wrote their first shows together when both were still students attending Columbia University. Their breakthrough came with the score for the 1925 charity show, The Garrick Gaities, which introduced the classic valentine to their hometown, “Manhattan.” Over the next five years they wrote fifteen musical comedies for Broadway and London’s West End before relocating to Hollywood in 1930, where they contributed songs and wrote the scores for several movie musicals, most notably Love Me Tonight starring Maurice Chevalier. In 1935 they returned to New York to write the score for Billy Rose’s circus musical, Jumbo, launching a golden era that included On Your Toes, Babes in Arms, I’d Rather Be Right, I Married an Angel, The Boys from Syracuse, Too Many Girls, Higher and Higher, Pal Joey, and By Jupiter. In 1943 the partnership disbanded temporarily when Rodgers collaborated with Oscar Hammerstein II on Oklahoma!, but it resumed with a revision of their 1927 hit A Connecticut Yankee, which opened on November 17, 1943 – less than a week before Lorenz Hart’s death. For the next two decades, Richard Rodgers collaborated exclusively with Oscar Hammerstein II on such musicals as Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music. After Hammerstein’s death in 1960, Rodgers continued to write for the musical stage; his fortieth, and final, Broadway musical, I Remember Mama, opened on Broadway less than eight months before his death on December 30, 1979. In March of 1990, Richard Rodgers was posthumously awarded Broadway’s highest accolade when the 46th Street Theatre was renamed in his honor.
A Broadway actor, director, playwright and producer, George Abbott wrote and starred in his first comedy, Perfectly Harmless, while attending Harvard. In the 20’s/30’s, his plays were mostly comedies, including Twentieth Century, Three Men on a Horse, and Room Service. In the 30’s he also collaborated on this first musicals – Jumbo, On Your Toes, and The Boys from Syracuse. Over the next three decades, musical projects included Pal Joey, On the Town, The Pajama Game, Damn Yankees, and Fiorello!. From the 70’s onward, he directed several revivals of his own shows, including 1987’s Broadway, as well as new projects, such as a musical version of Twelfth Night. Among Mr. Abbott’s many awards are six Tonys (including one for lifetime achievement) and the 1959 Pulitzer Prize for directing and co-authoring Fiorello!.
was born in Chicago, educated at Northwestern University and received an MFA in Playwriting from the Yale Drama School. He is a recipient of a playwriting grant from the New York council on the Arts and of a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. His Off-Broadway hits include his acclaimed evening of one-acts, Mere Mortals & Others, and All in the Timing, which won the Outer Critics Circle Award and (excepting the works of Shakespeare) was the most produced play in America during the 1995-96 season. Mr. Ives adapted magician David Copperfield’s Dreams and Nightmares for Broadway, with other New York productions including Ancient History, Don Juan in Chicago, The Red Address, Sure Thing, Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread, and concert adaptations of Gershwin’s Strike Up the Band and Porter’s Du Barry was a Lady and Out of this World for City Center’s ENCORES! series. His work for television and film includes the Fox comedy series Urban Anxiety, the screenplays Mr. Sex and Pentagon Wars for HBO and Travels with My Aunt for Hallmark Entertainment. His most recent play, The Lives of the Saints, had its world premiere earlier this year at Philadelphia Theatre Center.
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 50 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.
directed last season’s REPRISE! production of Gershwin and Kaufman’s Of Thee I Sing. He recently directed the Showtime film, By Dawn’s Early Light, starring Richard Crenna, and the soon-to-be-released feature film Walking Across Egypt, starring Ellen Burstyn and Jonathan Taylor Thomas. Other films include Grace & Glorie starring Gena Rowlands and Diane Lane, The Summer of Ben Tyler starring James Woods, Harvest of Fire starring Patty Duke and Lolita Davidovich, Miracle in the Woods starring Della Reese and Meredith Baxter, A Friendship in Vienna with Jane Alexander and Ed Asner, and Poker Alice with Elizabeth Taylor. Mr. Seidelman has directed more than twenty Broadway and off-Broadway shows, including Tennessee Williams’s Vieux Carré, Clifford Odets’s Awake and Sing, and the New York City Opera’s revival of The Most Happy Fella. His regional theater credits include Richard Alfieri’s The Sisters at the Pasadena Playhouse, Kallman’s Gypsy Princess for Opera Pacific, The Threepenny Opera, Irma La Douce, The Glass Menagerie, Saint Joan, and Madama Butterfly for the Santa Barbara Grand Opera. He has won two Emmys, five Emmy nominations, three Christopher Awards, Peabody, Humanitas and Obie Awards, a Drama Desk Award nomination, and the Grand Prize from the New York Film and Television Festival.
Innovative, assertive, and always original, Travis Payne is the cutting edge of today’s entertainment industry with his award-winning dance routines. Famous for his choreography, he has created the steps that grabbed our attention for such artists as Michael & Janet Jackson, Madonna, Ricky Martin, Courtney Love, Brian Setzer, TLC, Jewel, Marilyn Manson, Sheryl Crow, Rod Stewart, Brandy, EnVogue, Lenny Kravitz, Diana Ross, and Paula Abdul. His work is most conspicuous in the medium of Music Video. However, he is just as often a major force behind some of today’s most popular Films, Tours, Television Events, and Commercials, having staged personalities the likes of Calista Flockhart, Jane Krakowski, Cindy Crawford, Jim Carrey, Neve Campbell, Matthew Perry, Dylan McDermott, Elizabeth Hurley, Halle Berry, Milla Jovovich, Jennifer Aniston, and Jennifer Lopez. He has been the four-time winner of the MTV Video Music Award for Best Choreography, as well the three-time recipient of the Music Video Producers Association Award for Outstanding Achievement In Choreography. He is the youngest inductee into the “Gallery Of Greats,” and has also received numerous other awards and nominations, including the Emmy, the American Choreography Award, and the SSDC Bob Fosse Award for Best Choreography.
This is Mr. Wissmann’s second design for REPRISE!, the first being last season’s production of Of Thee I Sing. He has designed for The Pasadena Playhouse, the La Mirada Performing Arts Center, The Westwood Playhouse, South Bay Civic Light Opera, The Tiffany, The Colony, The Odyssey, The Beverly Hills Playhouse, The Ivy Substation, The Matrix and Coconut Playhouse, Florida. He has also worked as Set Designer for the Rogue Music Theatre, Oregon, and is the Resident Set Designer for The Ensemble Theatre Company of Santa Barbara. He has received numerous Drama-Logue Awards and the NAACP Theatre Award for Set Design for the musical Sisterella. He resides in Pasadena with his wife Shelley, and their co-designs, Michael and Joanna.
REPRISE! credits include Bells Are Ringing, Sweeney Todd, starring Kelsey Grammer and Christine Baranski, The Threepenny Opera, starring Patrick Cassidy, and Wonderful Town, starring Lucie Arnaz and Stephanie Zimbalist. Additional recent credits include the Baltimore, Chicago and New York productions of Clue - The Musical, the New York Encores! production of Fiorello!, the Sacramento Light Opera productions of 1776, Cabaret and Brigadoon, and the Sacramento Theatre Company’s production of Pericles. Mr. Zyla is currently designing the Shakespeare LA production of As You Like It. Film credits include Nice Guys Sleep Alone, starring Sean O’Brien and Morgan Fairchild, Joe Brooks’ Sara’s Life Before It Became a Movie, and the PBS mini-series, They Came For Good. Prior to his career in theatre and film, Mr. Zyla’s name was on an international fashion label, carried in all major stores and featured in national and international press. In addition to designing for numerous celebrities, Mr. Zyla designed the wardrobe for First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton for her trip to the Far East.
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, and Bells Are Ringing. 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 two seasons of REPRISE! BROADWAY’S BEST IN CONCERT at UCLA. Other design work includes Play On! and Only a Kingdom at the Pasadena Playhouse, Masada at the Shubert Theatre in LA, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Singing in the Rain for Denver’s Arvada Center for the Arts, Forever Plaid, Blues in the Night, and Sweet & Hot at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami, The King and I, South Pacific, Company, and Into the Woods for the Long Beach Civic Light Opera. For television, Mr. Allen has worked on the 1998 Academy of Country Music Awards, the 56th Golden Globe Awards, and 14th Soap Opera Awards. As a mixer, he engineered Saturday Night at the Summit attended by Bill Clinton and the leaders of the G-7 countries, which featured Michael Bolton, Amy Grant, Crystal Gayle, Chuck Berry, Kool and the Gang, and Ronnie Spector. He has earned five LA Dramalogue Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Sound Design, and an Ovation Award nomination for Best Sound Design in a Large Musical.