Kerry Butler & More Hairspray Alums Set to Perform at Memorial Service for Librettist Mark O’Donnell

A memorial concert will be held in honor of Hairspray librettist and novelist Mark O’Donnell, who passed away in August at age 58, at Broadway’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. Tony-winning Hairspray writers Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman will perform alongside Tony nominee Kerry Butler and more members of the Hairspray cast. The memorial will be held on November 12.

Filmed tributes by original Hairspray film director John Waters and Jon Stewart (a student of O’Donnell's at NYU) will be presented during the memorial. Actors Mia Barron, David Greenspan, Jay O. Sanders and Christopher Evan Welch will also perform O’Donell’s one-act play There Shall Be No Bottom (a bad play for worse actors). Tony and Emmy Award winner David Hyde Pierce, Patricia Marx, Margo Lion, Jack O’Brien and Mark Brokaw are also scheduled to appear.

O’Donnell earned a Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for Hairspray, and earned an additional nomination for the Cry-Baby book (alongside co-writer Thomas Meehan). His additional stage works include Tots in Tinseltown, That’s It, Folks!, Fables For Friends, The Nice and the Nasty, Strangers on Earth, Vertigo Park and an adaptation of Scapin (co-written by Bill Irwin) and a translation of A Flea in Her Ear (co-written by Jean-Marie Besset). His novels include Getting Over Homer and Let Nothing You Dismay.