THE MASTER BUILDER

The Creative Team

MAGGIE-KATE COLEMAN (BOOK, LYRICS)

wrote the book and lyrics for POP! and From a Childhood, written with Erato Kremmyda (Montclair State University, April 2009). Her work has been featured at The York Theatre Company’s NEO Cabaret (with composer Daniel Maté), Joe’s Pub, Barrington Stage, Laurie Beechman Theatre, Prospect Theater Company, Goodspeed Musicals, The Darlinghurst Theatre, New York Theatre Barn, and most recently at the National Alliance for Musical Theatre’s Songwriters Showcase.  Current projects include rainsong, a dance theatre piece with composer Erato Kremmyda and choreographer Clare Cook; and a full-length musical inspired by poems from Rainer Maria Rilke's Book of Images. Currently, she is a participant in New York City Opera’s Words First? Librettists Workshop. A graduate of Ithaca College and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Musical Theatre Writing program, she also trained at the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center.  Member: Dramatists Guild of America. Back to top.

ANNA K. JACOBS (MUSIC)

composed the scores for POP! and Stella and the Moon Man (Sydney Theatre Company/Theatre of Image/Australian Youth Orchestra, 2005), which won a Helpmann Award. Current projects include music for Harmony, Kansas, about a gay men’s chorus in rural Kansas, and lyrics for inclusion in Shooting from the Hip, a song cycle commissioned to open the 2011 Sydney Festival. Her music and lyrics have been featured at NAMT, Cutting-Edge Composers, Joe’s Pub, Ars Nova, The York Theatre, Theatre Row, The Laurie Beechman Theater, NYTB at the Duplex, Barrington Stage, Goodspeed Musicals, Don’t Tell Mama, The Darlinghurst Theatre, The Art Gallery of NSW, and many others. Anna is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Musical Theatre Writing program and the University of Sydney, and also studied composition at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. She a member of the Dramatists Guild of America and is represented by the Australian Music Centre and MorningStar Music Publishers. Originally from Sydney, Australia, she is now based in New York. www.annakjacobs.com. Back to top.

MARK BROKAW (DIRECTOR) 

New York credits include premieres by Lynda Barry, Douglas Carter Beane, Eric Bogosian, Keith Bunin, Lisa Kron, Lisa Loomer, Kenneth Lonergan, Craig Lucas, Eduardo Machado, Patrick Marber, Keith Reddin, Paula Vogel (including her Pulitzer Prize-winning How I Learned To Drive), and Wendy Wasserstein. Regional work includes the Sondheim Celebration at the Kennedy Center, Yale Rep, Guthrie Theater, Mark Taper Forum, Seattle Rep, Hartford Stage, Long Wharf, La Jolla Playhouse, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Huntington Theatre Company, Berkeley Rep, New York Stage & Film, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Sundance, and the O’Neill Conference. He has also directed at London’s Donmar Warehouse and Dublin’s Gate Theatre. Mark is the Artistic Director of the Yale Institute for Music Theatre and is an Associate Artist of the Roundabout Theatre. He is a graduate of Yale School of Drama. Back to top.

DENIS JONES (CHOREOGRAPHER)

recently choreographed Coraline (MCC Theater); High School Musical, The Full Monty, Meet Me in St. Louis (Paper Mill Playhouse); Pirates!, She Loves Me (Huntington Theatre/Williamstown Theatre Festival); The Boy Friend (Maltz Jupiter Theatre; Carbonell Award, Best Choreography); Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Thoroughly Modern Millie (Cape Playhouse); and Everyone Loves a Winner (Westport Country Playhouse). Denis was also the Associate Choreographer to Jerry Mitchell for Broadway’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Legally Blonde. Denis choreographed the Broadway concerts of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, On the Twentieth Century, and A Wonderful Life, as well as Charles Busch and Julie Halston Together on Broadway for The Actors Fund of America. Other credits include choreographing Sex and the City 2, The Kennedy Center Honors (CBS), Rosie Live (NBC), and national commercials for Staples and Glade. Denis was been proud to have served as the director of Broadway Bares, from 2005-2008, benefiting Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. Back to top.

LYNNE SHANKEL (MUSICAL DIRECTOR)

was music director/arranger for the Broadway production of Cry-Baby.  She was also the resident music supervisor for the Tony Award-winning revival of Company, and conducted the Grammy-nominated cast album.  She was music director/arranger for Off-Broadway's Altar Boyz, for which she received a Drama Desk nomination. Other Broadway credits include Beauty and the Beast; You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown; and The Lion King.  Off-Broadway: Vanities (orchestrations), The Thing About Men, Summer of '42 (music direction, vocal arrangements, orchestrations), The Cocoanuts, Milk and Honey.  Regional: Cry-Baby (La Jolla Playhouse); Party Come Here, The Opposite of Sex (Williamstown Theatre Festival), Vanities (Pasadena Playhouse, Theatreworks); Princesses (5th Avenue Theatre; Goodspeed at Chester); Tom Jones (North Shore Music Theatre); Summer of '42 (Goodspeed, Theatreworks); Twelfth Night (Long Wharf); Rough Crossing, and Camino Real (Hartford Stage). Back to top.

VALÉRIE THÉRÈSE BART (SCENIC DESIGNER)

is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where her credits include The Tempest (sets) and The Robbers (costumes). She will design the costumes for The Servant of Two Masters at Yale Rep this spring. Other costume design credits include Cabaret, The Wind in the Willows, James and the Giant Peach (Santa Ana College), Monster, One Flea Spare (Sight Unseen Theatre Group), Twelfth Night (Footprint on the Sun), Metamorphosis (UCLA Theatre). Film credits include The Commotion (Vanishing Pictures) and A Kiss on the Nose (USC Film). Valérie has also designed costumes for dance concerts at Santa Ana College, in which she danced herself, and has worked at South Coast Repertory Theatre, Pasadena Playhouse, A Noise Within Theatre, and The Colorado Shakespeare Festival. She holds a BA from the University of California, Los Angeles. www.valeriebart.com. Back to top.

YING SONG (COSTUME DESIGNER)

is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where her credits include costumes for last season's American Catnip (Carlotta Festival of New Plays) and Love's Labour's Lost. She received her BA in fashion design at Tsinghua University, China. In 2004, her fashion design was selected as one of the ten best creative works to represent China in the world finals of the prestigious International Competition of Young Fashion Designers. Back to top.

KEVIN ADAMS (LIGHTING DESIGNER)

most recently designed the lighting for the Green Day musical American Idiot (Berkeley Repertory Theatre) and Tony Kushner’s The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures (Guthrie Theater). Broadway credits include Next to Normal (Tony Award nomination), Hair (Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Award nominations), Spring Awakening (Tony Award; also London, Japan, Korea, Vienna, US tour), The 39 Steps (Tony and Drama Desk Awards), Passing Strange, Take Me Out, and Hedda Gabler with Kate Burton. He has designed solo shows by John Leguizamo, Eve Ensler, Anna Deveare Smith, and Eric Bogosian. Off-Broadway credits include Hedwig and the Angry Inch; and new work by Edward Albee, Christopher Durang, Richard Greenberg, Arthur Kopit, Terrence McNally, Charles Mee, Neil Simon, and Paula Vogel. Concerts: Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs, Audra McDonald, Patti LuPone, and Sandra Bernhard. He is the recipient of the 1999 and 2007 Lucille Lortel Awards and the 2002 OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence. www.ambermylar.com. Back to top.

DAVID BUDRIES (SOUND DESIGNER)

is the Sound Design Advisor at Yale Repertory Theatre, where his credits include Happy Now?, Trouble in Mind, Black Snow, and Safe in Hell, among many others.  His New York credits include Souvenir; Ah, Wilderness!; A Long Day’s Journey into Night; Our Country’s Good; Other People’s Money; Measure for Measure; And a Nightingale Sang; From the Mississippi Delta; Search and Destroy; End of the Day; Playland; and Marisol. His regional theatre credits include productions at Long Wharf, Hartford Stage, CENTERSTAGE, McCarter Theatre, Huntington Theatre Company, Dallas Theater Center, La Jolla Playhouse, Ford’s Theatre, South Coast Repertory, Trinity Repertory Company, and Alliance Theatre.  Mr. Budries chairs the Sound Design department at Yale School of Drama and is a freelance producer of music and radio programs. Back to top.

TAL YARDEN  (PROJECTION DESIGNER)

New York credits include Distracted (Roundabout Theatre Company); The Night Watcher (Primary Stages); Beast, Liberty City, The Misanthrope, Kaos (New York Theatre Workshop); Stephen Petronio's The King Is Dead, Not Garden; Reza Abdoh’s Tight Right White, Quotations from a Ruined City; Pavel Zustiak’s Le Petit Mort; Mark Wing-Davey’s Monkey in the Middle; as well as productions with John Jesurun, Jim Simpson, Mikel Rouse, DD Dorvillier, Mia Lawrence, Kyle de Camp, Conway and Pratt, and Margarita Guergue. International work includes Ivo van Hove’s productions of The Antonioni Project, Cries and Whispers, Angels in America, Shakespeare’s Roman Tragedies, Mourning Become Electra, Rent; and Wagner’s Ring Cycle. His original productions have been presented by Monkeytown, PS 122, Dance Theater Workshop, and Chashama. Commercial clients include Diesel, Puma, Levis, Heineken, Red Cross, Reem Acra, Armani, Visionaire, Smart Car, Timberland, and Ford Motors. He has also directed music videos and documentaries. Back to top.

BRUCE COUGHLIN (ORCHESTRATOR)

New York orchestration credits include Dolly Parton's 9 to 5 (Drama Desk Award nomination), Happiness (Lincoln Center Theater), Grey Gardens (Tony, Drama Desk Award nominations), The Light in the Piazza (co-orchestrator; Tony, Drama Desk Awards), Floyd Collins (OBIE Award; Drama Desk nomination), Urinetown (Tony, Drama Desk nominations), the Grammy Award-winning Annie Get Your Gun, Guys and Dolls (2009), The Wild Party, On the Town, The Sound of Music (Drama Desk nomination), Triumph of Love, Once Upon a Mattress, and The King and I. Other credits include Giant (Signature Theatre), Candide (National Theatre, London), Martin Guerre (Chicago), Children of Eden (Paper Mill Playhouse, cast recording), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (Stratford Festival), “Miss Baltimore Crabs” for the movie Hairspray, the opera Grapes of Wrath, and many others. He was principal arranger for Disney’s Fantasia 2000 and has worked with singers Audra McDonald, Kristin Chenoweth, Patti LuPone, Darius de Haas, among others. Back to top.

CATHERINE SHEEHY (DRAMATURG)

is Resident Dramaturg at Yale Rep and the Chair of Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism at Yale School of Drama.  Her most recent Yale Rep dramaturgy credits include Trouble in Mind and The King Stag (which she also co-adapted with Evan and Mike Yionoulis). Her adaptation of Pride and Prejudice was recently produced at Asolo Repertory Theatre and Dallas Theater Center. She has worked at the O’Neill Playwrights Conference, in New York and Ireland with the late Joseph Chaikin, at Baltimore’s CENTERSTAGE with Irene Lewis, and for four seasons as Festival Dramaturg at Shakespeare Santa Cruz.  She is a former associate editor of American Theatre and a former editor of Theater magazine. She received her doctorate from Yale in 1999 for her dissertation: If You Care to Blast for It: Excavating the Lost Comic Masterpieces of the American Canon. Back to top.

JENNA WOODS (STAGE MANAGER)

is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where her credits include Man=Man, Romeo and Juliet, Baal, and Grace, or the Art of Climbing. Previous Yale Rep credits include last season’s Notes from Underground. Most recently, she stage managed the workshop of POP! at the Yale Institute for Music Theatre. Jenna has toured with the national tours of The Music Man and Footloose (Props Supervisor) and the North American tour of Riverdance (Wardrobe Supervisor). Jenna holds a BFA in theater design from the University of Kansas. Back to top.