MUSICAL THEATER
Dan Martin (Composer) and Michael Biello (Lyricist) are longtime collaborators who have created a unique body of critically acclaimed work in musical theatre.
Their newest musical, The Cousins Grimm, received three developmental readings in 2007 at NYC’s York Theatre, Philadelphia’s Arden Theatre, and at NYMF (The New York Musical Theatre Festival) where it received an Anna Sosenko Trust Award. The Cousins Grimm is scheduled for a workshop in August 2008 at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center in Waterford, CT.
Biello & Martin's work has enjoyed success in Chicago, where Bailiwick's production of Breathe won the 1999 After Dark Award for Outstanding New Work and where, in 2000, Bailiwick commissioned and premiered their revue Q – the Songs of Martin & Biello.
The 2007 Bailiwick production of Bare Naked Lads included several Biello & Martin songs and was staged in Chicago, Provincetown, and Dublin, Ireland.
Additional productions of Breathe include Richmond VA in 2005, Philadelphia PA in 2004, and Omaha NE in 2003 (Nominated for 8 TAG Awards), as well as a presentation at Chicago’s prestigious ASCAP/Disney Musical Theatre Workshop in 2004. Q was produced at the 2002 Philadelphia Fringe Festival where it was cited by Philadelphia Weekly for the Best Original Music of the 2002 Theatre Season.
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“Martin and Biello have a knack for creating uplifting pieces
that eschew the maudlin in favor of that which can
genuinely touch the heart and soul.”
Philadelphia City Paper
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Martin & Biello’s musical theater work has also been presented in New York at American Opera Projects, New Dramatists, Musical Theater Works, The Century Center for the Performing Arts, HERE, the TWEED Festival, and PS 122, among others; in Miami at City Theatre, in Washington DC at DCAC, in Provincetown MA at the UU Church, and in San Francisco at the People's Theater Coalition.
Biello and Martin’s songs have been performed from LaMama to Lincoln Center, on ABC, PBS, and on a variety of recordings and have garnered various honors and awards including: Table 3 – performed by Tony Award winner Karen Ziemba at Lincoln Center as part of the 2001 Bound for Broadway concert; You Do Not Know Me – nominated for a 2000 GLAMA Award for Best Theatre Song; Clones in Love – winner of 1985’s Best Short at the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Film Festival; and The Dance - a film of which has been screened worldwide and is in the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. A new recording of Table 3 by Tony nominee Erin Dilly is featured as part of the 2008 BMI Workshop Podcast/Songbook.
Additional career highlights include their dance/theater/music pieces of the late 1970s and early 1980s including Two Men Dancing and How I Spent My Summer Vacation; 1984's musical X-posed; and a series of innovative performance art musicals in the early and mid 1990's including Homo Love Song and Human Being. Their avant-garde musical Claire, originally created with director Melanie Stewart in 1996, enjoyed a sold out revival at the 2007 Philadelphia Fringe Festival.
Biello and Martin live and work in Philadelphia and in New York, where they are members of The Dramatists Guild and the BMI/Lehman Engel Advanced Musical Theater Workshop. They are the co-founders of OUTmusic and in 2004 were inducted into the GLBT Hall of Fame.