JEFFREY HADDOW
is a 2009 winner of the BMI Harrington Award for Creative Excellence. He co-authored the musical revue, Scrambled Feet, which ran two years Off-Bway at the Village Gate, was produced as a Showtime TV special starring Madeline Kahn, and is published by Samuel French. He also co-wrote the play, Chekhov in Yalta, which had its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum in L.A. won a Los Angeles Drama Critics Distinguished Playwriting Award, was produced as a TV special starring Tom Courtenay, and is also published by Samuel French. Other produced plays include Ducks (co-book and lyrics), Musical Theatre Works, NYC. Thin Ice (play) WPA Theatre Off- Broadway, Scully & Royce (play) Detroit Repertory Company, and The Drunken Boat (play) Circle Repertory Co., NYC. Current projects include At the Back of the North Wind (book and co-lyrics), which has enjoyed staged readings at the 2006 Festival of New Musicals, Village Theatre, Issaquah, WA, the Nat’l Arts Club, NYC (2007) and the TRU Voices New Musicals Series, NYC (2007). He is also working on a stage version of the 1950 MGM film musical, Summer Stock (co-book and co-lyrics) and a musical of Jane Austen’s Sense & Sensibility (book and lyrics, www.senseandsensibilitymusical.com), which was the inaugural presentation of the Berkshire Musical Theatre Workshop in May ’09. Other projects include Lincoln and Son (lyrics), a musical for young audiences, and the libretto for The Legend of the Yellow Rose, an original opera written with composer Gregory Sullivan Isaacs and scheduled to have its premiere in 2010 at The Living Opera Co. in Dallas, TX.
Jeffrey is a graduate of Northwestern University and a current member of the Dramatists Guild and the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop.
GEORGE MACDONALD - (1824-1905), Scottish novelist and poet
In addition to At the Back of the North Wind (1871), George MacDonald’s best-remembered works are Phantastes, The Princess and the Goblin, The Light Princess, Lilith, and The Golden Key. He was a mentor to C.S. Lewis and a friend of Mark Twain, G. K. Chesterton, Henry Longfellow, and Walt Whitman. In the 1870s he toured and lectured in America where he was well-received by huge audiences and by writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson. Note on our adaptation: In order to connect more readily with contemporary audiences, we have updated the story of At the Back of the North Wind from Victorian England to Depression-era New York City.
THOMAS TIERNEY
is a composer, lyricist and music producer. He has written for theatre, television, corporate events and theme parks, and his songs have been performed and recorded by artists such as Tommy Tune and Marlene VerPlanck. His musical Eleanor - An American Love Story has played in many U.S. theatres, including Ford’s Theatre in Washington, Chicago's Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, Musical Theatre West in LA and the Pittsburgh Public Theatre. Eleanor is published by Rodgers & Hammerstein (www.RNHtheatricals.com) and the original cast CD is available in stores and at www.EleanorTheMusical.com. He composed the music for Narnia, based on C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe, which has played in The City Of London Festival, Off-Broadway in New York and in more than 600 productions throughout the US, Canada, Great Britain and Australia. His Narnia Suite for symphony orchestra and 4 singers premiered at New York's Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. He wrote music and lyrics for Jungle Queen Debutante, produced by Hell’s Kitchen Musicals for NYMF ’07 Festival and by Seattle’s Village Theatre. He wrote several songs for Pets! (Off-Broadway) and the music for The Dream Team (Goodspeed Opera) and Tommy Tune’s one-man musical Ichabod (Boston and New York). With Jeffrey Haddow he is also writing the new stage musical Summer Stock based on the MGM film starring Judy Garland and Gene Kelly, and Lincoln and Son for young audiences. His 6 musicals for Theatreworks/ USA have toured nationally, including The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, now in its 17th season. Other musicals for young audiences are The Fabulous Fable Factory, Olympic Spirit (about Jesse Owens) and The Tuesday Afternoon Regulars. For television, he wrote scores for NBC's Emmy Award winning series Unicorn Tales, and the theme music for We Remember Eleanor, narrated by Margaret Truman Daniels. His theme song for AT&T's pavilion at Disney's Epcot Center played 144 times a day for 10 years. He has performed his own music at Lincoln Center in New York and at the White House in Washington. Thomas has won numerous ASCAP awards, is listed in Who's Who In Entertainment and is a member of the N.Y. Television Academy, for which he has served on the Board of Governors.