The Category Is — House Parents
Book, score, and direction: the voices shaping XTRAVAGANZA, and the team around them.
Book
R. Eric Thomas is a national bestselling author, award-winning playwright, and screenwriter. For his playwriting, Eric has been awarded the Barrymore Award for Best New Play, the Dramatist Guild Lanford Wilson Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and was a finalist for the Steinberg/ATA New Play Award.
Music & Lyrics
Khiyon Hursey is a writer and composer who got his start as the music assistant on the off-Broadway and Broadway productions, and the Grammy Award-winning cast album, of Hamilton. He is a graduate of Berklee College of Music with a degree in Songwriting.
Director
Stevie Walker-Webb is an Obie Award-winning Broadway director, playwright, and cultural worker. He is a 2050 Fellow at New York Theatre Workshop and recipient of the Princess Grace Award for Theatre and The Lily Award in honor of Lorraine Hansberry, awarded by the Dramatists Guild of America.
Music Supervisor
Bill Sherman is a Tony, Grammy, and Emmy Award–winning composer, orchestrator, and producer. He won the Tony for the orchestrations of In the Heights and Grammys for its cast album and Hamilton’s, co-founded Freestyle Love Supreme with Lin-Manuel Miranda, and has written thousands of songs as music director of Sesame Street.
Additional Music
Matt Campfield and Danny Klein are Some Randoms, a Los Angeles-based production and songwriting duo. Their credits include Kehlani’s “Can I”, Emmy Meli’s breakthrough “I Am Woman”, PRETTYMUCH’s “Phases”, and KSI’s debut album Dissimulation.
Dramaturg
Avon Haughton is the Artistic Associate for New Works at Baltimore Center Stage, where XTRAVAGANZA premieres. Haughton’s credits include The Ms. Pat Show and Bitchin’: The Sound and Fury of Rick James.
Dramaturg
Jesse Cameron Alick is a dramaturg, producer, and poet who spent fifteen years developing new work at The Public Theater, most recently as Company Dramaturg, served as Associate Artistic Director of the Vineyard Theatre, and is a Co-Director of HERE Arts Center.
House of Xtravaganza
José Gutierez Xtravaganza is a legend of the New York ballroom scene and an icon of the House of Xtravaganza. He carried voguing from the ballroom floor to the world stage as a dancer and co-choreographer of Madonna’s “Vogue” and the Blond Ambition tour, and is a subject of the documentaries Truth or Dare and Strike a Pose.