About the author:
Since graduating from Columbia University’s MFA playwriting program, Jon Kern has found creative outlets on stage and on the small screen. Kern, who recently joined the writing staff of TV's The Simpsons, premiered his first off-Broadway play, We in Silence Hear a Whisper, with the Red Fern Theatre Company in 2011. This year, Kern won ...

About the author:
The name of Rain Pryor’s off-Broadway show, Fried Chicken and Latkes, hints at the two sides of her background as the daughter of legendary comedian Richard Pryor and Shelley Bonis, a Jewish actress and the second of Pryor’s five wives. Rain survived a chaotic childhood and became a successful actress (Head of the Class; Rude ...

About the author:
Rebecca Lenkiewicz has the rare distinction of having made the transition from nightclub table dancer to the first living female playwright produced at the National Theatre’s Olivier Theatre. In addition to that honored play, Her Naked Skin, Lenkiewicz is the author of The Night Season, Soho, The Lioness, Stars Over Kabuls and The Painter, among others ...

About the Author:
Warren Carlyle got his start as a dancer, but the British-born performer has since climbed the ladder from associate choreographer of The Producers to director and choreographer of Finian’s Rainbow, Hugh Jackman, Back on Broadway and now, Chaplin. In the new musical, composed by Christopher Curtis with a book by Curtis and Thomas Meehan, the director ...

About the author:
When Gerard Alessandrini created and co-starred in Forbidden Broadway in 1982, he had no clue that his clever sendup of Broadway shows and stars would endure for three decades. The original revue created a sensation with its spot-on parodies of stars such as Carol Channing and Julie Andrews and shows such as Annie. Just in time for ...

About the author:
Actress Jenn Harris has played the role of F.B.I. trainee Clarice Starling in the laugh-out-loud parody Silence! The Musical since its inception seven years ago. The musical, by Jon and Alan Kaplan and Hunter Bell, lovingly pokes fun at the Oscar-winning film Silence of the Lambs, infusing the plot of the suspenseful movie with unprintable ...

Scott Wittman won a Tony, a Grammy and a Drama Desk Award for his lyrics to the Tony-winning musical hit Hairspray, and he and his partner, Marc Shaiman, are the duo behind the music for the NBC drama Smash. But before the lights of Broadway and TV beckoned, Wittman directed cabaret concerts for divas like Bette Midler, Patti LuPone, Christine ...

About the author:
Susan Pourfar is no stranger to the off-Broadway stage, starring in Last Sunday in June, In the Wake, The Singing Forest, When the Rain Stops Falling, Swimming in the Shadows and more. After crash courses in sign language, the piano, British dialects and deaf culture, Pourfar earned critical acclaim and a 2012 Obie Award for her heart-wrenching ...

About the author:
Capathia Jenkins may not always have the biggest part in a musical, but this big-voiced diva only needs one number to stop the show. The actress first burst onto the Broadway scene in 1999 in The Civil War and soon found herself center stage in Caroline, or Change and Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me. In the latter ...

About the author:
If Todd Susman’s voice sounds familiar, it may be because he served as the unseen announcer on M*A*S*H for eight years. A Broadway vet of Hairspray as Wilbur Turnblad, Susman is currently part of the screamingly funny ensemble of the off-Broadway hit Old Jews Telling Jokes. After experiencing this laugh riot first hand ...