Sara Cooper and Zach Redler

Sara Cooper is a bookwriter, lyricist, and playwright. With composer Zach Redler, Sara wrote The Memory Show, which was produced Off-Broadway by Transport Group and won a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2013, and Loving Leo, which had its first workshop production this past summer at Weston Playhouse after winning the Weston Playhouse New Musical Award in 2012. The Memory Show was developed at the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program at New York University and also ran in Seoul, South Korea, was in the NAMT Festival of New Musicals, and had its world premiere at Barrington Stage Company as a part of William Finn’s Musical Theatre Lab.

Sara and Zach have also written several opera pieces and are currently writing their third full-length musical together, Putting Off Goodbye. Sara’s other musicals have appeared in the NYMF Next Link Project, in the New York International Fringe Festival, and at Theater for the New City. Sara’s play Things I Left On Long Island has had several readings Off-Off-Broadway in the past year after winning a grant from the Queens Council on the Arts. As an educator, Sara has taught for organizations including New York University, City College, Theater for the New City, and Lincoln Center.

Website

Zach Redler is a composer, pianist, vocal coach, music copyist, musicologist, a member of ASCAP and Local 802 and a graduate of Tisch’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program, at which he met bookwriter/lyricist Sara Cooper. Zach’s research and study of Auschwitz victim Marcel Tyberg’s life and music has culminated in eight world premieres and two distinguished grants. Zach is currently preparing and editing Tyberg’s entire body of works for Boosey and Hawkes. In addition to vocal coaching at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education, Zach is adjunct faculty teaching courses at both the Tisch School of the Arts and Steinhardt. Zach’s first musical, Perez Hilton Saves the Universe written with Tim Drucker and Randy Blair, won Best Musical Fringe Festival 2008 and Best Musical in the Talkin’ Broadway 2008 Summer Theatre Festival Citations.

Zach and Sara Cooper’s first musical together, The Memory Show, began as their thesis project at Tisch in 2009. After the world premiere production at Barrington Stage (2010) and a nine-month run in Seoul (2012), last spring Transport Group produced it at the Duke Theater in New York for which they won an NEA Grant. Readings with the Adirondack Theater Festival (2010), Sharon Playhouse (2011) and Contemporary Traditionalists (2011) helped shape Zach and Sara’s Loving Leo.

In 2012, Loving Leo won the Weston Playhouse Award and The Weston Playhouse produced its first workshop production this past summer. Zach and Sara’s operatic works include a set of six monodramas (Windows) and four chamber operas (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and Male Identity) that were created in part at the Virginia Arts Festival (2011), NYU (2012) and through a two year Van Lier residency with American Opera Projects (2011-13). Zach has also written many sets of art songs with texts by 19th century American poets. This spring, Opera Memphis will premiere his and librettist Jerre Dye’s monodrama Movin’ Up in the World (part of Ghosts of Crosstown) and an excerpt from Zach and librettist Mark Campbell’s new opera about Susan Smith will be performed at the Virginia Arts Festival. Currently, in addition to writing their third musical, Putting Off Goodbye, Zach and Sara are crowd sourcing for The Memory Show cast album that grammy nominated Michael Croiter of Yellow Sound Label will produce this summer.

Website

See highlights from the grant presentation here.

See music from Zach and Sara here.