Chad Beguelin

Chad Beguelin (born September 24, 1969) is an American playwright and four-time Tony Award nominee. He wrote the book for Disney's Aladdin, as well as additional lyrics for the score. He was nominated for Best Original Book and Best Original Score for Aladdin. He also 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.

Biography

Beguelin, a native of Centralia, Illinois, 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 2000 and 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.

Chad

Coordinates: 15°N 19°E / 15°N 19°E / 15; 19

Chad (ⁱ/tʃæd/; Arabic: تشاد‎ Tshād; French: Tchad), officially the Republic of Chad (Arabic: جمهورية تشاد‎ Jumhūrīyat Tshād; French: République du Tchad), 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. It is the fifth largest country in Africa in terms of area.

Chad has several regions: a desert zone in the north, an arid Sahelian belt in the centre and a more fertile Sudanian 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. N'Djamena, 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. In 1960, Chad obtained independence under the leadership of François Tombalbaye. Resentment towards his policies in the Muslim north culminated in the eruption of a long-lasting civil war in 1965. In 1979, the rebels conquered the capital and put an end to the south's hegemony. However, the rebel commanders fought amongst themselves until Hissène Habré defeated his rivals. He was overthrown in 1990 by his general Idriss Déby. Since 2003, the Darfur crisis in Sudan has spilt over the border and destabilised the nation, with hundreds of thousands of Sudanese refugees living in and around camps in eastern Chad.

Alan Menken

HIDDEN ERROR: Usage of "awards" is not recognized

Alan Irwin Menken (born July 22, 1949) is an American musical theatre and film composer and pianist. 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 Little Shop of Horrors, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Newsies, Home on the Range, Enchanted, Tangled, The Shaggy Dog, and Mirror Mirror.

Menken has collaborated on several occasions with lyricists including Howard Ashman, Tim Rice, Glenn Slater, Stephen Schwartz, and David Zippel. With eight Academy Award wins (four each for Best Original Score and Best Original Song), Menken is the second most prolific Oscar winner in a music category after Alfred Newman, who has nine Oscars.

Early life

Alan Irwin Menken was born on July 22, 1949 at French Hospital in New York City to Normann Menken and his wife Judith. His father was a boogie-woogie piano-playing dentist, while his mother was an actress, dancer and playwright.

Casey Nicholaw

Casey Nicholaw (born 1962) is an American theatre director, choreographer and performer. He has been nominated for Tony Awards for directing and choreographing The Drowsy Chaperone (2006) and Something Rotten! (2015), for choreographing Monty Python's Spamalot (2005), and choreographing The Book of Mormon (2011), winning for his co-direction of the latter with Trey Parker. He also was nominated for the Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Direction and Choreography for The Drowsy Chaperone (2006) and Something Rotten! (2015) and for Outstanding Choreography for Spamalot (2005).

Biography

The son of Andy and Kay Nicholaw and the oldest of three children, Nicholaw grew up in San Diego, California and performed in community theatre there as a teenager. He graduated from Clairemont High School in 1980 and attended the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a nephew of the late George Nicholaw, who was the long time general manager of radio station KNX (AM) in Los Angeles, California.

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.