Fred Stroppel is an American playwright and film writer [1] based in New York City. He has been writing for television, film and theater for over twenty years.
Stroppel, a member of the Theatre Artist Workshop, has had productions of his work at the Ensemble Studio Theatre, the John Houseman Theater, The Actor's Playhouse, the West Bank Cafe and the 29th Street Repertory Theater, all in New York City. His musical "Tales from the Manhattan Woods," based on Strauss' Die Fledermaus , recently completed a successful run at the Wings Theatre. Stroppel's full-length comedy "Fortune's Fools" was produced off-Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theater and "Actor!" his satire of the entertainment world, was staged at the Egyptian Arena Theatre in Los Angeles. Fred is also in collaboration with Brett Somers frequently and wrote a trio of comedies called "Danger, People At Large" for her and her ex-husband, Jack Klugman. Archived 2006-09-04 at the Wayback Machine Most recently, he is writing the book for a new, original musical - "The Girl in the Red Dress" - whose composers are Maia Sharp, Buddy Mondlock, and Art Garfunkel.
Having worked in television for HBO, Disney, Nickelodeon and PBS, Stroppel has written several screenplays, including "David Mamet's Gilded Stones," a short film based on his one-act play "The Mamet Women," which was an official selection at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. Fred has written for Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! and A Little Curious . For film, Fred has written Brooklyn State of Mind starring Tony Danza, Jennifer Esposito, and Vincent Spano, and Dark Side of Genius starring Moon Unit Zappa. For theater, Fred has written Brainstorms, which was a one-act comedy produced by "A Small Company In America Productions."
David Alan Mamet is an American playwright, filmmaker, and author. He won a Pulitzer Prize and received Tony nominations for his plays Glengarry Glen Ross (1984) and Speed-the-Plow (1988). He first gained critical acclaim for a trio of off-Broadway 1970s plays: The Duck Variations, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and American Buffalo. His plays Race and The Penitent, respectively, opened on Broadway in 2009 and previewed off-Broadway in 2017.
Ginger Rogers was an American actress, dancer and singer during the Golden Age of Hollywood. She won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her starring role in Kitty Foyle (1940), and performed during the 1930s in RKO's musical films with Fred Astaire. Her career continued on stage, radio and television throughout much of the 20th century.
The Band Wagon is a 1953 American musical romantic comedy film directed by Vincente Minnelli, starring Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse. It tells the story of an aging musical star who hopes a Broadway show will revive his career. However, the play's director wants to make it a pretentious retelling of the Faust legend and brings in a prima ballerina who clashes with the star. Along with An American in Paris (1951) and Singin' in the Rain (1952), it is regarded as one of the finest Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musicals, although it was a box-office disappointment on first release.
Fred Ebb was an American musical theatre lyricist who had many successful collaborations with composer John Kander. The Kander and Ebb team frequently wrote for such performers as Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera.
Marsha Mason is an American actress and theatre director. She has been nominated four times for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances in Cinderella Liberty (1973), The Goodbye Girl (1977), Chapter Two (1979), and Only When I Laugh (1981). The first two also won her Golden Globe Awards. She was married for ten years (1973–1983) to the playwright and screenwriter Neil Simon, who was the writer of three of these films.
Nathan Lane is an American actor. Since 1975, he has been seen on stage and screen in both comedic and dramatic roles. Lane has received numerous awards, including three Tony Awards, six Drama Desk Awards, two Obie Awards, the Olivier Award, three Emmy Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Lane received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2006 and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2008. In 2010, The New York Times hailed Lane as "the greatest stage entertainer of the decade".
Larry Howard Shue was an American playwright and actor, best known for writing two oft-performed farces, The Nerd and The Foreigner.
Marc Shaiman is an American composer and lyricist for films, television, and theatre, best known for his collaborations with lyricist and director Scott Wittman, actor Billy Crystal, and director Rob Reiner. Shaiman has received numerous accolades including two Grammy Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Tony Award. He has also received seven Academy Awards nominations.
Linda Lavin is an American actress and singer. She is known for playing the title character in the sitcom Alice and for her stage performances, both on and off-Broadway.
Lindsay Ann Crouse is an American actress. She made her Broadway debut in the 1972 revival of Much Ado About Nothing and appeared in her first film in 1976 in All the President's Men. For her role in the 1984 film Places in the Heart, she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Her other films include Slap Shot (1977), Between the Lines (1977), The Verdict (1982), Prefontaine (1997), and The Insider (1999). She also had a leading role in the 1987 film House of Games, which was directed by her then-husband David Mamet. In 1996, she received a Daytime Emmy Award nomination for "Between Mother and Daughter", a CBS Schoolbreak Special episode. She is also a Grammy Award nominee.
Ethan Phillips is an American actor. He is best known for his television roles as Neelix on Star Trek: Voyager and PR man Pete Downey on Benson.
David Rasche is an American theater, film, and television actor who is best known for his portrayal of the title character in the 1980s satirical police sitcom Sledge Hammer! Since then he has often played characters in positions of authority, in both serious and comical turns. In television he is known for his main role as Karl Muller in the HBO drama series Succession and his role as Alden Schmidt in the TV Land comedy series Impastor, as well as recurring and guest performances in numerous programs including L.A. Law, Monk, The West Wing, Veep, Bored to Death, and Ugly Betty.
Speed-the-Plow is a 1988 play by David Mamet that is a satirical dissection of the American movie business. As stated in The Producer's Perspective, "this is a theme Mamet would revisit in his later films Wag the Dog (1997) and State and Main (2000)". As quoted in The Producer's Perspective, Jack Kroll of Newsweek described Speed-the-Plow as "another tone poem by our nation's foremost master of the language of moral epilepsy."
Oleanna is a 1992 two-character play by David Mamet, about the power struggle between a university professor and one of his female students, who accuses him of sexual harassment and, by doing so, spoils his chances of being accorded tenure. The play's title, taken from a folk song, refers to a 19th-century escapist vision of utopia. Mamet adapted his play into a 1994 film of the same name.
Benjamin Rush "Rusty" Magee was an accomplished comedian, actor and composer/lyricist for theatre, television, film and commercials.
Jason Brett is an American actor, writer and film producer, who produced the 1986 romantic comedy film About Last Night.
George Michael Cohan was an American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer and theatrical producer.
Dennis Grimaldi is an American theatrical producer, director, and choreographer who has worked on Broadway, Off Broadway, television, and on London's West End.
Jeff Zinn is an American director and actor who has appeared in several films by Jay Craven, and in theatre, Zinn played Danny in the off-Broadway production of Sexual Perversity in Chicago by David Mamet, and Trety in the Broadway production of The Suicide by Nikolai Erdman.
Robin Saex Garbose is an American filmmaker and theatre director. Following an early career directing several off-Broadway plays and episodes of the shows Head of the Class and America's Most Wanted, Garbose embraced Orthodox Judaism and founded the Kol Neshama Performing Arts Conservatory, a summer camp and arts conservatory providing an artistic outlet for teenage Orthodox girls. With Kol Neshama, she has produced several projects, including the films A Light at Greytowers (2007), The Heart That Sings (2011), and Operation: Candlelight (2014). Her projects have been screened at the Museum of Tolerance, the Menachem Begin Heritage Center, the Jerusalem and Tel Aviv Cinematheques, and the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival.