THE CREATIVE TEAM

K E N L A Z E B N I K Book/Adaptor

Ken LaZebnik is a playwright, film and television writer, whose work includes collaborating with Garrison Keillor on Robert Altman’s final film, A Prairie Home Companion, as many years of writing for the public radio show of the same name. He wrote the popular Christmas movie A Christmas Cottage, starring Peter O’Toole and Marcia Gay Harden, which has become a perennial favorite. His plays have twice won American Theater Critics Awards, the first for Vestibular Sense, and most recently for On The Spectrum. Both plays were commissioned by the Mixed Blood Theatre of Minneapolis and deal with issues of autism. On The Spectrum had an acclaimed run in the spring of 2013 at The Fountain Theater in Los Angeles. His play Theory of Mind was commissioned by Cincinnati’s Playhouse in the Park and has been performed in Hawaii, Minnesota, and Michigan.

For television, he wrote and produced over 25 episodes of the top-rated CBS series Touched By An Angel, and has written episodes for series as diverse as Providence, Army Wives, and in 2014, When Calls The Heart. For PBS, he wrote three In Concert At The White House specials, featuring singers such as Patti LuPone, Jennifer Holiday, and Toby Keith.

In the spring of 2014, his book Hollywood Digs: An Archaeology of Shadows will be published by Kelly’s Cove Press.

L E S L I E S T E I N W E I S S Composer/Lyricist

Composer and lyricist Leslie Steinweiss has most recently been writing chamber music and choral works including a string trio, and wind quintet and two songs for choir, piano and string ensemble. His Flight of Fancy for Clarinet and Piano was performed at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Mass.

He has also recently created music for Museum Scandals, a short film directed by Sande Shurin. As composer-in-residence for the theater company DearKnows in New York City, his scores were performed at Lincoln Center, Home for Contemporary Theater and Art in New York City, and Olympia Dukakis’s Whole Theater in Montclair, New Jersey. He composed music for The School of Jolly Dogs with book and lyrics by Denise Balle, which was workshopped and performed at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center.

Other film credits include PBS documentaries,independent films as well as collaborative work with his wife Marjory Steinweiss, who is a filmmaker. Open Lines directed and edited by Marjory, is an award-winning short film which was featured at the Breckenridge, Chicago and Saarbrucken film festivals.