Carnegie Hall Gathers Rapp, Sheik, Miranda and More for 'Revival' Panel

By: Sep. 29, 2008
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On Monday, October 6 at 8:00 p.m. in Zankel Hall, The Carnegie Hall Notables host REVIVAL: Broadway’s Next Act, a panel discussion focusing on the fresh approach that composers have recently introduced to Broadway, attracting audiences through a new range of media, from YouTube to MTV. The discussion will be moderated by Actress Ana Gasteyer and Panelists include Grammy- and Tony Award-winning composer Duncan Sheik; actor, lyricist, and Tony Award-winning composer Lin-Manuel Miranda; film director, choreographer, and executive producer Adam Shankman; Broadway director and choreographer Jerry Mitchell; and actor and author-songwriter Anthony Rapp. Duncan Sheik, Anthony Rapp, and Lin-Maneul Miranda are scheduled to give a special performance as part of the panel event in Zankel Hall. Immediately following the panel discussion, guests are invited to attend an exclusive afterparty at The Russian Team Room sponsored by Heavy Water Vodka at 9:30 p.m.

REVIVAL: Broadway’s Next Act is one of many events specifically created by The Notables, Carnegie Hall’s membership program for music enthusiasts in their 20s and 30s. The October 6 event is free for Notables members. Tickets for non-members, priced at $75 each, are also available. For ticket information, please call 212-903-9734 or email notables@carnegiehall.org. Event information is also available by visiting www.carnegiehall.org/notables. This evening is generously underwritten by Pia and James Zankel.

About the Panel
Actress Ana Gasteyer (Wicked, The Threepenny Opera, and Saturday Night Live) recently received rave reviews for her starring role as Fosca in Gary Griffin's production of Sondheim's Passion at The Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Prior to that she earned raves as Elphaba in Wicked in New York City on Broadway and in Chicago. Additional Broadway credits include The Threepenny Opera (with Alan Cumming and Jim Dale), The Rocky Horror Show as well as off-Broadway and regional productions of Kimberly Akimbo (Manhattan Theater Club), Roulette, The Vagina Monologues, Cinderella (New York City Opera), Fanny Brice in Funny Girl (Pittsburgh CLO) and Mary Zimmerman’s The Notebooks of Leonardo DaVinci. Film credits include Reefer Madness, Mean Girls, What Women Want, Dick, What's the Worst That Could Happen, The Women, and the upcoming feature Dare. Ms. Gasteyer is a former member of the Los Angeles comedy troupe The Groundlings and she spent six seasons on Saturday Night Live. Additional television credits include: Frasier, Just Shoot Me, 3rd Rock From the Sun, Seinfeld, and Law & Order. She has also guest hosted on The Late Late Show and The Rosie O’Donnell Show. Recordings include the Grammy-nominated Hair and the soundtrack to Reefer Madness. Ms. Gasteyer continues to perform her musical Let It Rip! across the country.

Actor, lyricist, and Tony Award-winning composer Lin-Manuel Miranda is the star, composer, and lyricist of In The Heights, Broadway's 2008 Tony Award-winner for Best Musical, Best Score, Best Orchestration, and Best Choreography. Lin-Manuel also received a Tony nomination for Best Leading Actor in a Musical. Additionally, In The Heights won the Lucille Lortel Award and Outer Critic's Circle Award for Best Musical and Lin-Manuel received an Obie Award for Outstanding Music and Lyrics for the show. As an actor, Lin-Manuel received a 2007 Theater World Award for Outstanding Debut Performance and the 2007 Clarence Derwent Award for Most Promising Male Performance. He also received the ASCAP Foundation's Richard Rodgers New Horizons Award in 2007 and a Medal of Honor from the National Arts Club in 2008. Lin-Manuel is a co-founder and member of Freestyle Love Supreme, a popular hip-hop improv group that performs regularly in New York City. The group has also toured the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, as well as the Aspen, Melbourne, and Montreal Comedy Festivals.

Director and choreographer Jerry Mitchell made his Broadway debut directing the musical Legally Blonde, for which he also served as choreographer, and was nominated for both Tony and Drama Desk Awards for choreography and a Drama Desk Award for direction. He has received accolades and awards for the choreography he created for the 2005 Tony Award-winning revival of La Cage Aux Folles, as well as Broadway productions of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels; Hairspray; The Full Monty; The Rocky Horror Show; You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown; Hedwig and the Angry Inch; and the revival of Gypsy, starring Bernadette Peters, among others. Mitchell began his choreography career as associate choreographer to Michael Bennett on Scandal and Jerome Robbins on Jerome Robbins' Broadway. For his choreography of The Drew Carey Show Mitchell received an Emmy-nomination. His feature film work includes In and Out, Camp, Drop Dead Gorgeous, and Scent of a Woman. For television, he is host of Bravo’s Step It Up and Dance and director/choreographer of MTV’s Legally Blonde—The Search for Elle Woods. Mitchell proudly conceives, directs, and choreographs Broadway Bares, a burlesque comedy performed annually for the charity Broadway Cares. Future projects include choreographing Phantom of the Opera 2 and Catch Me If You Can and directing and choreographing Peepshow, a Las Vegas extravaganza production show as well as a Broadway musical based on the film, Mad Hot Ballroom.

Anthony Rapp has been acting and singing professionally since he was nine years old. Rapp is best known for originating the role of Mark Cohen in Jonathan Larson’s Tony Award-winning rock opera, Rent. He went on to reprise this role in Chris Columbus’ film version opposite other members of the original cast. Rapp recently wrote a book entitled Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical Rent (Simon & Schuster) about his struggle to balance the demands of life in the theatre with his responsibility to his family during his mother’s battle with cancer. He recently adapted the book into a one-man show entitled “Without You” which he has performed throughout the country. Recently he appeared in Second Stage Theatre’s Some Americans Abroad and his Broadway credits include the revival of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown and John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation. Rapp made his Broadway debut in Precious Sons with Judith Ivey and Ed Harris, for which he received an Outer Critics Circle Award and a Drama Desk nomination. Rapp’s film credits include Adventures in Babysitting, School Ties, Dazed and Confused, Six Degrees of Separation, Man of the Century, David Searching, Road Trip, and A Beautiful Mind.

Hollywood director, choreographer, and executive producer (Hairspray) Adam Shankman is known as a master of comedy and considered to be one of the most commercially successful filmmakers of his generation. Shankman’s Hairspray, the feature film adaptation of the Tony Award-winning Broadway production, opened in 2007 to rave reviews. Shankman made his directorial debut with The Wedding Planner in 2001, starring Jennifer Lopez and Matthew McConaughey. Prior to directing, Shankman was a premier dance and physical comedy choreographer, putting his creative stamp on many well-known comedies, dramas, thrillers, and animated films, including The Addams Family, Casper, Inspector Gadget, George of the Jungle, Boogie Nights, Miami Rhapsody, and The Flintstones, among others. A native of Los Angeles, Shankman developed a love for the theater at an early age and after high school moved to New York and to attend the Juilliard School. Shankman is currently in post-production on Bedtime Stories, which he is directing and executive producing, with Adam Sandler set to star. Additionally, Shankman is producing Seventeen Again starring Zac Efron.

When Grammy- and Tony Award-winning composer Duncan Sheik wrote the music for Spring Awakening, he accomplished what few pop or rock artists before him had done: create original music that seems right at home on Broadway yet feels very much his own, a natural progression from the recordings he had been making for more than a decade. Spring Awakening premiered off-Broadway in May 2006, opened on Broadway to critical acclaim in December of that year, and went on to win the Tony Award for Best Musical, with Sheik winning two Tony Awards for Best Orchestration and Best Original Score (Music). Sheik graduated from Brown University in 1993 and headed to Los Angeles, with a cassette full of demos. In 1996, he released his self-titled debut album, including the hit single, “Barely Breathing,” which spent 55 weeks on Billboard’s Hot 100. About his sophomore album, Humming, The New York Times wrote “Most pop nowadays is as disposable as a Big Mac wrapper. Hardly anyone is talking about ‘art.’ But Mr. Sheik’s beautifully orchestrated meditations suggest that pop can still aspire to a lofty, searching classicism.” Sheik’s other albums include Phantom Moon (2001), daylight (2002), White Limousine (2006), and brighter/later (2006). His compositions for film include the score of Mary Stuart Masterson’s directorial debut The Cake Eaters. In Sheik’s words, “I feel really fortunate to be able to be working in these different media…I think that, more and more, the way people will experience music is in different media. And that will keep music alive.”

The Carnegie Hall Notables is a membership group specifically created for music enthusiasts in their 20s and 30s. The Notables program celebrates music through intimate discussions with musicians, concerts, private performances, and exclusive Notables-only social gatherings. Contributions to the Notables support the vital music education programs of The Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall, which annually serves over 115,000 children, students, teachers, parents, young music professionals, and adults in the New York City metropolitan area, across the United States, and around the world. www.carnegiehall.org/notables.


Event Information
Monday, October 6, 2008

8:00 p.m. Panel Discussion at Zankel Hall

               Ana Gasteyer, actress (Wicked, The Threepenny Opera, and Saturday Night Live)
               Lin-Manuel Miranda, actor, lyricist, and Tony-winning composer (In the Heights)
               Jerry Mitchell, Broadway director and choreographer (Legally Blonde: The Musical) and
               Broadway choreographer (Hairspray)
               Anthony Rapp, Actor (Rent), Author-Songwriter (Without You)
               Adam Shankman, film director, choreographer, and executive producer (Hairspray)
               Duncan Sheik, Grammy- and Tony-winning composer (Spring Awakening)

9:30 p.m. Afterparty at The Russian Tea Room Sponsored by Heavy Water Vodka

The panel discussion and afterparty are free for Notables members. Tickets for non-members, priced at $75 each, are also available. For ticket information, please call 212-903-9734 or visit www.carnegiehall.org/notables.

Photos by Ben Strothmann and Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.


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