Creative Team

Aaron Alon (website) Creative Director; Book, Lyrics, Music (Houston, TX)

Aaron Alon is an award-winning, widely-performed young classical composer. He has also been involved in theatre since an early age as a performer and since 2009,y as a playwright and musical theatre composer-lyricist. Aaron is an Associate Professor of Music at Lone Star College-CyFair and holds degrees in composition from Rice University, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and the University of Chicago.  He also studied musical theatre composition with The Writers’ Workshop (Chicago) and with Tony Award winner Stuart Ostrow. Current projects include producing his full-length play POSITIVE and filming his new musical BULLY. Aaron fully expects to die young, as any composer must if he is to earn his place in history.

Heather Brown Core Creative Team (Cypress, TX)

Heather Brown is an assistant professor of Transitional English at Lone Star College who has returned to the arts after many years away to assist with music department ensemble classes as well as with the glee club. Her background is in musical theatre and choir, as well as in nonfiction writing and in editing fiction. The combined time commitment of teaching English and volunteering in music makes her unsure which would be a more fitting end: sticking her head in the oven like Sylvia Plath or a simple drug overdose like Kurt Cobain. 

Andrew Chukerman (full bio) Music (Los Angeles)

Winner of the Richard Rodgers Award, the Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation Award, and the Edgerton Award, Chicago-native Andrew Chukerman works extensively in film, television, theatre, and concert venues as a composer, orchestrator, music director, and keyboardist. His keyboard work appears on numerous recordings, including Rod Stewart’s multi-platinum, Grammy-winning The Great American Songbook. Andrew made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2000 as a composer and pianist with the New York Pops for his original work My Only Son. With this production, Andrew is proud to confirm that his career is “dead.”

Miriam Daly works in Houston as a music director, accompanist, arranger & composer. While previously living in NYC, she music directed the Off-Broadway smash, Tony ‘n Tina’s Wedding. She has played at noted NYC venues Don’t Tell Mama, The Duplex, & La Mama. She was a 2007 recipient of NYC’s The York Theatre’s NEO award for composition.  She is a graduate of Eastman School of Music and NYU’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program for which she received a full scholarship. She has never met Death although they are friends on Facebook.

Elizabeth Doyle Music (Chicago)

A featured guest on Marian McPartland’s NPR program Piano Jazz, singer songwriter Elizabeth Doyle has written the musicals “Sleepy Hollow,” “Alice In Analysis,” “The White City,” “Duo” and “Fat Tuesday.” She wants to go singing a great big money note, but a long time from now.

Jason Howard Book (Houston)

Jason is a local writer/actor/director who has worked on many of the stages in Houston and the surrounding areas.  Besides several produced plays, he has also written radio sitcoms produced in the UK and is currently writing the script and lyrics for a locally produced movie musical.  His greatest production is a collaborative effort with his wife Amy — their son, Jude.  Jason will sleep when John Dunn is dead.

Eric James Book; Core Creative Team (Houston)

Eric James received his BA in English – Creative Writing at the University of Houston, where his plays In My Mother’s Heels and Winter Tree received full productions in the Edward Albee workshops. His short plays have been produced the past four years in the annual S/H 10×10 showcase of new plays. In 2009, his full-length play, Stop, Traveler, received a professional reading at Stages Repertory Theatre as part of Wordsmyth Theatre’s new play reading series. His fear of death overshadows all his other phobias combined…so it only makes sense that he would help write a musical comedy about it.

Steven has music directed for many Houston theater companies: Stages (Grey Gardens), TUTS (ass’t m.d. Anything Goes), Main Street (Urinetown), A.D. Players (The Fanasticks), Theater Lab (The Musical of Musicals), New Heights (The Life), The Ensemble (Once on this Island), Country Playhouse (Do I Hear A Waltz?), Texas Repertory (Illyria), Unity Theater (Forever Plaid), Masquerade Theater (City of Angels), Mildred’s Umbrella (The Last Five Years). He has also done several HBU School of Music operas, including The Magic Flute, Trouble in Tahiti and Gianni Schicchi. Steven holds a BM from Baylor and a MM from UT.

Owen Kalt Lyrics (Chicago)

Owen Kalt has written the lyrics for several musicals including “American Klezmer,” which was produced in Los Angeles, and “Belle Barth: If I Embarrass You, Tell Your Friends,” which was produced in Chicago.  Owen suffers from a morbid fear that he will choke to death on a potato latke.

Patti Lozano Core Creative Team (Houston, TX)

Patti Lozano has been a music and Spanish teacher in several Houston-area school districts.  She wrote episodes and appeared in a six year interactive video program for teaching Spanish through music called “¡Viva el español!” which was used widely around Texas.  She is best known as an author for Dolo Publications, who writes short humorous plays, activities and songs for learning French, Spanish, German and English through music, storytelling and theater. Death has come for Patti several times, but she always regales him with endless anecdotes about New York City history, literally boring Death to death, so he now leaves her alone.

Deb Murphy Book; Core Creative Team (Galveston, TX)

Deb Murphy is an insane dilettante who got pulled into this project by a not nearly departed friend. Deb is a published, award-winning writer of news, feature stories, personal essays, and book reviews. She currently lives in Galveston and works in Houston, further proving “she’s not quite right.” Since Deb doesn’t believe the world is ending, she anxiously awaits the return of our cat overlords, having lived with their spies for many years. In return for a quick death, Deb makes regular offerings of catnip and tuna.

Mark Sanderlin (website) Book, Music, Lyrics (New York City)

Mark Sanderlin is an award-winning and versatile composer/lyricist whose works include a full-length musical (At The Edge), two albums of original songs, film scores, choral arrangements, incidental music for the stage and lyrics for chamber works. Mark is a member of the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop and the Dramatists Guild. Mark cheated Death several times in the early 80’s and as a result, has since changed his name and entered the Witness Protection Program.

Russell Sarre Core Creative Team (Houston)

Bio coming soon…

Thomas Sturm is a young composer attending Rice University.  His classical music has been performed by members of the Da Camera Young Artists Program and members of the Houston Symphony.  Thomas’ music has been honored with the Boston New Music Initiative/American Festival for the Arts 2011 Composition Prize as well as being a finalist in the 2011 ASCAP Morton Gould composition competition.  Death and Thomas used to be really close until he started wearing black robes and carrying a scythe everywhere.  After that, Death decided Thomas was a bad influence.

Alex Winker Core Creative Team (Houston)

Alex Winkler is a Houston composer and pianist who writes in nearly every style of music. Although he specializes in music for film & TV, Alex has collaborated on many diverse projects including his musical Liberators, which was accepted into the 2012 Houston Fringe Festival. Past awards and honors include being featured in both the Aletheia Arts Journal and the Unified Underground Magazine, receiving two Robert Avalon Composition Competition awards as well as being the Undergraduate winner of the Louisa Sarofim Composition Contest. As a film composer, Alex’s artistic integrity has suffered an untimely death, although scientists agree that his body should remain alive for years to come.

Peter Wittenberg, Jr. Book, Lyrics; Core Creative Team (Los Angeles)

Peter studied under theater greats Edward Albee, Lanford Wilson, and Stuart Ostrow. His plays Engagements & Ornaments and Poet were produced through University of Houston classes. as was the musical Magic Mountain, for which he wrote the book. Accused and Standing Up to a Bully were presented by the S/H 10×10 festival, with Accused later being produced in NYC. Visitor was read in Galveston as part of a series of plays about Hurricane Ike. More important than playwrighting is his daughter, Chloe. Peter is too busy to be visited by Death, but would be happy to talk over a bottle of Irish whiskey.