copyright 2000
A native of San Francisco, writer/composer/lyricist Kenneth Allan Vega has most recently written the book for 1001 Nights, a new musical about a theatre troupe touring the antebellum South that helps to smuggle runaway slaves, in collaboration with composer/lyricist John Mercurio and producer Andrew Kato. A staged reading was presented at the York Theatre in New York in October 1999 and a workshop will be presented at the George Street Playhouse in New Jersey in May 2000.
Vega's music theatre piece Heartfield was given a staged reading under the direction of Gabriel Barre in December 1997 at the Manhattan Theatre Club. Based on the life and work of the German photo-montage artist John Heartfield and developed with the assistance of Heartfield's grandson, Heartfield was subsequently given a studio-worksop production in February 1999 at Towson University in Baltimore by director Kate Chisholm, to be followed by a full production by Chisholm at Baltimore's Theatre Project in April-May 2000.
In addition to 1001 Nights and Heartfield, Vega is working on two other musicals based on historical figures, ISIS Unveiled about Madame Blavatsky, and Lindbergh Baby, a 6 actor account of the famous crime and its aftermath which is slated for a Baltimore production by director Scott Susong in 2001.
Vega has won two San Francisco Theatre Critics Circle Awards, for Outstanding Musical Score for Cafe Depresso, and Outstanding Script for a Musical in Berlin 1932, and a San Francisco Cabaret Gold Award for Outstanding Cabaret-Theatre Production for Berlin 1932.
Other musicals by Vega produced in San Francisco include Marco Polo, Ground Zero, There was a Young Lady, and In the House of Livia, and two dance musicals for Jacques d'Amboise's National Dance Institute.
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