The
Company
Michael Kostroff (cast, co-creator)
best known for his five-season run as unscrupulous gang attorney Maury Levy on HBO's highly acclaimed hit, The Wire, and a long list of credits that includes The Blacklist, The Deuce, Law & Order: SVU, The Good Wife, Billions, Blue Bloods, and many more. He played Peter Madoff to Robert De Niro's Bernie Madoff in the HBO film, Wizard of Lies, appeared with Jessica Chastain in Aaron Sorkin's Molly's Game, and had a leading role in HBO's miniseries, The Plot Against America.
All that drama notwithstanding, Kostroff has always been a song-and-dance man at heart. He has toured the country as the comic villain Thénardier in Les Misérables, and played Max Bialystock in no fewer than seven productions of Mel Brooks' The Producers, beginning as an understudy on the first national tour. Other stage roles have included Edna in Hairspray, Milt Fields in Neil Simon's Laughter on the 23rd Floor, Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls, Pseudolous in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and Mr. Mushnik in Little Shop of Horrors. Most recently, he was Professor Plum in the Cleveland Play House's premiere production of Clue.
is an established television and stage actor,
Eric Leviton (cast, co-creator)
has performed all over the United States, as
well as on London’s West End and in Sydney, Australia. He was an original Broadway cast member of the 6-time Tony Award winning Kinky Boots. He’s toured in such shows as Chicago (as Amos), The Full Monty (as Dave Bukatinsky), Seussical, the Musical (as Horton the Elephant) starring Cathy Rigby, and Damn Yankees (as Sohovik) starring Jerry Lewis.
Eric also had the opportunity to appear in the Tiffany Theatre’s long-running, Ovation-nominated revival of The Rocky Horror Show, starring David Arquette, in which he played both Eddie and Dr. Scott. He has taken on the role of The Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz for McCoy/Rigby Entertainment (a performance for which he received the prestigious Drama-Logue Award) and twice for the Sacramento Music Circus. Eric’s numerous television credits include roles on Sneaky Pete, Boardwalk Empire, Blue Bloods, Law & Order, Desperate Housewives, Scrubs, Diagnosis Murder, Beverly Hills 90210, and Disney’s Annie, as well as a recurring role as The Heckler on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. He is a graduate of UCLA.
Mary Van Arsdel (cast)
originated principal roles in the first national
tours of both A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder and Mary Poppins. An
operatically trained soprano, Ms. Van Arsdel's concert work includes numerous charity benefits, where she shared the stage with such stars as Beau Bridges, Angela Lansbury, Charlotte Rae, Bernadette Peters, Tyne Daly, and many others. Regionally, she has played Carlotta in Kopit and Yeston's Phantom, Kate in Kiss Me Kate, Mama Rose in Gypsy, and Cunegonde in Candide. She has also appeared at Hartford Stage, Ogunquit Playhouse, Theatre Under the Stars, and The Hollywood Bowl, and can be heard on her highly praised 2001 solo album, When at Night I Go to Sleep.
Michele Spears (director)
the Edinburgh Theatre Festival, London’s Covent Gardens, The O’Neill Theater Center, The Ojai Playwrights Conference, The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, L.A.’s Musical Theatre Guild at the Pasadena Playhouse, The New York Musical Theatre Festival, Disney/ASCAP Workshop, REDCAT, Cornerstone, The L.A. Gay Men’s Chorus, and the Migrant Youth Theatre Project, among others. She choreographed the feature film Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss starring Sean Hayes, the independent films The Wizard of Id and Nightingales, and Hulu’s web series, Learning Town. Her work has received New York Nightlife, L.A. Weekly, Saturn, UNIMA, Stagescene L.A., Dramalogue, and Santa Barbara Independent awards, as well as Ovation and American Choreographers Award nominations.
Specializing in new works, she has directed and developed world premieres including:
Object of Her Affection (with support from the Henson Foundation and REDCAT), Wake Up Your Weird at the O’Neill Theater Center and the Ojai Playwrights Conference; Bumpersticker
at the Hollywood Fringe, and numerous projects for the Academy of New Musicals/New Musicals Inc. Michele is a graduate of NYU/TISCH and an alum of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab West.
has directed and/or choreographed works staged for
Ed Martel (musical director/pianist)
has served as music director, conductor,
arranger, orchestrator and pianist for shows, concerts, television, movies, and recording projects. He’s conducted orchestras throughout the USA, Europe and Asia, and played for such artists as Englebert Humperdinck, Jason Alexander, Davis Gaines, Andrea MacArdle, Diane Reeves, Fred Travalena, Sally Kellerman, Roslyn Kind, Rickie Lee Jones, Ted Neeley, The Irish Tenors, Robert Davi, Dennis McNeil, Barbara Morrison, Don Most, James Snyder, and Three Dog Night. Theatrical productions include A New Brain, Urinetown, Godspell, Working, Pippin, The Wiz, Finian’s Rainbow,Out of This World, Redhead, My Favorite Year, Parade, Lucky Stiff, Floyd Collins, The Robber Bridegroom, Into the Woods, Shrek, Little Shop of Horrors, Grease, The Addams Family, and Extraordinary! A Tribute to Stephen Schwartz. He has been the featured piano soloist for multiple performances of Rhapsody in Blue with orchestra and has recently performed a concert for justices, ambassadors and congressmen at the Supreme Court in Washington, DC. He studied music at Boston University and UCLA.
