CATS's Creative Team

Andrew Lloyd Webber (Composer/Book/Co-Orchestrator) was born in 1948. He is the composer of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat; Jesus Christ Superstar; the film scores of Gumshoe and The Odessa File; Evita; Variations and Tell Me on a Sunday, combined as Song & Dance; Cats; Starlight Express; Requiem, a setting of the Latin Requiem Mass; The Phantom of the Opera; Aspects of Love; Sunset Boulevard; By Jeeves, an acclaimed reworking of his earlier Jeeves; and his new musical Whistle Down the Wind. His awards include six Tony Awards, four Drama Desk Awards, three Grammys, including the award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition for Requiem in 1986, and five Laurence Oliver Awards. He is the first recipient of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers' Triple Play Award. In 1997 he and Sir Tim Rice were awarded the Golden Globe and an Oscar for Best Original Song for the Evita movie soundtrack. In 1982 he became the first person to have three musicals running in New York and three in London, an achievement repeated throughout the eighties and nineties. In 1996, the London production of Cats became the longest-running musical in West End theatre history. Andrew Lloyd Webber, through The Really Useful Group, produces not only his own but other writers' works including Shirley Valentine, Lend Me a Tenor, and La Bete. In 1988 he was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal College of Music and in 1992 he was awarded a Knighthood for Services to the Arts. He was inducted into the American Songwriters' Hall of Fame and given the Praemium Imperiale Award for Music in 1995. In 1996 he received the Richard Rodgers Award for Excellence in Musical Theatre. In January 1997 he was elevated to the peerage as Lord Lloyd Webber of Sydmonton.

Trevor Nunn (Director) became the youngest ever artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1968, he was responsible for running the RSC until he retired from his post in 1986. His productions for the RSC included The Revenger's Tragedy, The Relapse, The Alchemist, Henry V, The Taming of the Shrew, King Lear, Much Ado About Nothing, The Winter's Tale, Henry VIII, Hamlet, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Julius Ceasar, Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, The Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, All's Well That Ends Well, Once in a Lifetime, Three Sisters, Juno and the Paycock, Orthello (the final production at The Other Place Theatre), The Blue Angel and Measure for Measure (the first two productions in the new Other Place Theatre). With his collegue, John Caird, he co-directed Nicholas Nickleby (winner of five Tony Awards); J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan; and Les Miserables, which won eight Tony Awards and has become the most performed musical in the world. In 1982 he opened the RSC's new London home, the Barbican Theatre, with his production of Shakespeare's Henry IV, Parts I and II. 1988 saw the opening of the Swan Theatre in Stratford upon Avon which he concieved and for which he directed one of the first productions, The Fair Maid of the West. Outside the RSC, he has directed the Tony Award-winning Cats, Starlight Express, Aspects of Love and Sunset Boulevard for Andrew Lloyd Webber; Chess; The Baker's Wife; Timon of Athens; and Heartbreak House. At Glydebourne he has directed Idomeneo, Porgy and Bess, Cosi fan Tutte and Peter Grimes, and at the Royal Opera House, Porgy and Bess (revival), and Katya Kabonova. For the Royal National Theatre, he has directed Arcadia, Enemy of the People, Mutabilitie, Not About Nightingales and the recent revival of Oklahoma! (also Lyceum). His television work includes Antony and Cleopatra (BAFTA award), The Comedy of Errors, Macbeth, Three Sisters, Nicholas Nickleby (Emmy Award), Word of Mouth, Othello and Porgy and Bess. He has directed three films: Hedda, Lady Jane and Twelfth Night. He is a director of the Royal National Theatre.

John Napier (Designer) John Napier's work in musical theatre includes Cats, Starlight Express, Les Miserables, Miss Saigon, Sunset Boulevard, Martin Guerre, Time, Children of Eden, the recent British revival of Jesus Christ Superstar and the spectacular Siegfried and Roy Show in Las Vegas which he also co-directed. Notable productions include Peter Shaffer's Equus, Nicholas Nickleby, Burning Blue, and the recent West End revival of Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. He designed the Captain EO video starring Michael Jackson and the Steven Spielberg movie Hook. For his design work, John has received three Olivier Awards in London and five Tony Awards in New York.

T. S. Eliot (Poet and Lyricist) was born in St. Louis in 1888. Educated at Harvard, the Sorbonne in Paris and Oxford, he settled in England in 1915 and taught briefly at two schools before joining Lloyds Bank in its foreign and colonial department. His first volume of poems, Prufrock and Other Observations, was published in 1917. The Waste Land, his most famous work, came out in 1922. In 1925 he left the bank to become a director of the publishing house of Faber. There have been several collected editions of his poetry and volumes of his literary and social criticism. T.S. Eliot wrote a number of verse plays: the best-known, Murder in the Cathedral, was commissioned for the Canterbury Festival of 1935. Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats appeared in October 1939. (Eliot had a great affection for cats and "Possum" was his alias among friends.) Four Quartets, now generally regarded as his masterpeice, was first published as a single work in 1943. T.S. Eliot became a British citizen in 1927. He received many honors and distinctions: the Order of Merit and the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was posthumously awarded the 1983 Tony Award for the Book of Cats. He was also an Officer de la Legion d'Honneur. He died in London in 1965, and there is a memorial to him in Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey.

Gillian Lynne (Associate Director and Choreographer) was a soloist with Sadler's Wells Ballet, the star dancer at the Palladium, starred with Errol Flynn in the movies and danced with all the greats on TV. She became instrumental in the development of jazz dance in Britain and her distinctive style led to her groundbreaking work on Cats. Gillian's 50 plus B'way and West End shows include (as director) Tonight at Eight, Once Upon a Time, The Match Girls, Tomfoolery, Jeeves Takes Charge, and Cabaret. For the RSC she co-directed A Midsummer Night's Dream and staged The Comedy of Errors, The Way of the World, As You Like It, Once in a Lifetime and directed The Boy Friend at Startford. As choreographer and stager her numerous productions include The Roar of the Greasepaint..., Pickwick, How Now Dow Jones, Collages, The Embassador, The Card, Phil The Fluter, Hans Cristian Anderson, The Yeoman of the Guard, My Fair Lady and Songbook. Her work for the Royal Opera House Covent Garden includes The Trojans, The Midsummer Marriage, The Flying Dutchman and Parsifal, and for the ENO, the direction of Offenbach's Bluebeard. Gillian's ballets include A Simple Man, Lippizaner and the three-act ballet The Brontes. She best known for her worldwide direction/choreography of Cats and her staging of The Phantom of the Opera for Andrew Lloyd Webber. Her TV direction of "Le Morte d'Arthur" was awarded the Samuel E. Engel Award in America; her "A Simple Man" won the 1987 British Academy Award for her direction. She staged many of the "Muppets" shows and her 11 feature films include Half a Sixpence, Man of La Mancha and Yentl. She directed a new play by Bill C. Davis called AVOW at the George Street Playhouse in 1996; staged Cats: The Video in London in 1997, and her new Bacharach/David musical (conception/direction/choreography) What the World Needs Now had a successful run at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. Her recent projects include a short ballet commissioned by the Bolshoi in Moscow and a new staging of the Lerner and Loewe classic Gigi at the VolksOper in Vienna.

Cameron Mackintosh (Producer) has presented hundreds of productions all over the world. Currently he has over 50 musicals in production, including Les Miserables, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon, Oliver!, Martin Guerre, The Fix, Just So, Swan Lake, Oklahoma! and Putting It Together. His next new musical will be The Witches of Eastwick, which will open in 2000. In 1995 his company received The Queen's Award for Expert Achievement and he was knighted in the 1996 New Year's Honours for his services to British Theatre.

David Cullen (Co-Orchestrator) has worked mainly as an orchestrator of musicals, most notably those of Lord Lloyd Webber: Cats, Starlight Express, Song & Dance, The Phantom of the Opera, Aspects of Love and Sunset Boulevard. Other musicals include Abbacadabra, Jeeves, Shogun the Musical, Children of Eden, Napoleon, Can-Can, The Baker's Wife, and Carmen Jones. Records which he has arranged include the America album by the Kings Singers, Christmas with Kiri and Kiri's Coventry Carols by Kiri Te Kanawa and I Am What I Am by Shirley Bassey. He both arranged and produced the albums Music of the Night for Cantabile and Lloyd Webber Plays Lloyd Webber for Julian Lloyd Webber. He has arranged songs for Barbra Streisand, Tina Turner, Sheena Easton, Sarah Brightman, Michael Ball, Cliff Richard and many others. He has orchestrated much film and TV music, and has contributed theme and incidental music to three UK TV series. He won the Drama Desk Award for his orchestrations of Phantom and was nominated the following year for Aspects of Love.

David Geffen (Producer) Entertainment entrepreneur David Geffen has made his mark in theatre, film and contemporary music. Geffen Theatre co-produced the award-winning M. Butterfly, Cats, Dreamgirls and Little Shop of Horrors. Geffen films scored successes with Beetlejuice, After Hours, Lost in America, Little Shop of Horrors, Risky Business and Men Don't Leave. He founded Geffen Records (1980) and DGC Records (1990) which have accrued 66 "gold" albums, 34 "platinum" albums, 16 "multi-platinum" albums and 63 Grammy nominations with artist rosters including Guns'N'Roses, Nirvana, Cher, Aerosmith, Don Henley, David Coverdale/Jimmy Page, Peter Gabriel, Joni Mitchell, Sonic Youth, Metheny, Nelson and Eddie Brickell. Geffen records has also released cast albums to theatrical productions such as Miss Saigon, Les Miserables, Cats, Dreamgirls and Little Shop of Horrors. An avid collector of modern art, Geffen is on the Board of Trustees of the Los Angeles Country Art Museum.

David Hersey (Lighting Designer) for more than 30 years has designed the lighting for over 200 plays, musicals, operas and ballets. His work has been seen in most corners of the globe and his many awards include Tony Awards for Evita, Cats and Les Miserables. His work is currently represented in London's West End by Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Starlight Express, Les Miserables, Miss Saigon, Oliver! and Martin Guerre. he has also been active in the world of theme parks in Florida and Italy as well as lighting extravaganzas at The Mirage and Treasure Island Hotels in Las Vegas. He is the founder of DHA Lighting which concentrates on the design and manufacture of special lighting toys which makes his job easier and more fun. For 10 years he was lighting consultant to the RNT and is a past Chairman of the Association of Lighting Designers.

Information respectfully taken from a CATS Broadway Playbill.