James Lapine (born January 10, 1949) is an American stage director and librettist. He has won the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical three times, for Into the Woods, Falsettos, and Passion. He has frequently collaborated with Stephen Sondheim and William Finn.

Lapine was born in Mansfield, Ohio and graduated from Franklin and Marshall College in 1971. He did graduate study in both photography and graphic design at the California Institute of the Arts. He was a photographer, graphic designer, and architectural preservationist and taught design at the Yale School of Drama. At Yale University he wrote an adaptation and directed the Gertrude Stein play Photograph, which was produced Off-Broadway at the Open Space in SoHo in 1977. He proceeded to write and direct Off-Broadway plays and musicals, working with composer William Finn on March of the Falsettos in 1981 as director; the musical won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Play. Frank Rich, the New York Times theatre critic, noted "Mr. Lapine's wildly resourceful staging."

Stephen Joshua Sondheim ( /ˈsɒnd.haɪm/) (born March 22, 1930) is an American composer and lyricist known for his contributions to musical theatre. He is the winner of an Academy Award, eight Tony Awards (more than any other composer) including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award. Described by Frank Rich of the New York Times as "the greatest, and perhaps best-known artist working in musical theatre", his most famous works include (as composer/lyricist) A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods. He also wrote the lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy.

Sondheim has also written material for movies, including the 1981 Warren Beatty film Reds, contributing the song "Goodbye For Now". He also wrote five songs for the 1990 movie Dick Tracy, including "Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)", which won the Academy Award for Best Song.

William Alan Finn (b. February 28, 1952, Boston, Massachusetts) is an American composer and lyricist of musicals. His musical Falsettos received the 1992 Tony Awards for Best Music and Lyrics and for Best Book.

Finn, who is Jewish, grew up in Natick, Massachusetts with his parents and siblings, Michael and Nancy. He majored in music at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. When he graduated, he received the Hutchinson Fellowship (a musical composition award). He is also Adjunct Faculty Composer/Lyricist at New York University.

In 1992, Finn suffered deteriorating vision, dizziness and partial paralysis and was rushed to the hospital. He had arteriovenous malformation, or AVM, in his brain stem. In September, 1992, he had Gamma Knife surgery, which obliterated the AVM. After the surgery, Finn experienced a year of humbled serenity and constantly felt like he had a "new brain." Finn's 2002 musical A New Brain is based on his experience with AVM and his subsequent successful surgery. He lives with his life partner in New York City and Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he is a composer and writer. Besides composing for the stage and screen, Finn is member of the NYU Tisch Graduate Program in Musical Theater Writing faculty and he has been the Artistic Head of the Musical Theater Lab at the Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Massachusetts for the past four years.

Julian M. Sands (born 4 January 1958) is an English actor, known for his roles in the Best Picture nominee The Killing Fields, the cult film Warlock, A Room with a View, Arachnophobia, Vatel, the television series 24 and as Jor-El in the television series Smallville.

Sands began his film career appearing in supporting roles, including parts in the 1984 films Oxford Blues and The Killing Fields. He was cast as the romantic lead in the 1985 film A Room with a View, the success of which prompted Sands to move to Hollywood in 1987 and pursue a career in American films. He has since appeared in a variety of both low-tier and higher-budget films, including the title role in the 1989 horror film Warlock and the 1993 sequel Warlock: The Armageddon, and parts in films such as Arachnophobia, Boxing Helena and Leaving Las Vegas. He has done voice-overs as Valmont in the Jackie Chan Adventures cartoon for Seasons 1 and 2 before being replaced by British actors Andrew Ableson and Greg Ellis for the other seasons. He played Erik aka The Phantom in the horror version of The Phantom of the Opera in 1998.

Jonathan Tunick (born April 19, 1938, New York City, New York) is an American orchestrator, musical director, and composer, one of eleven people to have won all four major American show business awards: the Tony Awards, Academy Awards, Emmy Awards and Grammy Awards. He has worked on most of the musicals of Stephen Sondheim, starting in 1970 with Company and ending with the 2010-11 revival of Follies.

He graduated from the LaGuardia Performing Arts High School, and holds degrees from Bard College and the Juilliard School. Tunick's principal instrument is the clarinet.

Much of his work has arisen from his involvement in theatre, and he is associated especially with the musicals of Stephen Sondheim. Sondheim said of Tunick's work: " 'I think he's tops'..." and further noted that "Tunick is a standout in his field not only because of his musicianship and imagination, but primarily because of 'his great sensitivity to theatrical atmosphere.' "

Tunick also has a band, the "Broadway Moonlighters", which played at Birdland in March 2012 and in 2008 with Barbara Cook as his special guest. He has worked as an arranger and/or con­ductor on recordings with Judy Collins, Cleo Laine, Kiri Te Kanawa, Itzhak Perlman, Placido Domingo, Johnny Mathis, Barbra Streisand, Paul McCartney and Bernadette Peters. In his review of the Bernadette Peters recording Bernadette Peters Loves Rodgers and Hammerstein (Angel Records, 2002), John Kenrick wrote: "Jonathan Tunick provides the brilliant arrangements." Tunick won the Grammy Award as "Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s)/Best Background Arrangement" for his work on the song "No One Is Alone" from the Cleo Laine album Cleo Laine Sings Sondheim (RCA Victor, 1987).