University (B.A. Theatre, Class of 2020) graduate, he is a member of the BMI Lehman Engel Advanced Songwriting and Advanced Bookwriting Workshops.

His full-length musical Buzzkill is a darkly comic pentalogy of insect stories — from an alcoholic mosquito to a sexually cannibalistic praying mantis, an underground cicada rock band confronting extinction, a horrified spotted lanternfly, and a dangerously optimistic louse. Developed alongside collaborators Barrett Riggins, Jensen Krall, John Cicco, and Ted Bushman, Buzzkill will workshop at the Spark Theatre Festival (NYC, April 2026) and was recently named a semi-finalist for Michigan State University’s New Musical Laboratory.

Jordan was commissioned by Executive Producer Frank Shiner, alongside Jonah Bobo, to write the full-length drama musical Grow, which received a 29-hour Equity workshop at Open Jar Studios in September 2024, directed by Nicholas Polonio.

His 20-minute musical Itchin’ For An Itch: The Mosquitical — the origin piece for Buzzkill — won Best Production Short at the New York Theater Festival (2022) and was workshopped at Williamstown Theatre Festival.

Additional works include People You May Know, developed with Northwestern’s American Music Theatre Project and winner of the 2020 Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Musical Theatre Award.

Jordan was also the lead singer-songwriter of Stage Wombat Collective; his second EP, Single Wombat, was released in 2023, and the band’s song “Clown Wolf” was nominated for Best Original Song at the 13th Annual Indie Series Awards.

Current projects include the satire Kony 2012: Make Him Famous (co-written with Justino Tesoro) and Family Comes First, an animated musical film with Ron Passaro exploring loyalty, isolation, and generational trauma within an Australian cult.