Ryan Scott Oliver Part 2: ”This Too Shall Pass”

Clayton Howe’s Entertainmentx

RYAN SCOTT OLIVER (ryanscottoliver.com) (IG:@ryanscottoliver)(TW:@ryanscottoliver) was called “the future of Broadway… a major new voice in musical theatre” (Entertainment Weekly) and is “shaking up musical theater with his dark, twisted and genius work … [Oliver] could very well be musical theater’s answer to an auteur filmmaker or a gothic novelist” (Huffington Post).He wrote the book, music and lyrics for Jasper in Deadland (book by Tony Award-nominee Hunter Foster) which was first Off-Broadway in a spring 2014 run, and then presented at Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theatre in May 2015;as well as Darling; Havana! (with director Warren Carlyle); Otherbody, a brief musical allegory; and Mrs. Sharp (read at Playwrights Horizons July 2009 starring Jane Krakowski, dir. by Michael Greif); and more.

Both Jasper in Deadland and 35mm: A Musical Exhibition are licensed worldwide by Samuel French, and have cast recordings on the Ghostlight/Sh-k-boom label. Oliver is a Jonathan Larson Grant Recipient, Richard Rodgers Award Winner, Lortel Award Nominee, numerous ASCAP awards, a Dramatists Guild Fellow, a guest lecturer at Harvard University, and the recipient of residencies at 5th Avenue Theatre, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Weston Playhouse, Cap 21, the York Theatre, Running Deer Ranch, Pace University, Harvard University, San Diego State University, Playwrights Horizons and more.

Off-Broadway and elsewhere: Disney Theatricals commission, TheatreWorksUSA’s We the People, Rosie O’Donnell’s Theater Kids, and cabarets worldwide. Additionally, he is the Director of New Musicals at Pace University in downtown Manhattan and the Artistic Director of the Pasadena Musical Theatre Program. His songbook, Music+Lyrics by Ryan Scott Oliver: Vol. 1, was published by Hal Leonard in 2011. M.F.A. Musical Theatre Writing NYU; B.A. Music Composition, UCLA. Songbooks and sheet music available at ryanscottoliver.com.

Oliver is also currently at work on a new project for Universal Theatrical Group with Kirsten Guenther and a trilogy of new musicals about American desperation in war-time: the first, a southern Gothic thriller set in small-town Missouri, 1945 entitled We Foxes (commissioned by Broadway Across America);the second, a Civil War drama called Rope (commissioned by Grove Entertainment, 2015);and the final part, a contemporary “marriage play” called Three Points of Contact.His morbidly optimistic musings may be followed on all platforms.