With a life that spanned more than 100 years, and a catalogue that boasted over 1000 songs, Irving Berlin (1888-1989) produced an outpouring of ballads, dance numbers, novelty tunes, and love songs that defined American popular song for much of the century. A sampling includes “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” “White Christmas,” “Always,” “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” “Cheek to Cheek,” “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” and his beloved paean “God Bless America.” He wrote seventeen Broadway musicals, including The Cocoanuts, As Thousands Cheer, Louisiana Purchase, Mister President, and the phenomenally successful Annie Get Your Gun. His Hollywood movie musical scores include Top Hat, Holiday Inn, Easter Parade, White Christmas, and There’s No Business Like Show Business. Among his many awards were a special Tony Award (1963) and the Academy Award for Best Song of the Year for “White Christmas” in 1942. Mr. Berlin was also a co-founder of ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), and, with producer Sam Harris, builder of his own Broadway Theatre, The Music Box. Irving Berlin died on September 22, 1989, at the age of 101.
The Lindsay and Crouse partnership stands today as the longest collaboration of any writers in theatrical history, lasting for more than 28 years. Their hits include The Sound of Music (with a score by Rodgers and Hammerstein); Anything Goes and Red, Hot and Blue (with scores by Cole Porter); Call Me Madam (score by Irving Berlin), the long-running play Life With Father (which originally starred co-author Lindsay); the Pulitzer Prize winning The State of the Union; and Happy Hunting. Their producing credits include The Hasty Heart, Detective Story, and Arsenic and Old Lace.
most recently directed the World Stage Premiere of Irving Berlin’s White Christmas at the St. Louis Muny, where he also directed 1776, Annie, Peter Pan, and co-directed George M! He directed the Broadway revival of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and for City Center’s ENCORES! series in New York, Call Me Madam starring Tyne Daly. Mr. Repole was proud to direct the 1995 Easter Bonnet Competition on Broadway which raised over one million dollars for AIDS research. Regional and touring credits include Carousel, Fiorello!, Zorba starring Anthony Quinn, and A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine at Marriot’s Lincolnshire Theatre which earned him a nomination for the prestigious Joseph Jefferson Award. Other directorial credits include Le Pericole starring Joel Grey and Angelina Reaux at the San Antonio Arts Festival and Animal Crackers at the Goodspeed Opera House. He has also conceived and directed concerts for the Kennedy Center, the New Jersey Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra and the 92nd Street Y, featuring such stars as Marilyn Horne, Barbara Cook, Art Garfunkle and Burl Ives. Mr. Repole has also starred on Broadway in Doubles, Whoopie!, and Very Good Eddie, winning a Theatre World Award and earning Tony and Drama Desk nominations for his performances.
wrote the book and lyrics for the critically acclaimed Broadway musical Side Show, for which he and composer Henry Krieger received a Tony nomination for Best Score. He wrote the book and lyrics for the long-running Off-Broadway musical Pageant, which played this past summer in London’s West End under his direction. He authored the book and lyrics for Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens, directing it Off-Broadway and in London’s West End and Fringe. His other credits as Bookwriter/Lyricist include Off-Broadway’s Fortune and The Texas Chainsaw Musical (co-author) and Family Style (Minneapolis). He co-adapted (with Charles Repole) the book for Call Me Madam starring Tyne Daly for City Center’s ENCORES! series in New York City. His credits as Lyricist include the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular, Gay Games IV and Jade & Sarsaparilla. His directing credits include Generation X and Monteith and Rand. His latest musical, Everything’s Ducky, which features music by Henry Krieger, premiered last season at Theatreworks, and is slated for three productions this season.
was orchestrator/conductor on Broadway for Noel Coward’s Sail Away and Richard Rodger’s No Strings; he created orchestrations for Jule Styne’s Hallelujah Baby and more recently Tommy Tune’s Grand Hotel; on records Matz has arranged, conducted and produced albums for Rosemary Clooney, Tony Bennett, Dionne Warwick, Melissa Manchester, Kiri te Kanawa, Nancy La Mott, Barbra Streisand and most recently he arranged Barbara Cook’s recordings of songs with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein. On TV, Peter was arranger/conductor for Carol Burnett’s long-running series, and composed scores for more than fifty TV movies, as well as many feature films (Sidney Lumet’s Bye Bye Braverman is still Matz’s favorite). Peter and his wife, actress/singer/psychotherapist Marilynn Lovell are active fund-raisers for APLA, Shanti Foundation, Aid for AIDS and other local AIDS organizations, as well as the GMHC in New York; the CD of their show “Say It With Music”, recorded live in New York, is available on the “Original Cast Records” label. He has been the musical director of all the REPRISE! musicals since its inception.
Last New York production - Director of the 1998 Lincoln Center all-star version of Sweet Charity. A producer on the original Charity starring Gwen Verdon, and produced and/or directed the Charity’s of Chita Rivera, Juliet Prowse, and Carol Lawrence. A producer for Angela Lansbury’s original Mame. Directed her in three additional tours, plus the Mame’s of Ann Miller, Janis Paige, Susan Hayward, Jo Anne Worley and Jane Russell. Staged the 1990 The Unsinkable Molly Brown tour with Debbie Reynolds. In New York presented Shirley Jones in Maggie Flynn, and produced and directed the Town Hall versions of She Loves Me starring Madeline Kahn, Rita Moreno and Barry Bostwick, and Richard Kiley’s Knickerbocker Holiday. Produced or directed 140 productions on tour, including Lana Turner’s Forty Carats debut, Patricia Morison’s Pal Joey, Lois Nettleton’s Cole, Della Reese’s Same Time, Next Year and An Evening with George Burns and Carol Channing. Directed over 400 television episodics, including The Cosby Show, The Facts of Life, Bosom Buddies, Soap, Benson, The Wayans Brother, and Jay Leno, Bob Hope, Tonight Show specials and Gabe Kaplan’s HBO Groucho. He’s hosted cabarets at his home for Aid for AIDS, presenting Barbara Cook, Rosemary Clooney, Lanie Kazan, Nancy Dussault, Jerry Herman and Karen Morrow, Julie Wilson, Andrea Marcovicci and other musical stars.
During the past thirty years, Mr. Johnson recreated numerous productions of Jerry Robbins’ original West Side Story all over the world. He has had a long relationship with Mel Brooks, beginning with the famous (or infamous) “Springtime for Hitler” number in The Producers. He also choreographed Blazing Saddles; Young Frankenstein; High Anxiety; History of the World, Part I; and Dracula, Dead and Loving It. He directed the film To Be or Not to Be, starring Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft. For the past twenty years, he has directed and choreographed all of Shirley MacLaine’s live appearances. He has also staged shows and choreographed for Ann-Margret, Chita Rivera, Ann Reinking, Tommy Tune, Leslie Uggams, Bernadette Peters and Peter Allen. His many television specials have earned him three Emmy Awards and six nominations. He received a Tony nomination for Legs Diamond on Broadway. He has also been nominated for an American Choreography Award for The Gap/West Side Story commercials. He is also on the boards of directors of the Academy of Dance on Film and the Professional Dancers Society. He is a member of the American Choreography Awards and the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers.
has designed over 250 shows for theatre and television. His stage credits include Comedy Tonight and Waiting in the Wings on Broadway, Jazz Leggs in Berlin, Jubilee! at Bally’s Grand in Las Vegas, Hello Hollywood at the MGM Grand in Reno; Mark Taper Forum productions of Rosebloom, The Dance Next Door, The Moths, The Golden Fleece and Private, Private; the Loretto Hilton Theatre (St. Louis) productions of The Time of Your Life, The Miser and The Caucasian Chalk Circle; the Kennedy Center productions of Pepito’s Story, Brothers of the Knight, and most recently Soul Possessed directed by Debbie Allen and starring Patti LaBelle, and My Favorite Broadway at Carnegie Hall directed by Scott Ellis. His credits include sets for Cher, Diana Ross, Martha Graham, Michael Jackson, Bea Arthur, Liza Minnelli, Ann-Margaret, Elton John, Princess Grace, Barbra Streisand, Madonna and Elvis. He created set designs for all the American Music Awards shows, eleven American Film Institute Salutes, six Academy Award shows, ten Kennedy Center Honors, two Tony Awards, and a Night of 100 Stars. He is the recipient of three Emmy Awards and eleven nominations, and the Hoffman Scholar Chair from Florida State University. He received an M.F.A. in theatre design from Yale University.
Over 100 Broadway shows, including the original Auntie Mame with Rosalind Russell, Twentieth Century with Gloria Swanson, and many productions of The Tea House of the August Moon (George Jean Nathan Award). He handpainted all of the costumes designed by Marc Chagall for the ballet Firebird in 1947, which established him in the world of costume design. A favorite designer of Tennessee Williams, he designed the original Night of the Iguana with Bette Davis and The Slapstick Tragedies with Zöe Cauldwell (Maharam Award, 1967). In 1998 he designed The Sunshine Boys for National Actors Theatre. Among the 62 Hallmark Hall of Fame productions he designed was The Magnificent Yankee starring Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, which marked the first time the Academy honored a designer in the field of costume design. A long-time favorite of Katherine Hepburn, he designed costumes for her last six films.
has enjoyed creating lighting for many varied productions and architectural spaces. For REPRISE!, Tom has designed Finian’s Rainbow, The Pajama Game, The Threepenny Opera, Of Thee I Sing, Sweeney Todd, Bells Are Ringing, The Boys From Syracuse, and Fiorello! He has designed over 75 productions for South Coast Repertory and shows for the Mark Taper Forum, International City Theatre, and The Palm Springs Follies. His designs can be seen at theme parks in 6 different countries including Universal Studios Hollywood, Universal’s Islands of Adventure Orlando, Warner Bros. MovieWorld, Paramount’s Star Trek World Tour, and Knott’s Berry Farm. His architectural lighting can be seen at Santa Monica Place, South Coast Plaza Mall, Orange County Performing Arts Center, the Los Angeles Music Center and many other shopping malls, restaurants, churches, residences and Las Vegas casinos and hotels. Other professional associations include the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and Sacramento Music Theatre. Mr. Ruzika is also head of the Graduate Lighting Design Program at U.C. Irvine.
has designed over 70 theatrical shows, including Measure for Measure, Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Cinderella at the Ahmanson, First Picture Show at the Taper, and the first three seasons of REPRISE! Other work includes Play On, and Only A Kingdom (Pasadena Playhouse); Masada (Shubert Theatre in LA); Joseph…, and Singing in the Rain (Denver’s Arvada Center for the Arts); Forever Plaid, and Blues in the Night, (Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami); and The King and I, South Pacific, and Into the Woods (Long Beach CLO). For television Mr. Allen assisted in the sound system design for the 1998 Academy of Country Music Awards with Emmy Award winning sound designer Bruce Burns, and equalized the sound at the 56th Golden Globe Awards and 14th Soap Opera Awards. As a mixer he just completed 8 months as Production Sound Engineer with the national tour of Titanic, and last year he engineered the gala production Saturday Night at the Summit attended by Bill Clinton and the leaders of the G-7 countries. He won the 1999 L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award for Cinderella, five L.A. Drama-Logue Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Sound Design, and an Ovation Award nomination for Best Sound Design in a Large Musical.