Rent

Jonathan Larson received the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for RENT. He also won the 1996 Tony Award for Best Musical and the 1994 Richard Rodgers Award for RENT and twice received The Gilman & Gonzales-Falla Theatre Foundation's Comendation Award. In 1989 he was granted the Stephen Sondheim Award from American Music Theatre Festival, where he contributed to the musical Sitting on the Edge of the Future. In 1988 he won the Richard Rodgers Development Grant for his rock musical Superbia, which was staged at Playwrights Horizon. He composed the score for the musical J.P. Morgan Saves the Nation, which was presented by En Garde Arts in 1995. Larson performed his rock monologue tick, tick... BOOM! at Second Stage Theatre, The Village Gate and New York Theatre Workshop. In addition to scoring and song writing for Sesame Street, he created music for a number of children's book-cassettes, including Steven Spielberg's An American Tail and Land Before Time. Other film scores include work for Rolling Stones magazine publisher Jann Wenner. He conceived, directed and wrote four original songs for Away We Go!, a musical video for children. RENT, his rock opera based on La Boheme, had its world premiere on February 13, 1996 at New York Theatre Workshop.

Graham trained at LAMDA (Evelyn Laye Award) and was an actor for fourteen years working extensively in regional/West End theatre, television and film with directors such as Kenneth Branagh, Matthew Warchus, Gregory Doran, John Caird and John Doyle. He then moved into directing and writing.

Graham was Associate Director on Sweeney Todd (West End/Broadway), Mack and Mabel (Criterion), The Sound of Music (London Palladium), Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (Palace).

Graham now focuses on his own creative projects. His productions range from Shakespeare, through Coward and Brecht to Musical Theatre. As Artistic Director for New Rep Theatre, he was nominated for the Peter Brook Award, 2012, for his newly scored actor/musician production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle. He enjoys supporting and developing new writing and was nominated Best Director 2013, by Broadway World for his work on the world premiere of Carol Vine’s The Spring Tide.  His stage adaptation of Julia Donaldson’s children’s book What The Ladybird Heard, had a successful run in the West End in 2017 and is currently on an international tour.

Graham regularly directs at many of the top drama schools in the UK (CSSD, Arts Ed, LIPA, BSA, Guildford Conservatoire, LSMT) and is artistic director for the Salvation Army’s annual charity concert at the Royal Albert Hall.

He has recently completed writing a musical The Colonel’s Lady (based on a short story by Somerset Maugham) and is looking forward to adapting a South African novel, Buckingham Palace, District Six which covers three decades of the apartheid years, for the stage.

Annabel is a director, playwright and lyricist, she is currently developing new work, under the mentorship of Claude-Michel Schönberg.

Credits include: A Kiss For Cinderella (National Youth Music Theatre, in development); Brother (Bookwriter, Southwark Playhouse workshop production & MT Fest); Seance (Director, Rehearsed Reading, The Pit Loft New York); Trash Puppets  (Director, The Pit Loft New York); Toil and Trouble (Director, Rehearsed Reading, The Pit Loft New York); Fall of Man; an Autumnal evening of Feminist Musical Theatre (Writer/Director, The Pit Loft New York); STOP: A New Musical  (Writer/Director, Edinburgh Fringe and Cockpit Theatre, OUDS National Tour, Burton Taylor Theatre Oxford); Anything Goes (Director, Oxford Playhouse); Alice (Bookwriter/Lyricist, NYU Tisch).

She has degrees in Musical Theatre from Guildford School of Acting, Philosophy Politics and Economics from Oxford University, and recently graduated with an MFA in Theatre Writing from New York University.

Annabel is proud to be a Trustee of The Oxford Playhouse. In 2021, she was nominated for the Black British Theatre Awards 'Book and Lyrics Recognition Award' for her work as a book writer and lyricist.

Explores challenging topics and themes, including AIDS, suicide, substance abuse, homophobia, violence, and homelessness.