Yale Rep Announces Cast and Creative Team for POP!, World Premiere 11/27

Yale Repertory Theatre (James Bundy, Artistic Director; Victoria Nolan, Managing Director) announces complete casting and the creative team for the world premiere of POP!, a new musical with book and lyrics by Maggie-Kate Coleman and music by Anna K. Jacobs, directed by Mark Brokaw. POP! will play for 22 performances only, November 27-December 19. Opening Night is Thursday, December 3.

The cast of POP! includes Danny Binstock (Gerard), Randy Harrison (Andy Warhol), Doug Kreeger (Ondine), Leslie Kritzer (Valerie), Cristen Paige (Edie), Brian Charles Rooney (Candy), and Emily Swallow (Viva).

POP! will feature choreography by Denis Jones, musical direction by Lynne Shankel, sets by Valérie Thérèse Bart, costumes by Ying Song, lighting by Kevin Adams, sound by David Budries, projections by Tal Yarden, orchestrations by Bruce Coughlin, dramaturgy by Catherine Sheehy, and stage management by Jenna Woods.

Who shot Andy Warhol? The fabulous drag queen Candy Darling hosts a happening whodunit musical in which the famous-and infamous-denizens of Warhol's legendary Factory all have motives to pull the trigger. But the pop art icon unravels an even bigger mystery as he confronts not only the prime suspects, but also his art and his own greatest creation: himself.

DANNY BINSTOCK (GERARD) is a second-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where he most recently appeared as Dr. Dorn in The Seagull. His other theatre credits include Paradise Lost, Man in Love (Yale School of Drama); Bones in Basket, Language of Angels, Nijinsky's Last Dance (Yale Cabaret), as well as productions at the Signature Theatre, The Shakespeare Theatre, North Shore Music Theatre, and the New York Music Theatre Festival. He received his BFA in music theatre from the University of Michigan.

Randy Harrison (Andy Warhol) has appeared in New York on Broadway in Wicked and Off-Broadway in Craig Lucas's The Singing Forest (The Public Theater), Antony and Cleopatra (Theatre for a New Audience), Edward II (Red Bull Theater), and A Letter from Ethel Kennedy (Manhattan Class Company). His regional theatre credits include The Glass Menagerie (Guthrie Theater); A Midsummer Night's Dream (SITI Company); Ghosts, Waiting for Godot, and Amadeus (Berkshire Theatre Festival). His television work includes five seasons on Showtime's Queer as Folk.

Doug Kreeger (ONDINE) most recently appeared in Judas & Me (New York Musical Theatre Festival) and Rooms: A Rock Romance (Off-Broadway). His other credits include Kander & Ebb's The Visit opposite Chita Rivera (Signature Theatre); the Broadway revival of Les Misérables; international tours of Grease and Hair; the Off-Broadway production of Thrill Me: The Leopold and Loeb Story; Departure Lounge (The Public Theater); as well as productions at Arkansas Rep, Barrington Stage, Bay Street Theatre, GeVa Theatre, Metrostage, and The Old Globe. He appears on the cast albums of Rooms: A Rock Romance, Thrill Me: The Leopold and Loeb Story, and Hair: European Tour. Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, Doug attended the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. www.dougkreeger.com

Leslie Kritzer (VALERIE) Broadway credits include A Catered Affair (Drama Desk Award nomination), Legally Blonde (Clarence Derwent Award), Hairspray, and the upcoming Sondheim on Sondheim with Barbara Cook and Vanessa Williams. Off-Broadway and regional credits include Judas & Me (New York Musical Theatre Festival), Rooms: A Rock Romance (Outer Critics Circle Award nomination), On the Town (City Center Encores!), The Great American Trailer Park Musical (Drama Desk nomination), Leslie Kritzer Is Patti LuPone at Les Mouches (Joe's Pub, The Plush Room in San Francisco; Time Out New York Award), Bat Boy, Godspell, Broadway: Three Generations (Kennedy Center), Born Yesterday, the world premiere of Vanities, Urinetown (National Tour), Evita, and an acclaimed run as Fanny Brice in Funny Girl. She has performed at London's Royal Albert Hall as a guest soloist honoring Tim Rice and Alan Menken and can be heard on several cast recordings. Film and television credits include Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, 3LBS (CBS), and Jason and Jessica (HBO). www.youtube.com/lesliekritzer

Cristen Paige (EDIE) performed this role in the Yale Institute for Music Theatre workshop of POP! Her other theatre credits include How Now, Dow Jones (New York International Fringe Festival); Sarah Plain and Tall (Dallas Theater Center); Kander & Ebb's The Visit (Goodman Theatre, world premiere; Signature Theatre); the resident Chicago production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee; Cry-Baby (La Jolla Playhouse, directed by Mark Brokaw); the world premiere of Loving Repeating (About Face);Travesties, The Importance of Being Earnest, James Joyce's The Dead (Court Theatre); A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (Joseph Jefferson Award nomination), Honk!, Bye Bye Birdie, and You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown (Marriott Theatre); Dames at Sea (Joseph Jefferson Award nomination), Lucky Stiff (Drury Lane Oakbrook); Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz (Chicago Shakespeare); Into the Woods and The Taffetas (Peninsula Players). Ms. Paige received her BFA in acting from Boston University.

Brian Charles Rooney (CANDY) performed this role in the Yale Institute for Music Theatre and New York University workshops of POP! Other theatre credits include Lucy Brown in The Threepenny Opera (Roundabout Theatre Company); Camelot, New York Philharmonic (seen on PBS); Tony in West Side Story (International tour); The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber (North American tour); Dionne Salon in Bedbugs!!! (New York Musical Theatre Festival); Piers Gaveston in Edward the King (The Barrow Group); Homer in Floyd Collins (Actors' Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre); Younger Brother in Ragtime (White Plains Performing Arts Center); the title role in Batboy! The Musical; The Bully (Vital Theater Company); The Taxi Cabaret (Prospect Theatre Company); Becoming Tennessee (Eugene O'Neill Theater Center); and productions at Blumenthal Performing Arts Center, Pittsburg CLO, Paper Mill Playhouse, American Conservatory Theater, and Berkshire Theatre Festival, among others. He received his BA from Duke University and certificate in acting from American Conservatory Theater. www.briancharlesrooney.com

Emily Swallow (VIVA) has appeared in New York in the Broadway production of High Fidelity; Romantic Poetry (Manhattan Theatre Club); The Black Eyed (New York Theatre Workshop); Measure for Pleasure, Much Ado About Nothing (The Public Theater); Like Love (New York Musical Theatre Festival); and Orange Lemon Egg Canary (PS 122). Her regional theatre credits include A Midsummer Night's Dream (Guthrie Theater), Enchanted April (San Jose Rep), Metamorphoses (Pioneer Theatre), Measure for Pleasure (Sundance Theatre Institute). Her film and television credits include The Lucky Ones, Southland, Flight of the Conchords, Journeyman, Jericho, Medium, and Guiding Light. She received her MFA from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.

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; an adaptation of Ludwig Tieck's Der Blonde Eckbert; and a full-length musical inspired by poems from Rainer Maria Rilke's Book of Images. 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.

ANNA K. JACOBS (COMPOSER) wrote the music 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 Shooting from the Hip, a song cycle commissioned to open the 2010 Sydney Festival. Her music and lyrics have been featured at National Alliance for Musical Theatre, Joe's Pub, The York Theatre Company, Theatre Row, Laurie Beechman Theatre, NYTB at The Duplex, Barrington Stage Company, Goodspeed Musicals, Don't Tell Mama, The Darlinghurst Theatre, The Art Gallery of New South Wales, and many others. Anna received her MFA from NYU's Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program, and her B.Mus. (Honors I) from the University of Sydney, and she also studied composition at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. She is 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

Mark Brokaw (DIRECTOR) New York credits include After Miss Julie, Distracted, The Constant Wife, Suddenly Last Summer (Roundabout); Mouth to Mouth, This Is Our Youth (New Group); The Long Christmas Ride Home, Stranger, The Dying Gaul, How I Learned to Drive (Vineyard Theatre); Reckless (Manhattan Theatre Club/Second Stage Theatre); Lobby Hero (Playwrights Horizons); As Bees in Honey Drown (Drama Dept.); The Good Times are Killing Me (Second Stage); Old Money (Lincoln Center Theater); 2.5 Minute Ride (The Public Theater); and the musical Cry-Baby. Other work includes productions at Guthrie Theater, Mark Taper Forum, Seattle Rep, La Jolla Playhouse, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Huntington Theatre, Berkeley Rep, Hartford Stage, Long Wharf, 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. A graduate of Yale School of Drama, Mark is the Artistic Director of the Yale Institute for Music Theatre and is an Associate Artist of the Roundabout Theatre.

Denis Jones (CHOREOGRAPHER) served as associate choreographer on the Broadway productions of Legally Blonde and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and choreographed the Broadway concerts of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, A Wonderful Life, and On the Twentieth Century, as well as Legends starring Joan Collins and The Kennedy Center Honors Julie Harris Tribute. He directed Broadway Bares for three years, 2005-2007. As a performer, he has appeared on Broadway in Never Gonna Dance, Dreamgirls (Actors Fund benefit concert), The Full Monty¸ Little Me, Chicago, and Grease.

Lynne Shankel (MUSIC 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).

VALÉRIE THÉRÈSE BART (SCENIC DESIGNER) is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where her recent 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

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. Other recent credits include High School Musical at Middlesex Summer School Youth Theater. She received her BA from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, in 2004.

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

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.

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.

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 the Disney's Fantasia 2000 and has worked with singers Audra McDonald, Kristin Chenoweth, Patti LuPone, Darius de Haas, among others.

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.

JENNA WOODS (STAGE MANAGER) is a third-year Stage Management student at Yale School of Drama, where her credits include Man = Man, Romeo and Juliet, The Covering Skyline Is Nothing, Baal, and Grace, or The Art of Climbing. Most recently, she stage managed the workshop of POP! this past summer at the Yale Institute for Music Theatre. Jenna spent six years on several tours, including the national tour of The Music Man (props supervisor) and the North American tour of Riverdance (wardrobe supervisor). Jenna holds a BFA in Theater Design from the University of Kansas.

Tickets for POP! range from $35-67 and are available online at www.yalerep.org, by phone at (203) 432-1234, and in person at the Yale Rep Box Office (1120 Chapel Street, at York Street). Student, senior, and group rates are also available.  Tickets go on sale November 2. For a complete performance schedule and more information on POP! and additional productions, visit www.yalerep.org.

 

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