Richard Schotter
Playwright and lyricist Richard Schotter is the author of the plays Medicine Show: An American Entertainment, Benya the King, The Wood Dancer, Taking Stock and The Sussman Variations. He has been a “Obie” Award nominee, a New York State CAPS grant recipient and winner of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture’s Berman Playwriting Award. His play The Wood Dancer was made into a chamber opera by composer Jerome Hughes.
In addition to his full-length plays, Richard Schotter has written the ten-minute plays, The Duke, The Spot, The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, The River and There’s an App for That!, all of which have been performed at the Boston Theater Marathon and at theatres across the country. His widely performed ten-minute musical, Duet for Shy People (music by Michael Kosarin) won the Eola Theatre’s “Spring Sing” Competition. All of his ten-minute plays have been published by Samuel French.
In addition to his work as a playwright, Richard Schotter has written lyrics for the PBS children’s series The Puzzle Place and, with composer Michael Kosarin, book and lyrics for a musical of Anne of Green Gables. For The Sussman Variations, with composer Phil Schroeder, he wrote the lyrics to all of Charlie Sussman’s songs. (He and Phil are planning to make a CD celebrating the work of America’s greatest fictional Broadway composer. Tentative Title: The Songs of Charlie Sussman: The Broadway Years.) He is an alumna of the BMI-Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop.
Richard Schotter holds a PhD in Dramatic Literature from Columbia University and has been a theatre critic, an editor The Drama Review and Literary Manager of The American Place Theatre. He is Professor of English at Queens College, CUNY, where he directs the MFA Playwriting Program and, for the past twelve years, has also been Visiting Professor of Playwriting in Graduate Creative Writing Program at Boston University.
Phil Schroeder
Phil Schroeder composed music professionally in San Francisco for twenty-five years before relocating to Boston and beginning his second life in theater. His has written music for hundreds of radio jingles, corporate shows, and television soundtracks and has produced a number of musical artists. He is currently studying playwriting at Boston University where he has had the pleasure to meet and begin working with Richard Schotter. As inspiration for the The Sussman Variations songs, Phil owes a great debt to the music of Frank Sinatra, particularly songs written by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen, as well as the musical theater of Frank Loesser. Phil would like to give a big thanks to Richard for the invite, and to Kate and the crew for keeping new plays (and playwriting students) alive and well.