Brian Yorkey | |
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 Yorkey in 2018 | |
| Born | Omaha, Nebraska, U.S. |
| Education | Columbia University (BA) |
| Known for | Next to Normal , 13 Reasons Why |
| Awards | Pulitzer Prize for Drama (2010) Tony Award for Best Original Score (2009) |
Brian Yorkey is an American playwright and lyricist. His works often explore dark and controversial subject matter such as mental illness, grief, the underbelly of suburbia, and ethics in both psychiatry and public education.
Yorkey was born in Omaha, Nebraska, [1] where he was raised, before his family moved to Issaquah, Washington. He graduated from Columbia University in 1993, [2] where he served as the Artistic Director of the Varsity Show. He is an alumnus of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop. [3] [4]
Prior to bringing Next to Normal to Broadway, Yorkey was affiliated with Village Theatre in Issaquah, where he began as a KIDSTAGE student and eventually progressed to a seven-year tenure as Associate Artistic Director. [5] Four musicals written by Yorkey—Funny Pages (1993), Making Tracks (2002), The Wedding Banquet (2003), and Play it by Heart (2005)—were staged there. [6] [7] [8]
While at Village Theatre, Yorkey founded the KIDSTAGE Company class which teaches teens to write, direct, and perform their own musicals. Yorkey's frequent collaborator, Tom Kitt, joined him in assisting with the score to the 2008 Company Original, In Your Eyes. He worked with composer Tim Symons, on other Company Originals such as Last Exit [9] and A Perfect Fall. [10]
During Yorkey's tenure as Village Theatre's Associate Artistic Director, he developed a comprehensive new works program, Village Originals. [11] The Village Originals program develops approximately ten new musicals each season, in various stages from reading to full production. Yorkey is credited with the development of over 50 new musicals, including the 2010 Broadway musical, Million Dollar Quartet , which was nominated for Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, and won Best Performance by a Featured Actor (Levi Kreis) in a Musical at the 64th Tony Awards.
Next to Normal began as a ten-minute-long piece called Feeling Electric, which recent college graduates Yorkey and Kitt wrote as a final project for the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop at the end of the 1990s. [12]
Their inspiration was a segment about electroconvulsive therapy Yorkey saw on Dateline NBC . [13]
Next to Normal was nominated for a total of eleven Tony Awards, including the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical. The show won the 2009 Tony Award for Best Original Score, and Tony Award for Best Orchestrations. In 2010 Yorkey and Kitt were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Next to Normal, citing "a powerful rock musical that grapples with mental illness in a suburban family and expands the scope of subject matter for musicals." [14]
In 2013, Yorkey's musical with Kitt, If/Then , starring Idina Menzel, LaChanze, and Anthony Rapp, had its pre-Broadway try-out at The National Theatre in Washington, D.C. The musical subsequently opened on Broadway on March 30, 2014. The musical garnered a Tony Award nomination and Outer Critics Circle nomination for Best Original Score for Kitt and Yorkey, as well as a nomination for Best Performance by a Leading Actress for Menzel. [15]
In 2014, Yorkey's collaborative work, with Sting and co-librettist John Logan, The Last Ship opened on Broadway. The musical is loosely based on Sting's album The Soul Cages (1990). [16] It opened on September 29, 2014. Yorkey and Logan were nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award for their book.
He co-wrote the book and lyrics, with Melanie Burgess, to Jesus in My Bedroom, an original musical, with a score by Tim Symons. Jesus in My Bedroom received a reading at Village Theatre's 13th Annual Festival of New Musicals. [17]
He wrote the music, with Kitt, for a musical version of Freaky Friday with librettist Bridget Carpenter. Freaky Friday is produced by Disney Theatrical Productions, and had its World Premiere at the Signature Theatre (Arlington, Virginia) in October 2016. [18] The musical began performances at the La Jolla Playhouse, San Diego, on January 31, 2017 running to March 12. The cast features Emma Hunton and Heidi Blickenstaff. [19]
Yorkey adapted Jay Asher's bestselling novel, 13 Reasons Why , for Netflix, Paramount Television and Anonymous Content. [20] Spanning four seasons, the series ran from March 2017 to June 2020. While the first season earned positive reviews, the rest were poorly received.
He scripted Sluts for Lionsgate Films. His first feature film pitch, Time After Time, sold in a bidding war to Universal Pictures. It is now fast tracked at Lionsgate/Summit with Bradley Buecker directing. Yorkey is adapting Next to Normal's film adaptation for Anonymous Content and an untitled fashion musical for Paramount Pictures, Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald. [21] Yorkey and Kitt are also developing Score!, a theatre camp musical for Robert Downey Jr. to star in for Warner Bros. [22] [23]
More recently, he signed deals with Netflix to start the Echoes limited series, [24] and adapt Neal Shusterman's book Game Changer into a series.
Yorkey was working with Tom Kitt on a musical adaption of Magic Mike , with Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa writing the book. [25] According to various news sources, on May 2 and 3, 2019, the creative team of Kitt, Yorkey and Aguirre-Sacasa have left the project and a private workshop that had been scheduled for the week of May 3 has been cancelled. [26] [27]
The Pulitzer Prize for Drama is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It is one of the original Pulitzers, for the program was inaugurated in 1917 with seven prizes, four of which were awarded that year. It recognizes a theatrical work staged in the U.S. during the preceding calendar year.
Freaky Friday is a comedic children's novel written by Mary Rodgers, first published by Harper & Row in 1972. It has been adapted for several films, including versions in 1976, 1995, 2003, and 2018.
Disney Theatrical Productions Limited (DTP), also known as Disney on Broadway, is the stageplay and musical production company of the Disney Theatrical Group, a subsidiary of Disney Entertainment, a major division and business unit of The Walt Disney Company.
Next to Normal is a 2008 American rock musical with book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey and music by Tom Kitt. The story centers on a mother who struggles with worsening bipolar disorder and the effects that managing her illness has on her family. The musical addresses grief, depression, suicide, drug abuse, ethics in modern psychiatry, and the underbelly of suburban life.
Brian d'Arcy James is an American actor and musician. He is known primarily for his Broadway roles, including Shrek in Shrek the Musical, Nick Bottom in Something Rotten!, King George III in Hamilton, and the Baker in Into the Woods, and has received four Tony Award nominations for his work. On-screen, he is known for his recurring role as Andy Baker on the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why, Officer Krupke in West Side Story, and reporter Matt Carroll in Spotlight.
Second Stage Theater is a theater company founded in 1979 by Robyn Goodman and Carole Rothman and located in Manhattan, New York City. It produces both new plays and revivals of contemporary American plays by new playwrights and established writers. The company has two off-Broadway theaters, their main stage, the Tony Kiser Theater at 305 West 43rd Street on the corner of Eighth Avenue near the Theater District, and the McGinn/Cazale Theater at 2162 Broadway and 76th Street, on the Upper West Side. In April 2015, the company expanded into Broadway theater productions when it bought the Helen Hayes Theater.
The New York Musical Festival (NYMF) was an annual three-week summer festival that operated from 2004 to 2019. It presented more than 30 new musicals a year in New York City's midtown theater district. More than half were chosen by leading theater artists and producers through an open-submission, double-blind evaluation process. The remaining shows were invited to participate by the Festival's artist staff. The festival premiered over 447 musicals, which featured the work of over 8,000 artists and were attended by more than 300,000 people. More than 100 NYMF shows went on to further productions. By NYMF's count, alumni productions have been produced in all 50 US states and in 27 countries, and have been seen by roughly four million people. Over 20 NYMF shows have had cast albums recorded.
Heidi Blickenstaff is an American actress based in New York City best known for playing a version of herself in the musical [title of show] during its Off-Broadway and Broadway runs, as well as for originating the role of Bea in the 2015 musical Something Rotten!. She co-starred with Cozi Zuehlsdorff in the Disney Channel musical version of Freaky Friday which was broadcast on August 10, 2018.
Making Tracks is an Asian American musical theater production by Second Generation, a New York-based theater company, with music by Woody Pak, lyrics by Brian Yorkey, and concept and book by Welly Yang.
Bridget Carpenter is a television writer and playwright.
The 63rd Annual Tony Awards, which recognized Broadway productions of the 2008-2009 season, were presented on June 7, 2009 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. The ceremony was broadcast by CBS, hosted by Neil Patrick Harris.
Thomas Robert Kitt is an American composer, conductor, orchestrator, and musician. For his score for the musical Next to Normal, he shared the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama with Brian Yorkey. He has also won two Tony Awards and an Outer Critics Circle Award for Next to Normal, as well as Tony and Outer Critics Circle nominations for If/Then and SpongeBob SquarePants. He has been nominated for eight Drama Desk Awards, winning one, and a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album for Jagged Little Pill in 2021.
Michael Greif is an American stage director. He has won three Obie Awards and received four Tony Award nominations, for Rent, Grey Gardens, Next to Normal, and Dear Evan Hansen.
Christopher Ashley is an American stage director. Since 2007, he has been the artistic director of the La Jolla Playhouse.
Michael Starobin is an orchestrator, conductor, composer, arranger, and musical director, primarily for the stage, film and television. He won Tony Awards for the orchestrations of Assassins (2004) and Next to Normal.
If/Then is a musical with a libretto by Brian Yorkey and a theatrical score by Tom Kitt, directed by Michael Greif. It tells the story of a 38-year-old woman named Elizabeth who moves back to New York City for a fresh start.
Freaky Friday is a musical with music by Tom Kitt, lyrics by Brian Yorkey, and a book by Bridget Carpenter. It is based on the 1972 novel of the same name by Mary Rodgers and its 1976, 1995, and 2003 film adaptations. In the story, when an overworked mother and her teenage daughter magically swap bodies, they have just one day to put things right again before the mom's wedding.
Village Theatre is a major regional theatre located in the Seattle metropolitan area. It is a member of Theatre Puget Sound and the National Alliance for Musical Theatre. The theatre was founded in Issaquah, Washington, in 1979 and built a second location in Issaquah in 1994. Village Theatre was contracted by the City of Everett, Washington, in 1998 to be the resident performing and management company of the Everett Performing Arts Center.
Christian Hebel is an American violinist, songwriter, arranger and concertmaster. He has appeared on multi-Platinum, Gold, Emmy Award, Academy Awards, Tony Award, and Grammy Award winning recordings as well as film scores and Broadway theatre.
Freaky Friday is an American musical television film that premiered as a Disney Channel Original Movie on August 10, 2018. Based on the 1972 book of the same name by Mary Rodgers and the 2016 Disney Theatrical Productions stage adaptation by Bridget Carpenter; the movie is the fourth feature film installment in the Freaky Friday franchise. The adaptation stars Cozi Zuehlsdorff and Heidi Blickenstaff.
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