Valerie Wright (she/her)

THIRD SEASON

Performing: Broadway: Kimberly Akimbo; TUCK Everlasting; ELF; Annie Get Your Gun; Damn Yankees; Steel Pier; Sally Marr and Her Escorts; Song & Dance; Cats. Off-Broadway: Wanda’s World; The World Goes ‘Round; Showing Off. Helen Hayes Award nominations and Jefferson Award. Directing/Choreography: National Tour–ANNIE (Associate Director) Regional: Anne of Green Gables (Associate Director); ELF; Miracle on 34th Street; Beehive; HAIR; Priscilla, Queen of the Desert; Pajama Game; The Baker’s Wife; Fiddler On The Roof. 

Andrew Morrissey (he/him)

SIXTH SEASON

Andrew Morrissey is a NYC based pianist, award-winning music director, vocal coach and composer. Experience includes educational, community and semi-professional theatre in NH, NYC and the DMV area. A NH native, regional credits include Interlakes, Jean’s Playhouse, Winnipesaukee Playhouse and Plymouth State University, where he received a BA in Music. He has a MM in stage music composition from CUA, and his thesis project grew into a fully fledged staging of Lost In Wonderland with DC’s Pallas Theatre Collective. Current projects include a new musical based on Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray and another on the life of Rasputin. IG: @Andrewmorrisseymusic

CLAUDIA SHEAR

Broadway: SMELL OF THE KILL (Drama League Award), DIRTY BLONDE (Tony and Drama Desk nominations for Best Play and Best Actress; Drama League Award, Theatre World Award). London: DIRTY BLONDE, CHICAGO. Off-Broadway: BLOWN SIDEWAYS THROUGH LIFE (Obie Award, Drama Desk nomination), DIRTY BLONDE (NYTW). Television: ‘Blown Sideways Through Life,’ (Montreux Rose D’Or Prize).

James Lapine was born in 1949 in Mansfield, Ohio and lived there until his early teens, when his family moved to Stamford, Connecticut. He attended public schools before entering Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania where he majored in History. He went on to get an MFA in Design from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California.

After graduate school, he moved to New York City where he worked part-time as a waiter; a page and tour guide at NBC; a free-lance photographer and graphic designer; and an architectural preservationist for the Architectural League of NY. One of his free-lance jobs was designing the magazine of the Yale School of Drama, Yale/Theater, then edited by Rocco Landesman and Robert Marx. The dean of the School of Drama, Robert Brustein, offered Lapine a full-time job designing all of the printed materials for the School of Drama and the Yale Repertory Theatre as well as a faculty position teaching a course in advertising design.

While at Yale, his students urged him to direct a play during the annual January period when both faculty and students undertook a project outside of their areas of study or expertise. At their suggestion, Lapine directed a Gertrude Stein play, Photograph. The play was five acts, and just three pages in length. Assembling students and friends, the play was presented in New Haven and came to the attention of director Lee Breuer, who helped arrange for a small performance space in Soho to present the work for three weeks. The production was enthusiastically received and won Lapine an Obie award.

Lapine was approached to create a new piece for the Music-Theatre Group. He wrote and directed a workshop version of Twelve Dreams, a work inspired by a Jungian case history. The play was later presented at the Public Theatre and revived by Lincoln Center Theatre. Lapine eventually left the visual arts for a career in the theatre, where he has also written and directed the plays Table Settings, Luck, Pluck and Virtue, The Moment When, Fran’s Bed and Mrs. Miller Does Her Thing.

He has written the book for and directed Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, Passion and the multi-media revue Sondheim on Sondheim. He also directed Merrily We Roll Along as part of Encores! at New York City Center. With William Finn he has collaborated on March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland, later presented on Broadway as Falsettos, A New Brain, Muscle and Little Miss Sunshine at Second Stage Theatre.

On Broadway, he has also directed David Henry Hwang’s Golden Child, The Diary of Anne Frank, Michel Legrand’s Amour, and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. He directed Jenny Allen’s solo piece I Got Sick and Then I Got Better with Darren Katz. Lapine directed the 2012 Broadway revival of Annie. He co-produced and directed the HBO documentary Six By Sondheim. In 2014, Lincoln Center Theater produced his stage adaptation of the Moss Hart memoir Act One. Lapine has also directed several productions off-Broadway as well as three films.

He is the recipient of three Tony Awards, five Drama Desk Awards and the Pulitzer Prize. In 2011, he was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame. Lapine is a member of the Dramatist Guild Council and for the last twelve years has been a mentor for TDF’s Open Doors Program. He is also on the board of Ars Nova Theatre. He currently lives in New York City.

Concord Theatricals

Concord Theatricals is the world’s most significant theatrical company, comprising the catalogs of R&H Theatricals, Samuel French, Tams-Witmark and The Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection, plus dozens of new signings each year. Our unparalleled roster includes the work of Irving Berlin, Agatha Christie, George & Ira Gershwin, Marvin Hamlisch, Lorraine Hansberry, Kander & Ebb, Kitt & Yorkey, Ken Ludwig, Marlow & Moss, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Anaïs Mitchell, Dominique Morisseau, Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Thornton Wilder and August Wilson.

With offices in New York, London, and Berlin, Concord Theatricals is the only firm providing truly comprehensive services to the creators and producers of plays and musicals, including theatrical licensing, music publishing, script publishing, cast recording, and first-class production.