Ryan Scott Oliver
Ryan Scott Oliver is a Lortel Award-nominated and Kleban Prize, Rodgers, and Larson Award-winning composer and lyricist. He was called “the future of Broadway… a major new voice in musical theatre” (Entertainment Weekly) and is “shaking up musical theater with his dark, twisted and genius work … [Oliver] could very well be musical theater’s answer to an auteur filmmaker or a gothic novelist” (Huffington Post).
He wrote the score for 35mm: A Musical Exhibition (based on photographs by his husband, Matthew Murphy) and Jasper in Deadland (co-book with Tony Award-nominee Hunter Foster); as well as Hugo (based on Brian Selznick’s novel and directed by Christopher Wheeldon); Mrs. Sharp (developed at Playwrights Horizons July 2009 starring Jane Krakowski, dir. by Michael Greif); We Foxes (commissioned by Broadway Across America); Tethered with Adam Chanler-Berat (commissioned by Grove Entertainment); Darling; Palace of Lights (with director Warren Carlyle for Norwegian Cruise Lines); Otherbody, a brief musical allegory; and a contemporary “marriage play,” Three Points of Contact. Both Jasper in Deadland and 35mm: A Musical Exhibition are licensed worldwide by Concord Theatricals, and have cast recordings on the Ghostlight/Sh-k-boom label.
He is currently at work on Party of the Century, a musical based on Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball (for Fourth Wall Theatrical, book by Kirsten Guenther), plus an original musical commission, Tomorrow, the Island Dies, and Shirley Jackson’s Demons, a theatre piece comprised of musicalized short stories by the queen of psychological horror.
Oliver is also the recipient of the Jonathan Larson Grant, the Richard Rodgers Award, commissions by Disney Theatricals and Universal Theatricals, numerous ASCAP awards, a Dramatists Guild Fellow and a guest lectureship at Harvard University, as well as residencies at Rhinebeck Writer’s Retreat, 5th Avenue Theatre, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Weston Playhouse, Cap 21, the York Theatre, The Johnny Mercer Colony at Goodspeed Opera House, Running Deer Ranch, Pace University, Harvard University, San Diego State University, Weber University, Michigan State University, Playwrights Horizons and more.
M.F.A. Musical Theatre Writing NYU; B.A. Music Composition, UCLA. Songbooks and sheet music available from Hal Leonard and at ryanscottoliver.com.
He is represented by Di Glazer at Creative Artists Agency (CAA). His morbidly optimistic musings may be followed on all platforms @ryanscottoliver.