Chad Beguelin (born September 24, 1969) is an American playwright who wrote the lyrics and co-book for the Broadway musical The Wedding Singer. He was nominated for two Tony Awards for his work on the musical, as well as a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics. He also wrote the lyrics for the Broadway musical Elf the Musical.

Beguelin received an MFA from the graduate writing program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

Beguelin wrote the book and lyrics for The Rhythm Club which was produced at the Signature Theatre, Arlington, Virginia in 2000and was nominated for a Helen Hayes Award. He wrote the book and lyrics for Wicked City, which was produced at the American Stage Company and the Mason Street Warehouse, and he wrote the books for Disney's Aladdin and On the Record.

As a screenwriter, Beguelin sold a script to Grammnet Productions and also worked as a staff writer for Disney's live action film department in California.

Casey Nicholaw is expected to direct and choreograph the stage musical Aladdin which is expected to run at the 5th Avenue Theatre, Seattle, Washington, July 7-31, 2011. It will use songs from the 1992 film Aladdin, with a new book by Chad Beguelin and new lyrics by Beguelin and Alan Menken. The musical "is not being groomed for a Broadway future."

Chad ⁱ/ˈtʃæd/ (French: Tchad, Arabic: تشاد‎ Tšād), officially known as the Republic of Chad, is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic to the south, Cameroon and Nigeria to the southwest, and Niger to the west. Due to its distance from the sea and its largely desert climate, the country is sometimes referred to as the "Dead Heart of Africa".

Chad is divided into multiple regions: a desert zone in the north, an arid Sahelian belt in the centre and a more fertile Sudanese savanna zone in the south. Lake Chad, after which the country is named, is the largest wetland in Chad and the second largest in Africa. Chad's highest peak is the Emi Koussi in the Sahara, and N'Djamena, (formerly Fort-Lamy), the capital, is the largest city. Chad is home to over 200 different ethnic and linguistic groups. Arabic and French are the official languages. Islam and Christianity are the most widely practiced religions.

Beginning in the 7th millennium BC, human populations moved into the Chadian basin in great numbers. By the end of the 1st millennium BC, a series of states and empires rose and fell in Chad's Sahelian strip, each focused on controlling the trans-Saharan trade routes that passed through the region. France conquered the territory by 1920 and incorporated it as part of French Equatorial Africa.

Matthew Sklar (October 7, 1973) is a Broadway composer. He was nominated for the 2006 Tony Award for Best Original Score for the musical The Wedding Singer for which he wrote the music and Chad Beguelin wrote the lyrics. He also composed the music for the Broadway musical hit Elf which broke box office records five of the nine weeks of its limited engagement at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre in 2010-2011. Matthew co-produced the original Broadway cast albums for both shows.

Sklar is a native of Westfield, New Jersey. He attended Edison Intermediate School and graduated from Westfield High School in 1991. He was active in the high school's music and drama programs, and also participated in the Westfield Summer Workshop.

He made his Broadway debut as a composer for the new musical The Wedding Singer. He has been a pianist, conductor, and dance music arranger for many productions including Shrek, 42nd Street, Miss Saigon, Les Misérables, Nine and Caroline, or Change. He has been working on Broadway since the age of eighteen.

Alan Menken (born July 22, 1949) is a pianist and composer of American musical theatre and film.

Menken is best known for his scores for films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. His scores for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Pocahontas have each won him two Academy Awards. He also composed the scores for The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Home on the Range, The Shaggy Dog, Enchanted, and most recently, Tangled. Menken has collaborated on several occasions with lyricists including Howard Ashman, Tim Rice, Glenn Slater, and Stephen Schwartz. With nineteen nominations and eight wins, Menken has won the third most Oscars of any person, after Walt Disney (twenty-two wins) and Alfred Newman (nine wins).

Menken was born in New York, NY to a Jewish family, the son of Judith and Norman Menken, a dentist. He developed an interest in music at an early age, studying piano and violin. He went to New Rochelle High School in New Rochelle, New York. He attended college as a pre-med student, but later changed his focus to music at NYU Steinhardt. After college, he attended the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop. He performed frequently in local clubs and worked as a composer of jingles and songs and as an accompanist.

Hugh Michael Jackman (born 12 October 1968) is an Australian actor and producer who is involved in film, musical theatre, and television.

Jackman has won international recognition for his roles in major films, notably as action/superhero, period and romance characters. He is known for his role as Wolverine in the X-Men film series, as well as for his leads in Kate & Leopold, Van Helsing, The Prestige, Australia, and Real Steel. Jackman is a singer, dancer, and actor in stage musicals, and won a Tony Award for his role in The Boy from Oz.

In November 2008, Open Salon named Jackman one of the sexiest men alive. Later that same month, People magazine named Jackman "Sexiest Man Alive."

A three-time host of the Tony Awards, winning an Emmy Award for one of these appearances, Jackman also hosted the 81st Academy Awards on 22 February 2009.

Jackman was born in Sydney, New South Wales, the youngest of five children of English parents Chris Jackman and Grace Watson, and the second child to be born in Australia (he also has a younger half-sister, from his mother's re-marriage). One of his paternal great-grandfathers was Greek. His parents divorced when he was eight, and he remained with his accountant father and siblings, while his mother moved back to England. As a child, Jackman liked the outdoors, spending a lot of time at the beach and on camping trips and vacations all over Australia. He wanted to see the world: "I used to spend nights looking at atlases. I decided I wanted to be a chef on a plane. Because I'd been on a plane and there was food on board, I presumed there was a chef. I thought that would be an ideal job."