Musical Theatre Radio presents "Be Our Guest"

Conner and Smith

Matt Conner and Stephen Gregory Smith are modern musical theatre writers who explore the darker side of human nature, while searching for the light.

Riverside Studios

For over 45 years, Riverside Studios has been the home of an extraordinary mix of new and innovative theatre, film, comedy, art, dance, music and television. A cultural hub that has attracted some of the world’s best creative talent including Samuel Beckett, David Bowie, Benjamin Zephaniah, Amy Winehouse, Yoko Ono, Lenny Henry and Michael Clark.  
Now, in our glorious new building, we are beginning our next creative chapter, driven by a belief in the power of creativity to bring people together, unlock potential and spark positive change in the world. We are ambitious, curious and audacious, we are for our community, our artists and our audiences.  

We aim to be an independent home for new, innovative and international work, for an audience rooted in our local West London community and which is accessible to everyone, everywhere.

Michael Verre

Michael was born on New York's longest island.

As an only child, Michael was thrown into just about activity you could think of. From piano lessons to karate to baseball, he did it all. It was through this smorgasbord of activities that Michael discovered his love for performing.

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Since then, he has performed across the country, written a musical "A New Song and Dance" and has built a resume teaching tap dancers of all ages around the trip state area.

Dan Petrenko

Hailing from Toronto, ON, Dan is a director, playwright, and producer who has worked in theatres across Canada, the United States, and London’s West End. Previously, Dan served as the founding Artistic Director of Olive Branch Theatre, a professional company dedicated to creating opportunities for next-generation artists in the Greater Toronto Area. Throughout his career, Dan produced and directed a variety of critically acclaimed musicals and cabarets, including an award-winning drama based on his family’s story in the Holocaust, which toured in the United States. Dan’s work has been praised for its depth and artistic complexity. 

Born and raised in Israel to Ukrainian-Jewish parents, Dan often gravitates towards stories exploring Jewish identity and history, particularly those rooted in the Soviet era. As a playwright, he is currently developing multiple projects for the stage that he looks forward to sharing with an audience soon. Dan is a graduate of the University of Toronto, holding an MA in Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies and an Honours BA in Theatre and International Relations.

Since joining Winnipeg Jewish Theatre in 2022, Dan has co-created and directed Pain to Power: A Kanye West Music Protest and helmed the Canadian premiere of Kathrine Kressmann Taylor’s Address Unknown. In 2025, Dan will direct the first Canadian production of The Band’s Visit.Seth Zosky

Seth is a Jewish-Canadian, multidisciplinary artist hailing from Toronto. He is a singer, actor, Juno-nominated songwriter and musician with over a decade of performance experience. Seth is a graduate of Sheridan’s Music Theatre Performance degree. He is also part of CZN; a Pop/RnB/Rap trio singing group. They were chosen by Simon Cowell as the winners of Canadian Family’s Got Talent and have also appeared on America’s Got Talent.

Theatre Credits Include: Jack in the Canadian premiere of Titanique (Mirvish Productions/Segal Centre); Fiddler on the Roof, Peter Pan (Drayton Entertainment); The Last Five Years (Blue Bridge Theatre); One Hit Wonders (Stage West); Blocked (TheatreWorksUSA); The Last Five Years, A Night on Jewish Broadway (Olive Branch); American Idiot (Stephenville Theatre Festival).

Tracey Erin Smith

Tracey is an internationally recognized transformational leader and creator. She is the founder and driver of SOULO Theatre, originating in Toronto, with workshops in New York City, Tel Aviv, San Francisco, Vancouver and the UK. A proud Canadian, Tracey is an award-winning teacher, solo performer, theatre director and thought leader employing personal stories for global transformation.

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Tracey’s work had been seen Off-Broadway and on several stages the world over where she has been awarded Best of the Fringe (Toronto and NYC), Broadway World Award (NYC), and the Audience Choice Award (NYC). She is the host and creator of the critically acclaimed documentary series DRAG HEALS (Amazon Prime, Apple TV). Tracey is excited for the release of her first book, Flying SOULO in the fall of 2024. .

Pain To Power: A Kanye West Musical Protest

What do you do when your hero breaks your heart?

CJ Capital and Seth Zosky saw Kanye West as one of their biggest musical inspirations. Now that their hero has turned against their communities, the two of them question whether it is really possible to separate the art from the artist. Featuring Hip Hop chart-toppers such as “Heartless”, “Four-Five Seconds”, “Power”, “Ultralight Beam”, “American Boy”, and “Runaway”, interweaved with Seth’s and CJ’s stories of family, faith, and friendship, this will be a theatrical experience you don’t want to miss!

Sara and Giles started writing musicals together in 2016. They were Stiles and Drewe Finalists in 2018 (Best New Song) and 2021 (Best New Musical), and have written six musicals together: Country Dream (BEAM 2018 at Theatre Royal Stratford East), Barcelona! (Criterion Theatre, November 2018), TV musical How to be a Cougar, Score! (developed with the University of Winchester), Fallen Angel (released as concept album in December 2020 and at Drive-In Theatre, Trafford Centre, June 2021) and new musical The Gods
That Bottle Aint Your Friend, from Country Dream, featured on the No.1 UK Country Album, A Country Soul
Sara (www.saraeker.com) is a singer/guitarist and multi-platinum songwriter (Atomic Kitten, The Honeyz, The Faders, Dannii Minogue). Her song Lo Siento was no. 1 in Spain and parts of Latin America. It was No.1 for 16 weeks in Mexico
Giles (www.gilesfernando.co.uk) is a playwright (King’s Head Theatre, Edinburgh Festival). He won HighTide / IdeasTap playwriting competition in 2015, was a writer-on-attachment at the Oxford Playhouse and was shortlisted for the BBC3/Hive Award (#ModernRomance) and Adrian Pagan Award (Gagged)Fallen Angel

Angel Keeley and failing musician Zach are stuck in the departure lounge. Keeley just wants freedom from her Boss. Zach just wants a hit song. Keeley is masquerading as a musician for her latest assignment: taking Zach to Heaven, on a flight that’s going to crash. As they’re stuck, chatting and jamming together she slowly falls for Zach and realises how unfair it is that he’ll never achieve his dreams as a musician. She begs her Boss to save Zach. Boss refuses, and she’s left with a choice: her immortality or Zach’s life.

Stuart Brayson is a prolific and versatile British writer/composer of musicals. He has been actively creating diverse and melodic new work since the early 1990s when he decided to hang up his boots as singer/songwriter/frontman of the rock band POP.

Jessica Welsh (book, lyrics) and Linda Dowdell (music, lyrics)

Wild Man of The Wynoochee is a gripping tale set in the early 20th century, inspired by the true story of John Tornow, a hermit who became the subject of the largest manhunt in Washington State history. 

We speak with Jesse J Sanchez the creator of the musical Suenos: Our American Musical and members of the upcoming Las Positas College workshop production running from March 21st to the 30th 2025.

Daniel Seidman

Composer & Co-Lyricist

Dr. Daniel Seidman is a licensed clinical psychologist practicing in New York City.

Dan started playing in a band at the age of 12 at the Cafe Wha in Greenwich Village. At the age of 15, he toured the U.S. and Canada playing Hammond organ for Chubby Checker. He completed a year as a composition major at the Berklee College of Music in Boston in 1972-1973, and a B.A. in History from SUNY Binghamton. He received a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1988, and subsequently joined the faculty at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) where he taught, practiced psychology, and did research for 30 years. He retired from Columbia in June of 2018.

Fifth Avenue the musical originally grew out of Dan’s combined interest in jazz and history. Discussions with a history professor Albert Fried about the immigrant experiences of the Irish, Jews, Italians and in more contemporary times, Blacks, Hispanics and the Chinese provided insight into the “dark side” of the American dream and its “underworld culture”. This is the story Fried tells in his book “The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America” (Columbia University Press). After college, Dan began composing the music for "Fifth Avenue" while employed by the Shubert Organization in New York City. He met Susan Crawford, who wrote the book and co-wrote the lyrics for Fifth Avenue, in 1979. They were married in 1984 and are now the proud parents of two grown sons.

Susan Crawford

Book Writer and Co-Lyricist

My theater life began at 13 in my hometown's Shakespeare Festival. It evolved into much acting from then into my 30's. It soon overlapped with an interest in playwriting, and I finished my first play at 24. Eventually writing overcame acting for me. For that I studied with Arthur Kopit and John Guare; lyric writing at the ASCAP workshop, and with Sheila Davis, and Dorothy Fields. Around that time I co-developed the continuity for Ned Sherrin for “Only In America” songs by Leiber and Stoller. It ran at the Roundhouse in London, and was a distant antecedent to what became “Smoky Joe’s Cafe.”

“Dollars to Doughnuts, a Comedy for the 99%” was my master’s thesis in the CCNY Graduate Writing Program where I studied with Arthur Kopit. It was a finalist in the O’Neill Playwriting Conference the year it was finished (under the title "Lotto"). For the summer 2022 season, it was selected by Theatre for the New City’s “Dream Up” Festival where it was workshopped and is now being submitted for production. My one-act "Place Settings" was selected for the Chain Theatre's 2023 Winter One-Act Festival, and is also available for production.

R.K. Greene

Producer and Executive Director of The StoryLine Project, LLC, a theatrical production company developing new shows. Shows include:
* "Beau The Musical" by Lyons & Pakchar now an award-winning feature-length motion picture;
* "Fifth Avenue" in development by Susan Crawford & Daniel Seidman
* "Harmony" by Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman on Broadway;
* "Farinelli and the King" with Mark Rylance on Broadway;
* "Terms of Endearment" with Molly Ringwald Off-Broadway and licensing thru Playscripts;
* "A Time to Kill" with Patrick Page, Tonya Pinkins, Tom Skerritt, Fred Thompson and John Douglas Thompson on Broadway;
* "Peter and the Starcatcher" winner of five Tony awards and now an Australian Tour in 2024-25;
* "Cougar The Musical" Off-Broadway and licensing thru Concord Theatricals;
* "Love Child" with Daniel Jenkins and Robert Stanton Off-Broadway and licensing thru Playscripts;
* "Room Service" Off-Broadway.
See https://www.storylineproject.com/
Fifth Avenue

What happens when your American Dream keeps getting caught up in other peoples’ schemes?  Max and Willy borrow money to go legit and open a nightclub during prohibition offering ‘Fifth Avenue’ class in NYC’s Hell’s Kitchen.  Meanwhile the younger generation chase their own versions of the ‘American Dream.’

R.K. Greene

Producer and Executive Director of The StoryLine Project, LLC, a theatrical production company developing new shows. Shows include:
* "Beau The Musical" by Lyons & Pakchar now an award-winning feature-length motion picture;
* "Fifth Avenue" in development by Susan Crawford & Daniel Seidman
* "Harmony" by Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman on Broadway;
* "Farinelli and the King" with Mark Rylance on Broadway;
* "Terms of Endearment" with Molly Ringwald Off-Broadway and licensing thru Playscripts;
* "A Time to Kill" with Patrick Page, Tonya Pinkins, Tom Skerritt, Fred Thompson and John Douglas Thompson on Broadway;
* "Peter and the Starcatcher" winner of five Tony awards and now an Australian Tour in 2024-25;
* "Cougar The Musical" Off-Broadway and licensing thru Concord Theatricals;
* "Love Child" with Daniel Jenkins and Robert Stanton Off-Broadway and licensing thru Playscripts;
* "Room Service" Off-Broadway.
Works with The Directors Company developing new work in the non-profit arena, https://www.directorscompany.org/
Specialties: Theatrical product development and production on Broadway, Off-Broadway and on tour. Skills include dramaturgy, marketing, financial and market analyses, budgeting and projections, fundraising, contracts and business plan development.

The Storyline Project

A commercial theatrical production company based in New York City. Our focus is on stories that capture the imagination of an audience. Our mission is to identify and develop these stories and bring them to life on stage. Founded in January 1996 by four associates, SLP has analyzed hundreds of plays and musicals. Recommended plays have gone on to public readings at established theatre companies including Ensemble Studio Theatre, Theater Resources Unlimited and The Directors Company in New York City. SLP productions have appeared on Broadway, Off-Broadway and on tour across the U.S. and Canada