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Shellen Lubin (born April 4, 1953) is an American director, writer, performer, and teacher of theatre and music. She is best known for her philosophical musings about art and artists, found in her Monday Morning Quotesand articles in Backstage .[ citation needed ]
Shellen Lubin was born and raised in Valley Stream, New York, United States, by parents Samuel and Lora Lubin (née Bondrov), with her older sister Allene. [1] She graduated from Bennington College in 1974 with a triple major in Drama, Music and Dance. During her time at Bennington, she appeared in Miloš Forman's first film in America, 'Taking Off', [2] which featured two songs she wrote ("It's Sunday", which she performed, and "Feeling Sort Of Nice", performed by Karen Klugman). [1] After graduating, she moved to New York City to continue pursuing her career in music and theatre.
Her first major theater project after college was the musical Molly's Daughters, which she wrote for the American Jewish Theater in 1978. [3] It was produced twice, first at the Henry St. Settlement featuring Lisa Loomer and Jane Ives, then at the 92nd Street Y featuring Rosalind Harris and directed by Pamela Berlin. Afterwards, she spent a long time writing various plays and songs, most notably Imperfect Flowers for Gretchen Cryer and James “Jimmy” Wlcek, [4] and a number of songs with musician and composer Bill Dixon. [5] In 1983, WBAI-FM presented a one-hour special of her songs entitled Shellen Lubin, Songwriter/Singer. She also wrote and performed a one-woman musical about the experience of having her first child (entitled 'Mother/Child') at numerous cabaret spaces and theatres from 1986–88, including the Susan Bloch Theater and Interart Theatre.
In 1989, she began her professional theater directing career at the Producer's Club Theatre with LIARS, written by Elliot Meyers and starring James “Jimmy” Wlcek, Peter Sprague, Annie Hughes, and Joyce West. [1] She followed LIARS with Larry Myers’ Gene Tierney Moved Next Door in 1994 at Theater for the New City, with Cynthia Enfield, Rik Walter and Tom Fenaughty. [6]
Based on her years of work in theater and her growing Monday Morning Quotes mailing list, the theater publication, Backstage, commissioned Shellen Lubin to write seven cover pieces about the experience of living as an artist and working in the business of the Arts. She is the only person ever to have written for Back Stage from a philosophical perspective. [7]
Song and Dance is a musical comprising two acts, one told entirely in "Song" and one entirely in "Dance", tied together by a unifying love story.
Dorothy Fields was an American librettist and lyricist. She wrote more than 400 songs for Broadway musicals and films. Her best-known pieces include "The Way You Look Tonight" (1936), "A Fine Romance" (1936), "On the Sunny Side of the Street" (1930), "Don't Blame Me" (1948), "Pick Yourself Up" (1936), "I'm in the Mood for Love" (1935), "You Couldn't Be Cuter" (1938) and "Big Spender" (1966). Throughout her career, she collaborated with various influential figures in the American musical theater, including Jerome Kern, Cy Coleman, Irving Berlin, and Jimmy McHugh. Along with Ann Ronell, Dana Suesse, Bernice Petkere, and Kay Swift, she was one of the first successful Tin Pan Alley and Hollywood female songwriters.
Jason Robert Brown is an American musical theatre composer, lyricist, and playwright. Brown's music sensibility fuses pop-rock stylings with theatrical lyrics. He is the recipient of three Tony Awards for his work on Parade and The Bridges of Madison County.
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.
Barbara Cook was an American actress and singer who first came to prominence in the 1950s as the lead in the original Broadway musicals Plain and Fancy (1955), Candide (1956) and The Music Man (1957) among others, winning a Tony Award for the last. She continued performing mostly in theatre until the mid-1970s, when she began a second career as a cabaret and concert singer. She also made numerous recordings.
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Lucy Elizabeth Simon was an American singer and composer for the theatre and of popular songs. She recorded and performed as a singer and songwriter, and was known for the musicals The Secret Garden (1991) and Doctor Zhivago (2011).
Ellen Greene is an American actress and singer. She has had a long and varied career as a singer, particularly in cabaret, as an actress and singer in numerous stage productions, particularly musical theatre, as well as having performed in many films and television series. Her best-known roles are as Audrey in the original stage play and film adaptation of Little Shop of Horrors, and as Vivian Charles in the ABC series Pushing Daisies.
The Frogs is a musical "freely adapted" by Stephen Sondheim and Burt Shevelove from The Frogs, an Ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes. In the musical, Dionysos, despairing of the quality of living dramatists, travels to Hades to bring George Bernard Shaw back from the dead. William Shakespeare competes with Shaw for the title of best playwright, which he wins. Dionysos brings Shakespeare back to the world of the living in the hope that art can save civilization.
I Dood It is a 1943 American musical comedy film starring Red Skelton and Eleanor Powell, directed by Vincente Minnelli, and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The screenplay is by Fred Saidy and Sig Herzig and the film features Richard Ainley, Patricia Dane, Lena Horne, and Hazel Scott. John Hodiak plays a villain in this production, just his third movie role. Jimmy Dorsey and his Orchestra provide musical interludes.
Benjamin Rush "Rusty" Magee was an American comedian, actor and composer/lyricist for theatre, television, film and commercials.
Skyscraper is a musical that ran on Broadway in 1965 and 1966. The book was written by Peter Stone, and the music by Jimmy Van Heusen with lyrics by Sammy Cahn. Based on the 1945 Elmer Rice play Dream Girl, the Broadway production starred Julie Harris in her first musical.
Steven Sater is a Tony Award, Grammy Award, and Laurence Olivier Award-winning American poet, playwright, lyricist, television writer and screenwriter. He is best known for writing the book and lyrics for the Tony Award-winning 2006 Broadway musical Spring Awakening.
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Soara-Joye Ross, previously known as Joy Ross, Joye Ross, Joy E. T. Ross, and also known as Soara-Joyce Ross is an American actress and singer.
Jessica Molaskey is an American professional actress and singer. Jessica most recently appeared in the Off Broadway production of The Connector at the MCC Theater Company for which she was nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award and Outer Critics Circle Award. She has appeared in almost a dozen Broadway shows, including Sunday in the Park with George, Parade, Dream, Tommy, Les Miserables, Crazy for You, Chess, Oklahoma!, Cats, City of Angels, and the first national tour of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. In 2025, she's set to portray Miss Jane in the Broadway premiere of Floyd Collins opposite Jeremy Jordan.
Joseph Peter Philip Iconis is an American composer, lyricist, and playwright. He is best known for writing the music and lyrics to the Broadway musical Be More Chill, for which he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Original Score at the 2019 Tony Awards.
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Delightfully Dangerous is a 1945 American musical comedy film directed by Arthur Lubin showcasing teenage singer Jane Powell—in her second film on loan out to United Artists from MGM—and orchestra leader Morton Gould. The working titles of this film were Cinderella Goes to War, Reaching for the Stars and High Among the Stars. It was Frank Tashlin's first writing credit on a live action feature film.