 | This article includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations .(December 2023) |
Norman L. Berman is an American theater composer and playwright.
| This article includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations .(December 2023) |
Norman L. Berman is an American theater composer and playwright.
Norman L. Berman served as composer-in-Residence at the celebrated Circle Repertory Company. He composed music scores for over 20 plays there ranging from premieres by Tennessee Williams, Lanford Wilson, Marsha Norman and Paul Zindel to Shakespearean and Chekhovian classics. At Circle Repertory Company he worked with various distinguished directors and actors including Marshall W. Mason, Lanford Wilson, William Hurt, Christopher Reeve, Judd Hirsch and Jeff Daniels.
Berman co-composed the score to the Broadway and off-Broadway productions of the 1979 musical play Strider . For the Broadway production, he was the first composer to be awarded the Drama Desk Award in the category of outstanding music in a play. He also served as orchestrator and musical director. Strider has subsequently been produced all over the world including regional theaters across the United States.
He received an Ace Award nomination for his score for the film Traveler's Rest , seen on Showtime Cable Network. Berman's other television scores have been heard on PBS, CBS Cable Television, ( Kennedy's Children ) and the Discovery Channel. He has also composed music for four mini-musicals with librettist, lyricist Abraham Tetenbaum for the educational touring shows produced by Enrichment Works.
For ten years Berman served as Composer-in-Residence for the classical repertory company, A Noise Within, where he composed scores for some 32 plays ranging from Shakespeare to Thornton Wilder.
Berman has been commissioned to compose music for many prominent regional theaters across the country including, New York Shakespeare Festival, Manhattan Theatre Club, Playwrights Horizons, Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York Theatre Workshop, Roundabout Theatre, Arena Stage, Folger Theater Company, St. Louis Repertory Company, GeVa Theater, Seattle Repertory Company, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Taper Two and many more. His score for the musical "Winter Shakers" was premiered by the Louisville Symphony Orchestra at the inaugural ceremonies at the Kentucky Center For The Performing Arts.
Berman was commissioned by the Chelsea Theatre Center, to create (with Betty Comden and Adolph Green) and co-direct By Bernstein , a musical revue premiering Leonard Bernstein's unheard songs from West Side Story , Candide , On The Town , Peter Pan and The Race to Urga .
For Manhattan Theatre Club, he conceived and directed the musical revue An Evening of Cole Porter, which premiered two dozen songs by Cole Porter. A new and improved version was subsequently produced by Circle Repertory Company as "Unsung Cole." It was lauded by the press and has been produced by many regional theaters across the country. It is published by Samuel French. [1]
Berman directed various stage productions for Manhattan Theatre Club, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Westchester Theatre Company and more. He created and directed the revue Patch, Patch, Patch , which premiered the songs of Alan Menken at the Laurie Beechman Theatre in New York City.
Lanford Wilson was an American playwright. His work, as described by The New York Times, was "earthy, realist, greatly admired [and] widely performed". Wilson helped to advance the off-off-Broadway theater movement with his earliest plays, which were first produced at the Caffe Cino beginning in 1964. He was one of the first playwrights to move from off-off-Broadway to off-Broadway, then Broadway and beyond.
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.
The Hot L Baltimore is a 1973 American play by Lanford Wilson set in the lobby of the Hotel Baltimore. The plot focuses on the residents of the decaying property, who are faced with eviction when the structure is condemned. The play draws its title from the hotel's neon marquee with a burned-out "e" that was never replaced.
Jeanine Tesori, known earlier in her career as Jeanine Levenson, is an American composer and musical arranger best known for her work in the theater. She is the most prolific and honored female theatrical composer in history, with five Broadway musicals and six Tony Award nominations. She won the 1999 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play for Nicholas Hytner's production of Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center, the 2004 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music for Caroline, or Change, the 2015 Tony Award for Best Original Score for Fun Home, making them the first female writing team to win that award, and the 2023 Tony Award for Best Original Score for Kimberly Akimbo. She was named a Pulitzer Prize for Drama finalist twice for Fun Home and Soft Power.
Martin Charnin was an American lyricist, writer, and theatre director. Charnin's best-known work is as conceiver, director, and lyricist of the musical Annie.
Craig Lucas is an American playwright, screenwriter, theatre director, musical actor, and film director.
David Lee Shire is an American songwriter and composer of stage musicals, film and television scores. Among his best known works are the motion picture soundtracks to The Big Bus, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, The Conversation, All the President's Men, and parts of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack such as "Manhattan Skyline". His other work includes the score of the 1985 film Return to Oz, and the stage musical scores of Baby, Big, Closer Than Ever, and Starting Here, Starting Now. Shire is married to actress Didi Conn.
The Circle Repertory Company, originally named the Circle Theater Company, was a theatre company in New York City that ran from 1969 to 1996. It was founded on July 14, 1969, in Manhattan, in a second floor loft at Broadway and 83rd Street by director Marshall W. Mason, playwright Lanford Wilson, director Rob Thirkield, and actress Tanya Berezin, all of whom were veterans of the Caffe Cino. The plan was to establish a pool of artists — actors, directors, playwrights and designers — who would work together in the creation of plays. In 1974, The New York Times critic Mel Gussow acclaimed Circle Rep as the "chief provider of new American plays."
Benjamin Rush "Rusty" Magee was an accomplished comedian, actor and composer/lyricist for theatre, television, film and commercials.
Marshall W. Mason is an American theater director, educator, and writer. Mason founded the Circle Repertory Company in New York City and was artistic director of the company for 18 years (1969–1987). He received an Obie Award for Sustained Achievement in 1983. In 2016, he received the Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theater.
Jimmy Roberts is an American composer for the musical theater as well as a pianist and entertainer. His musical scores include: I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change (1996) and The Thing About Men (2003), both with book and lyrics by Joe DiPietro. He is a 1977 graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with the noted pianist, Constance Keene.
James Valcq is an American musical theatre composer, lyricist, and librettist, as well as an actor and arts administrator. He contributed to various theatrical works.
Mark Berman is a New York City pianist, composer, producer, conductor, music director and arranger.
Paul Howard Gordon is an American composer of popular songs and music for the theatre.
Dave Malloy is an American composer, playwright, lyricist, singer, orchestrator, and actor. He has written several theatrical works, often based on classic works of literature. His most well known work is the Tony Award winning Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, an electropop opera based on War and Peace. His other works include Moby-Dick, an adaptation of Herman Melville's classic novel; Octet, a chamber choir musical about internet addiction; Preludes, a musical fantasia set in the mind of romantic composer Sergei Rachmaninoff; and Ghost Quartet, a song cycle about "love, death, and whiskey".
Richard Frankel is an American theatrical producer and general manager who has been producing and managing on and off-Broadway since 1970. He has been working in partnership with Tom Viertel, Steve Baruch, and Marc Routh since 1985.
Ludlow Fair is a one-act play by American playwright Lanford Wilson. It was first produced at Caffe Cino in 1965, a coffeehouse and theatre founded by Joe Cino, a pioneer of the Off-Off-Broadway theatre movement.
Tanya Berezin was an American actress, co-founder and an artistic director of Circle Repertory Company in New York City, and educator. She performed on Broadway and Off-Broadway, and also appeared in a number of films and television series.
Nell Benjamin is a lyricist, writer, and composer noted for her work in musical theatre. With her husband and frequent collaborator Laurence O'Keefe, she won the Laurence Olivier Award for writing Legally Blonde in 2011. And in 2007, she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Original Score for Legally Blonde, and then again in 2018 for her lyrics for Mean Girls.
Michael Warren Powell was an American artistic director, director, actor and designer involved in the Off-Off-Broadway movement, Off-Broadway and in the development of new American plays.
