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Ira Weitzman is an American musical theatre dramaturge and producer. [1] [2] He was the creator and first director of the Musical Theater Program at Playwrights Horizons [3] from 1978 and at Lincoln Center Theater (LCT) [4] from 1992. He also served as associate producer of musical theater at both institutions.
Weitzman was involved in the development of the following productions:
From 2008 to the present, Weitzman has been the Mindich Musical Theater Producer at LCT, [6] [4] overseeing the development and production of the Tony Award-winning revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific as well as The King and I , Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady [7] and the 2016 Broadway revival of Finn and Lapine's Falsettos. During this period, he also developed new musicals including:
Weitzman produced the revival of Moss Hart and Irving Berlin's As Thousands Cheer for Drama Dept, was line producer and dramaturge for the first post-Broadway revival of Sondheim and Furth's Merrily We Roll Along directed by Lapine at the La Jolla Playhouse, and was the production coordinator for the world premiere of Into the Woods at the Old Globe.
As a concert producer, Weitzman was Artistic Director of WBAI-FM's Free Music Store, The Writers Cabaret at NY's West Bank Café under the auspices of Playwrights Horizons, the first Artistic Director of City Center's Encores! [8] and the inaugural producer of Lincoln Center's American Songbook concert series.
In 2009, Ira Weitzman received the Lucille Lortel Award for Sustained Excellence in Off-Broadway Theater. [9]
William Alan Finn is an American composer and lyricist. He is best known for his musicals, which include Falsettos, for which he won the 1992 Tony Awards for Best Original Score and Best Book of a Musical, A New Brain (1998), and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (2005).
John Weidman is an American librettist and television writer for Sesame Street. He has worked on stage musicals with Stephen Sondheim and Susan Stroman.
James Elliot Lapine is an American stage director, playwright, screenwriter, and librettist. He has won the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical three times, for Into the Woods, Falsettos, and Passion. He has frequently collaborated with Stephen Sondheim and William Finn.
Stephen Flaherty is an American composer of musical theatre and film. He works most often in collaboration with the lyricist/book writer Lynn Ahrens. They are best known for writing the Broadway musicals Ragtime, which was nominated for thirteen Tony Awards, two Grammy Awards, and won the Tony for Best Original Score; Once on This Island, which won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical, the Olivier Award for London's Best Musical, and was nominated for a Grammy Award and eight Tony Awards; and Seussical, which was nominated for the Grammy Award. Flaherty was also nominated for two Academy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards for his songs and song score for the animated film musical Anastasia.
Lynn Ahrens is an American writer and lyricist for the musical theatre, television and film. She has collaborated with Stephen Flaherty for many years. She won the Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, and Outer Critics Circle Award for the Broadway musical Ragtime. Together with Flaherty, she has written many musicals, including Lucky Stiff, My Favorite Year, Ragtime, Seussical, A Man of No Importance, Dessa Rose, The Glorious Ones, Rocky, Little Dancer and, recently on Broadway, Anastasia and Once on This Island.
Jerome Herbert "Chip" Zien is an American actor. He is best known for originating the lead role of the Baker in the original Broadway production of the musical Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim. He appeared in all of the "Marvin Trilogy" musicals by William Finn: In Trousers, March of the Falsettos, Falsettoland and Falsettos. In 2023, he returned to Broadway to critical acclaim in the lead role of Rabbi Josef Roman Cycowski in Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman’s Harmony.
Playwrights Horizons is a not-for-profit American Off-Broadway theater located in New York City dedicated to the support and development of contemporary American playwrights, composers, and lyricists, and to the production of their new work.
Susan P. Stroman is an American theatre director, choreographer, and performer. Her notable theater productions include Oklahoma!, The Music Man, Crazy for You, Contact, The Producers, The Frogs, The Scottsboro Boys, Bullets Over Broadway, POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive, and New York, New York.
Elegies is a song cycle by William Finn about the deaths of friends and family and is a response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Elegies premiered at Lincoln Center in 2003 and has been performed in many other venues.
Mary Testa is an American stage and film actress. She is a three-time Tony Award nominee, for performances in revivals of Leonard Bernstein's On the Town (1998), 42nd Street (2001) and Oklahoma (2019).
Scott David Frankel is an American composer.
Falsettos is a sung-through musical with a book by William Finn and James Lapine, and music and lyrics by Finn. The musical consists of March of the Falsettos (1981) and Falsettoland (1990), the last two installments in a trio of one-act musicals that premiered off-Broadway. The story centers on Marvin, who has left his wife to be with a male lover, Whizzer, and struggles to keep his family together. Much of the first act explores the impact his relationship with Whizzer has had on his family. The second act explores family dynamics that evolve as he and his ex-wife plan his son's bar mitzvah, which is complicated as Whizzer comes down with an early case of AIDS. Central to the musical are the themes of Jewish identity, gender roles, and gay life in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Lonny Price is an American director, actor, and writer, primarily in theatre. He is best known for his New York directing work, including Sunset Boulevard, Sweeney Todd, Company, and Sondheim! The Birthday Concert. As an actor, he is perhaps best known for his creation of the role of Charley Kringas in the Broadway musical Merrily We Roll Along, Neil Kellerman in Dirty Dancing, and Ronnie Crawford in The Muppets Take Manhattan.
David Thompson is an American writer, playwright, and producer. His notable theater productions include Chicago, The Scottsboro Boys, The Prince of Broadway, and New York, New York.
Graciela Daniele is an Argentine-American dancer, choreographer, and theatre director.
Barbara Walsh is an American musical theatre actress who has appeared in several prominent Broadway productions. Walsh is known for her Drama Desk Award and Tony Award nominated role as Trina in the original Broadway production of Falsettos, as well as her turn as Joanne in the 2006 Broadway Revival of Stephen Sondheim's musical Company.
Stafford Arima is a Canadian-born theatre director. Arima studied at York University in Toronto, where he was the recipient of the Dean's Prize for Excellence in Creative Work. He is a member of the SDC and CAEA. In April 2017, he became the artistic director of Theatre Calgary.
Michael Starobin is an American 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.
The Dramatists Guild Foundation (DGF) is a public charity. According to its website, its mission is "to aid and nurture writers for the theater; to fund non-profit theaters producing contemporary American works; and to heighten awareness, appreciation, and support of theater across the country."
Little Dancer is a musical with music by Stephen Flaherty and book and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, based on Edgar Degas' 1880 statue Little Dancer of Fourteen Years. The musical premiered at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. in 2014. The original production was directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman.