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Stephen and Scott Schwartz Take Part in D.C. My Ántonia Reading, Jan. 30
By: BWW News Desk Jan. 24, 2006
The younger Schwartz, who is best known as a director, wrote the adaptation of My Ántonia as a play with music. The reading will also boast the presence of Carole Prandis, who is the mother of Scott Schwartz; she will play the Grandmother. The Wicked songwriter himself will accompany the actors on piano. David Muse, who is the associate director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company, will helm the piece.
"Cather's classic chronicles Bohemian immigrants and others on the Nebraska prairie in the 1880s and focuses on harsh realities and missed opportunities and romance as seen through the lives of Jim Burden, a young American boy, and Ántonia (An-toe-NEE-ah), a young girl from Bohemia," according to press notes. Cather penned the novel in 1918.
Scott Schwartz has collected numerous Broadway and off-Broadway credits as a director. In the former category are Golda's Balcony and Jane Eyre, while he has directed off-Broadway shows such as The Foreigner, Miss Julie, No Way to Treat a Lady, tick, tick...BOOM!, and Bat Boy: The Musical. He earned Drama Desk Award nominations for the last two shows.
Stephen Schwartz, whose Wicked is the biggest musical hit on Broadway, wrote the music and lyrics for Godspell, Pippin, The Magic Show, The Baker's Wife, Children of Eden, and Captain Louie, and contributed his songs to the score of Working; he also collaborated with Charles Strouse on Rags. He has also written for the big screen, with a number of scores for animated films; he wrote music and lyrics for DreamWorks' The Prince of Egypt and the TV musical Geppetto, as well as lyrics for the Disney films Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (both with Alan Menken). Schwartz, whose two solo CDs Relucant Pilgrim and Uncharted Territory feature him performing his own songs, has received three each of the Academy Awards, the Grammy Awards and the Drama Desk Awards.
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