Barry Kleinbort

BARRY KLEINBORT has worked as an actor, director, composer, lyricist and librettist, which has earned him the prestigious Edward Kleban Foundation Award for Lyric Writing, two Gilman-Gonzalez Musical Theatre Awards, the Second Stage Musicals Writers Award, the Jamie deRoy/ASCAP award, three Back Stage Bistro awards and twelve Manhattan Association of Cabarets (MAC) awards for his directorial and song-writing efforts. He wrote the book and lyrics for the musical, WAS, (music by Joseph Thalken) based on the cult classic by Geoff Ryman, which was the inaugural production of the American Musical Theater Project in Chicago, directed by Tina Landau. With Da-vid Levy, he co-wrote PERFECT HARMONY, a musical play about the lives of the Barry Sisters, which ran for six months in Florida. As a composer/lyricist, he wrote music and lyrics for METROPOLITA(I)N, a bi-lingual musical revue, which played both in Paris and New York, and the musical, ANGELINA, based on the play, “That Summer - That Fall” by Frank D. Gilroy which premiered in Albany under the direction of David Armstrong. He wrote the incidental music and songs for Allan Knee’s play, “SECOND AVENUE RAG, “ for its off-Broadway run at Manhattan Punch Line. He provided scripts for eight PBS TV specials and was an artistic consultant for “Cathouse: The Mu-sical” for HBO. He also wrote and directed the musical 13 THINGS ABOUT ED CAR-POLOTTI, based on the play by Jeffrey Hatcher, starring Penny Fuller, which ran suc-cessfully off-Broadway at 59E59, and then regionally at the Merrimack Rep in Massa-chusetts and The Broad Stage in Los Angeles. It is now published by Dramatists Play Service. He has directed and/or written musical material for Brent Barrett, Petula Clark, Marvin Hamlisch, Penny Fuller, Len Cariou, Kaye Ballard, Regis Philbin, John Barrowman, Tony Roberts, Anita Gillette, Karen Mason, Sylvia McNair, Harolyn Blackwell, Jerry Hadley, Rod Gilfry, Heather MacRae, Hechter Uberry, Rita Gardner and many, many others. He co-conceived and directed Len Cariou’s one-man tour de force, BROADWAY AND THE BARD, for off-Broadway and its two subsequent national tours in 2018 and 2019. Prior to that, he adapted and directed the New York premiere of Bob Merrill’s last musical, THE PRINCE OF GRAND STREET starring Mike Burstyn for the Jewish Rep and helmed John Epperson’s autobiographical one man outing, SHOW TRASH, at both the Studio Theater in Washington, D.C and off-Broadway as part of the acclaimed LYPSINKA TRILOGY. He wrote the book for the revue “CHEEK TO CHEEK: IRVING BERLIN IN HOLLYWOOD” which premiered off-Broadway at the YORK theatre in 2021, and due to unanimous rave reviews, had a return engage-ment in 2022. The cast album of 13 THINGS ABOUT ED CARPOLOTTI, along with a highly regarded revue of his theater songs, BIG CITY RHYTHM, is available on Harbin-ger Records. He is currently working on a musical adaptation of Michael White’s ac-claimed memoir, “Travels in Vermeer,” as well as a new three character play, “Inner Li-fe.”