Rising singer-songwriter and Sire/Warner Bros. recording artist Regina Spektor will join playwright / director Tina Landau (Floyd Collins) and lyricist Michael Korie (Grey Gardens) to create the new musical BEAUTY, to be produced by Elephant Eye Theatrical (Stuart Oken, Michael Leavitt, Five Cent Productions), aiming for the 2011-12 Broadway season, following an out-of-town tryout to be announced. Landau will write the book and direct; Spektor the music, and Korie the lyrics.
An expansion of Landau's 2002 acclaimed one-act play produced by the La Jolla Playhouse, BEAUTY uses the 1812 Grimm fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty" as a jumping off point for a contemporary and hauntingly provocative story of beauty lost and beauty found.
REGINA SPEKTOR (Music). Since emerging on the NYC café circuit in 2001, this Russian-born, Bronx-bred artist has been hailed as a truly special talent. With an uninhibited imagination and acute sense of detail both in music and words, Spektor has gone from practicing on an out of tune piano in the basement of her local synagogue to hypnotizing small crowds in NYC's lower East Side to selling out 4,000 capacity venues worldwide. Continuing to showcase her amazing ability to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary with her unique and provocative vocal style and prodigious piano skills garnered through years of classical training, Spektor recently released her latest album "far," to an overwhelming response from both fans and critics and it debuted at #3 on the Billboard Top 200. "far" is the follow up to Spektor's breakthrough album "Begin To Hope" which spent 5 weeks in a row at #1 on the Billboard new artists chart before moving to #20 on the Billboard Top 100 and selling 1 million copies worldwide (Gold or Platinum in 7 countries).Regina will appear on Saturday Night Live on October 10th and will headline Radio City Music Hall on October 14th.
Michael Korie (Lyrics) was nominated for the Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards as lyricist for Grey Gardens, composed by Scott Frankel with a book by Doug Wright. Also with composer Frankel, Korie created lyrics to Happiness, an original musical with book by John Weidman produced by Lincoln Center Theater. Korie and Frankel's upcoming musical is Finding Neverland, with book by Allan Knee and direction by Rob Ashford, being produced by Bob and Harvey Weinstein. Korie wrote the libretto to composer Ricky Ian Gordon's The Grapes of Wrath which premiered at Minnesota Opera followed by productions at Los Angeles Disney Concert Hall, Utah Opera and Pittsburgh Opera. In Spring, 2010, it will receive its New York concert premiere at Carnegie Hall. Korie's libretto to The Garden of the Finzi Continis, based on the novel by Bassini, with music by Ricky Ian Gordon, premieres at Minnesota Opera in 2011. Korie are wrote the libretto to composer StewArt Wallace's Harvey Milk (San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, New York City Opera).
Tina Landau (Book/Direction) is currently directing the Broadway production of Tracy Letts' Superior Donuts. She is a writer and director whose original pieces include the plays Space (NYSF/Public, Mark Taper Forum, Steppenwolf), Theatrical Essays (Steppenwolf), 1969 (Humana Festival), Beauty (La Jolla Playhouse) and Stonewall (En Garde Arts), as well as the musicals Floyd Collins with composer Adam Guettel (Playwrights Horizons, Goodman, Old Globe, Prince Music Theater) and Dream True with composer Ricky Ian Gordon (Vineyard Theater in NYC). Tina's other directing credits include Tarell McCraney's Wig Out! (Vineyard Theater) and In the Red and Brown Water (Public, McCarter, Alliance), Chuck Mee's Iphigenia 2.0 (Signature Theater in NYC), A Midsummer Night's Dream (McCarter, Papermill) and Mary Rose (Vineyard). Tina is an ensemble member of Steppenwolf Theater Company where her productions include Superior Donuts, The Tempest, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Cherry Orchard, Time of Your Life (also Seattle Rep., ACT), Ballad of Little Jo, Berlin Circle and Time to Burn. Tina's upcoming projects include Tarell McCraney's Brother/Sister Plays at Steppenwolf and Ricky Ian Gordon's Sycamore Trees at the Signature Theater.
