Tom Eyen

Tom Eyen (August 14, 1940 – May 26, 1991) was an American playwright, lyricist, television writer and theatre director.

Eyen is best known for works at opposite ends of the theatrical spectrum. Mainstream theatergoers became acquainted with him in 1981 when he partnered with composer Henry Krieger and director Michael Bennett to write the book and lyrics for Dreamgirls, the hit Broadway musical about an African American female singing trio. Eyen's career started, however, with avant garde plays and musicals that he wrote and directed off-off Broadway in the early 1960s, which eventually led to off-Broadway success in the 1970s with the controversial nudity-filled performance-art play The Dirtiest Show in Town and Women Behind Bars, a camp parody of women's prison exploitation films.

Biography

Eyen was born in Cambridge, Ohio, the youngest of seven children of Abraham and Julia Eyen, who owned a family-run restaurant. He attended The Ohio State University but left before graduating, in 1960, and moved to New York City to study acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Henry Krieger

Henry Krieger (born February 9, 1945 in New York City) is an American musical theatre composer. He most notably wrote the music for the Broadway shows Dreamgirls (1981, with lyrics and book by Tom Eyen),The Tap Dance Kid (1983), and Side Show (1997).

He was nominated for the Tony Awards for Best Score for both Dreamgirls and Side Show, won a Grammy Award for the cast album of Dreamgirls and received three Academy Award nominations for the songs he wrote for the 2006 film.

Early life

Born in New York City, Krieger grew up in White Plains and Ossining in Westchester County, New York and attended school at the Scarborough School in Scarborough, New York. There he played in Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe and Ruddigore. He became interested in theatre and the dramatic arts, and he later studied creative and liberal arts at the American University in Washington, D.C., and Columbia University in New York, and then he studied Graphical Arts in Pontifical Xavierian University in Bogotá, Colombia.

Tony Award

The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known informally as the Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway productions and performances, and an award is given for regional theatre. Several discretionary non-competitive awards are also given, including a Special Tony Award, the Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre, and the Isabelle Stevenson Award. The awards are named after Antoinette Perry, co-founder of the American Theatre Wing.

The rules for the Tony Awards are set forth in the official document "Rules and Regulations of The American Theatre Wing's Tony Awards", which applies for that season only. The Tony Awards are considered the highest U.S. theatre honor, the New York theatre industry's equivalent to the Academy Awards (Oscars) for motion pictures, the Grammy Awards for music and the Emmy Awards for television, and the Laurence Olivier Award for theatre in the United Kingdom and the Molière Award of France.

Jennifer Hudson

Jennifer Kate Hudson (born September 12, 1981) is an American singer, actress and spokesperson. She rose to fame in 2004 as a finalist on the third season of American Idol, coming in seventh place.

As an actress, she made her film debut portraying Effie White in Dreamgirls (2006), for which she gained worldwide acclaim and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She has also appeared in such films as Sex and the City (2008), The Secret Life of Bees (2008) and Winnie Mandela (2013). As a singer, Hudson won a Grammy Award for her debut album, Jennifer Hudson, released in 2008. The album spawned the hit single "Spotlight" and was certified gold by the RIAA, with sales exceeding a million copies worldwide. Her second album, I Remember Me, was released 2011 and was certified gold by the RIAA, producing the hit "Where You At".

In October 2008, after Hudson's mother, brother and nephew were killed in a shooting, Hudson stepped out of the public eye for three months. Hudson resumed her public appearances in 2009 and has since performed at the Super Bowl XLIII, the Grammy Awards, American Idol, and The Oprah Winfrey Show. Hudson has been described as a friend of President Barack Obama, who invited her to appear with him at a fundraiser in Beverly Hills in May 2009. She also performed at the White House at the "Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement" event. Hudson has sold 1,280,000 albums and 2,237,000 singles in the United States as of February 2012. In 2013, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She is a dramatic soprano, with the ability to sing from C3 to C#6.

Eddie Murphy

Edward Regan "Eddie" Murphy (born April 3, 1961) is an American comedian, actor, writer, singer, and producer. Box-office takes from Murphy's films make him the 5th-highest grossing actor in the United States. He was a regular cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1980 to 1984 and has worked as a stand-up comedian. He was ranked #10 on Comedy Central's list of the 100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time.

He has received Golden Globe Award nominations for his performances in 48 Hrs., the Beverly Hills Cop series, Trading Places, and The Nutty Professor. In 2007, he won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of soul singer James "Thunder" Early in Dreamgirls.

Eddie Murphy's work as a voice actor includes Thurgood Stubbs in The PJs, Donkey in DreamWorks' Shrek series and the Chinese dragon Mushu in Disney's Mulan. In some of his films, he plays multiple roles in addition to his main character, intended as a tribute to one of his idols Peter Sellers, who played multiple roles in Dr. Strangelove and elsewhere. Murphy has played multiple roles in Coming to America, Wes Craven's Vampire in Brooklyn, the Nutty Professor films (where he played the title role in two incarnations, plus his character's father, brother, mother, and grandmother), Bowfinger, The Adventures of Pluto Nash, Norbit, and Meet Dave.