Eugene O'Neill Theater Center Announces
2007 National Music Theater Conference's 30th Anniversary Season

The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center announced today the projects selected for its 2007 National Music Theater Conference by Conference Artistic Director Paulette Haupt. Two teams of writers and composers will each spend two weeks at the O'Neill's Waterford Campus, developing their work with highly acclaimed actors, directors and music directors in an intensive series of rehearsals, discussions and public readings. 2007 marks the 30th year of the National Music Theater Conference at the O'Neill.

Since its founding in 1978, the National Music Theater Conference has developed and presented more than 100 musical works, including early works of award-winning writers and composers such as Tan Dun, Kirsten Childs, Andrew Lippa, Brian Crawley and Jeannine Tesori. Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx's Avenue Q, developed at the O'Neill in 2002, went on to Broadway and won three 2004 Tony Awards, including Best Musical. In The Heights, a NMTC selection from 2005, is currently playing off-Broadway to accolades and award nominations.

Ms. Haupt stated, "Among the many exceptional submissions we received this year, notes to MariAnne and Red Eye of Love demonstrated a fresh and bold approach to bringing complex characters and shattering events to life through music. Both are profoundly moving and address contemporary and universal issues that deeply affect humanity today. I look forward to working with these four talented creators as they continue to explore the development of their musicals with us this summer."

O'Neill Executive Director Preston Whiteway added, "I'm enormously pleased to be celebrating the 30th Anniversary season of the National Music Theater Conference with two outstanding works, and with such talented writers. The NMTC's many successes and artistic achievements over the last 30 years underscore Paulette Haupt's artistic integrity. The NMTC is an integral program of the O'Neill, and I am looking forward to another remarkable summer."

The O'Neill's 2007 National Music Theater Conference selections are:

notes to MariAnne
Book, Music and Lyrics by David Rossmer & Dan Lipton
Performances: Sat., July 14 at 8:15 pm; Sun., July 15 at 3:15 pm; Thurs., July 19 and Fri., July 20 at 8:15 pm
A brother and sister are torn apart and then reunited under extraordinary circumstances. notes to MariAnne is a modern fairy tale that draws from popular music to sing its story, exploring the consequences of leaving those you love and finding hope in dark places. This project is funded in part through The ASCAP Residency

Red Eye of Love
Book and Lyrics by Arnold Weinstein and John Wulp; Music by Jan Warner
Based on a play by Arnold Weinstein
Performances: Sat., July 21at 8:15 pm; Sun., July 22 at 3:15 pm; Weds., July 25 and Fri., July 27 at 8:15 pm
A zany musical comedy about America. Set against a background of war, depression and economic boom times, it follows the wacky adventures of Wilmer Flange, a young idealist; O.O. Martinas, owner of the world's largest meat department store; and Selma Chargesse, the woman they both love. In doing so, it takes a hard look at the effects of love and money upon our lives.

Schedules are subject to change. Tickets will be on sale beginning Wednesday, June 13. Please call the O'Neill Box Office at 860-443-1238 for prices and reservations.

The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, founded in 1964, is the pre-eminent center for the development of new works and new voices for the American theater. It has been home to more than 1,000 new works for the stage and 2,500 emerging artists. Scores of projects developed at the O'Neill have gone on to full productions at other theaters around the world, including Broadway, off-Broadway and major regional theaters. The O'Neill itself is the winner of a special Tony Award, the National Opera Award, the Jujamcyn Award for Theater Excellence and the Arts and Business Council Encore Award. The O'Neill's programs include the National Playwrights Conference, National Music Theater Conference, Puppetry Conference, Cabaret Conference, National Critics Institute, and the National Theater Institute, which includes semester-long, fully accredited intensive theater-training programs and a six-week accredited summer program, Theatermakers. In addition, the O'Neill owns and operates the Monte Cristo Cottage, a National Historic Landmark and the childhood home of Nobel Prize-winning and four-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Eugene O'Neill. For more information regarding the Center, please visit the O'Neill website at www.TheONeill.org or call 860-443-5378.

BRIEF ARTISTS' BIOS - 2007 NATIONAL MUSIC THEATER CONFERENCE

DAVID ROSSMER & DAN LIPTON (Writers, Composers & Lyricists, Notes to MariAnne)

Rossmer & Lipton have performed in musicals on Broadway and off, Rossmer as an actor and Lipton as a musician/arranger. Their combined resumes yield a list of projects that include The Light in the Piazza, Titanic, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Fiddler on the Roof, The Full Monty and Zhivago.

As a writing team, they have created multiple musicals together, jointly writing all lyrics, book and music. Current projects include JOE!, a form-bending satire about a guy who gets trapped in a musical; notes to MariAnne, a surrealist rock musical; and The Blonde Streak, a contemporary romance. Lipton and Rossmer are co-creators of Don't Quit Your Night Job, a theater-themed variety show featuring celebrity guests, currently at Joe's Pub in NYC, and soon to be produced commercially by Jed Bernstein.

Rossmer & Lipton have developed material for Clear Channel Entertainment, Terra Firma Films, Jayson Raitt, Manhattan Theatre Club, Araca Group and Charlie Fink, ex-VP of Walt Disney Pictures.

Dan Lipton holds a degree in music composition from Northwestern University, and his career bridges pop music, film and theater. His three albums have earned four ASCAPlus Awards for Popular Music. He has scored films for directors Reif Larsen, Corey Rosen (Empire State Film Festival) and Jeff Yorkes (Coca-Cola Refreshing Filmmaker Award). As a pianist, Lipton accompanies acclaimed Nonesuch Records artist Audra McDonald in concert halls across the country, as well as The White House. He played on the Grammy-nominated albums of The Full Monty and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and John Lithgow's children's album The Sunny Side of the Street. He is currently appearing on Broadway, playing piano onstage in Salvage, part 3 of Tom Stoppard's epic play The Coast of Utopia at Lincoln Center Theater.

David Rossmer holds a degree in theater from Penn State University. He is the author of numerous plays and screenplays, including Pariss and When the Dog Comes A-Knockin' at Your Door. He is singer, songwriter and keyboardist for the rock band The Misconceptions, whose first album received radio play and five-star reviews calling them pioneers of "carnival rock." The band's second album Super Orange Happy Sauce was just released as the band begins its latest round of live shows, performing in Pennsylvania and New York. Rossmer has performed in numerous Broadway and off-Broadway productions, films and TV shows, including most recently Zhivago at La Jolla Playhouse, Itamar Moses' play Authorial Intent at Drama League's DirectorFest and the musical Nerds at Philadelphia Theatre Company.

JAN WARNER

Jan Warner, a New York resident for thirty-plus years, attended Princeton University before being drafted by the U.S. Army. His work with John Wulp on Red Eye of Love began in 1979. In the intervening thirty years, Mr. Warner has developed a thorough appreciation for J.S. Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I. A proud owner of three Scottish Terriers and a Sealyham Terrier, Mr. Warner currently resides in Old Lyme, Connecticut with his wife and daughters.

JOHN WULP

John Wulp won a Tony Award for Best Revival for his production of Dracula. For his designs for Crucifer of Blood, which ran on Broadway, at the Royal Haymarket Theatre in London, and at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, he won a Tony nomination, a Drama Desk Award, an Outer Critics' Circle Award, and a Los Angeles Drama Critics' Award. For his direction of Red Eye of Love, produced off Broadway, he won an Obie Award. For his first play, The Saintliness of Margery Kempe, he won a Rockefeller Grant. He was founder, and for several years, the director of the Playwrights' Horizons Theater School, a division of New York University's undergraduate drama program. A resident of Vinalhaven, Maine, he has taught drama for ten years at North Haven Community School, helping his students win numerous regional and state drama festival awards for their productions.