Rick Elice is a Broadway script writer, Hollywood screenwriter, and author who has received numerous awards and accolades throughout his career. Elice’s first Broadway credit, Jersey Boys, which he co-authored with Marshall Brickman, won the Tony Award, the Grammy Award and the Olivier Award for Best Musical, and is in the record books as the twelfth longest-running show in Broadway history. The Addams Family, which Elice wrote with Marshall Brickman and Andrew Lippa, regularly tops the charts as the most licensed musical in North America. His first play, Peter and the Starcatcher, which was directed by Roger Rees and Alex Timbers, set a record in 2012 for the most Tony Award nominations for an American play in Broadway history (a record it held until this year). In all, the play won five Tony Awards. Elice also wrote the double Tony Award winning smash Broadway hit The Cher Show. His recent world premiere musicals include My Very Own British Invasion at the Paper Mill Playhouse; Dog and Pony at the Old Globe, directed by Roger Rees; and Turn of the Century, co-authored with Marshall Brickman and directed by Tommy Tune.

Elice’s current projects include the musicals The Princess Bride for Disney Theatrical Productions; Smash for Robert Greenblatt, Neil Meron, and Steven Spielberg with Bob Martin; Monopoly for Hasbro, with David Rossmer and Dan Lipton; and Mad Season, with Rob Thomas, Matt Serletic and Matt Walden of Matchbox Twenty. Elice is also working on adapting Sara Gruen’s popular novel Water for Elephants for the stage with the acclaimed theatre collective PigPen. In addition, he and Benjamin Scheuer, recipient of the 2021 Ed Kleban Award, are writing Treasure, a musical about the rivalry between Charles Darwin and Peter M. Roget, not to mention love, death, madness and the creation of Roget’s Thesaurus.

Elice was born in New York City and was the salutatorian graduate of Francis Lewis High School in Queens, New York. He earned degrees from Cornell University and the Yale Drama School, and from 1980–1981, he was a teaching fellow at Harvard University. He is a charter member of the American Repertory Theater and a trustee for The Actor’s Fund. From 1982–1999, as creative director at Serino Coyne Inc., he produced ad campaigns for some three hundred Broadway shows, from A Chorus Line to The Lion King. From 1999–2009, he served as a creative consultant for the Walt Disney Studio.  

Elice’s book, Finding Roger: An Improbably Theatrical Love Story, is a tribute to his late husband, Roger Rees, and is published by Kingswell.

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The appearance of Rick Elice is made possible by a generous gift from Tennessee Book Company.  

Broadway, film, and television star Aaron Lazar will host a one-hour special program exclusively for Tennessee Arts Academy participants on Wednesday, July 14. Bravo!! A Virtual Evening with Stephen Sondheim and Friends, hosted by Aaron Lazar: Honoring America’s Arts Teachers will feature an exclusive interview with musical theatre legend Stephen Sondheim. Sondheim will discuss his life, his shows, and the creative forces that have inspired and shaped his career. In tribute to Sondheim, Lazar will be joined by several Broadway stars who will relate their own special Stephen Sondheim moment and sing a Sondheim melody in honor of the famed composer. Tennessee Arts Academy educators will provide Aaron with questions to ask throughout the evening. They will also share their own unique perspective on the training they have received at the Academy and the impact it has had on their teaching and, in turn, on their students.

Bravo!! A Virtual Evening with Stephen Sondheim and Friends, hosted by Aaron Lazar: Honoring America’s Arts Teachers is an exclusive event for the 2021 Tennessee Arts Academy.

This very special evening is generously sponsored by Pat and Thane Smith.

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Introducing Our Special Guest...

Broadway Composer

Stephen Sondheim!

Stephen Sondheim is one of the most significant figures in twentieth-century theater. During his almost seventy-year career, his reinvention of the American musical has helped to bring new vitality, complexity, and sophistication to the form. The breadth and depth of his works explore the human experience with remarkable clarity and understanding. His innovative and award-winning music and lyrics are singular in their ability to create an emotional connection to the characters and the stage shows in which they appear.

Sondheim's best-known works include A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Sweeney Todd (1979), Sunday in the Park with George (1984) and Into the Woods (1987). He wrote the lyrics for West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959) Do I Hear a Waltz? (1965), and additional lyrics for Candide (1973). Anthologies of his work include Side By Side By Sondheim (1976), Marry Me a Little (1981), Putting It Together (1993/99), and Sondheim on Sondheim (2010). For films, he composed the scores of Stavisky (1974), co-composed the score for Reds (1981) and wrote songs for Dick Tracy (1990) and the TV production Evening Primrose (1966). He co-authored the film The Last of Sheila (1973) and the play Getting Away with Murder (1996).

Sondheim has received an Academy Award, eight Tony Awards (more than any other composer) and a special Tony for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, eight Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, and a Laurence Olivier Award. In 1983, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which awarded him the Gold Medal for Music in 2006. In 1990, he was appointed the first Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Oxford University. Additional awards he has received are a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1993 at the Kennedy Center Honors, the National Medal of Arts in 1996, the MacDowell Medal in 2013 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. He is on the Council of the Dramatists Guild, the national association of playwrights, composers, and lyricists, having served as its president from 1973 to 1981. In 1981, he founded Young Playwrights Inc. to develop and promote the work of American playwrights eighteen years and younger. His collected lyrics with attendant essays have been published in two volumes: Finishing the Hat (2010) and Look, I Made a Hat (2011). In 2010, the Broadway theater formerly known as Henry Miller’s Theatre was renamed in his honor.

Introducing

Our Host

Broadway, Film, and Television Star

Aaron Lazar

Since his 2005 critically acclaimed performance as Fabrizio Nacarelli in the Tony Award winning hit The Light in the Piazza, Aaron Lazar has established himself as Broadway’s most versatile leading man. His eleven Broadway production appearances include playing opposite seventeen-time Grammy Award winner Sting in the latter’s epic musical The Last Ship; originating roles in the revival of Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music opposite Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury; the world premiere of Impressionism with Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen; and the world premiere of A Tale of Two Cities. Lazar appeared in Sir Trevor Nunn’s revival of Oklahoma!; starred in the first Broadway revival of Les Miserables; performed the role of Sam in the global phenomenon Mamma Mia!; and made his debut in the longest-running show in Broadway history, The Phantom of the Opera. Most recently, Lazar starred in the first national tour of Dear Evan Hansen as Larry Murphy.

Lazar’s film credits include The Wolf of Wall Street (opposite Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie); This is Where I Leave You (as Tina Fey’s workaholic husband Barry); J. Edgar (as Prosecutor Wilentz); and the recent blockbusters Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: End Game. On television, Lazar has appeared in more than a dozen shows for the major networks including Quantico, The Strain, Disney’s Girl Meets World, The Blacklist, Blue Bloods, The Good Wife, The Following, New Amsterdam, All My Children, and many others. This past season, Lazar starred opposite Kim Cattrall in the one-hour gothic-soap Filthy Rich.

Lazar’s symphony credits include Billy Bigelow in Carousel with the Boston Pops, Lt. Cable in South Pacific at the Hollywood Bowl, Paul in Company (live with the New York Philharmonic), and multiple appearances with both the New York Pops at Carnegie Hall and the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center. Other notable appearances include the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra at Masada and the English National Opera Orchestra at the Coliseum in London’s West End. Lazar’s voice can be heard on numerous Broadway cast albums and dozens of television commercials. He is an honorary board member of the Tennessee Arts Academy Foundation, as well as an alumnus of Duke University and the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Lazar is the proud father of two boys—Julian and Adrian.

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A Virtual Evening With Stephen Sondheim And Friends, hosted by Aaron Lazar: Honoring America's Arts Teachers is made possible by a generous gift from Pat and Thane Smith.