Fred Carl

In 2003 Fred composed music for Sparrow Village, a short film directed by Christine Choy for the Zigen Fund. In 2005 his revised score for Suzen Murakoshi’s play Slippery When Wet was produced at St. Paul’s Penumbra Theater; the piece had previous productions at LaMaMa E.T.C. and the 1996 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. His jazz theatre collaborations with writer hattie gossett (Alum, Cycle 5), including pussy and cash; in the waitingroom of the 21st century and the immigrant suite: hey zenophobe who you calling a foreigner? have been performed at the New School, the Public Theater, the Whitney Museum, Here Arts Center, the Tribeca Performing Arts Center, the Vision Festival and the National Black Arts Festival. He musical directed Kirsten Childs’s The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin from its beginnings at Dixon Place and Musical Theatre Works thru its multiple award-winning 2000 Playwrights Horizons run; he received the 2000 Audelco Award for Best Musical Direction. In 2005 he musical directed Childs’s The Miracle Brothers at NY’s Vineyard Theatre. In 2007 he musical directed the first recording of The Bubbly Black Girl… for Sh-K-Boom Records. Between 2002 and 2008 he arranged, composed for and musical directed LaChanze’s cabaret performances at Lincoln Center and Joe’s Pub. Between 1999-2017 he designed and co-led (with GMTWP colleague Robert Lee) a summer musical theatre-writing workshop at London’s Theatre Royal Stratford East training hip-hop and contemporary music and word artists to write for the musical theatre stage; a version of the summer workshop was featured in the 2005 BBC Channel Four documentary, Rappin’ at the Royal. From 1999-2017 Fred was an Artistic Associate of Stratford East and a member of the theater’s Musical Theatre Advisory Committee. In 2011 he and writer Ed DuRanté (Alum, Cycle 7) were commissioned to create a musical theatre adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange for Theatre Royal Stratford East. In 2012 Fred musical directed, composed songs and incidental music for, arranged, conducted, and orchestrated the score for the 10^th anniversary revised version of Regina Taylor’s piece Crowns at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre. From 2015-2017 Fred was chair of the NYU Continuing Contract Faculty Senators Council, a constituent part of the NYU University Senate. From June 2018 to 2020 Fred and GMTWP colleague Deborah Brevoort began working with the NBO Musical Theatre Initiative writing workshop in Nairobi, Kenya, working with 12 collaborative teams assembled by musician/theatre-maker Eric Wainaina’s Rainmaker organization; 4 teams from NBO presented works-in-progress at the Kampala International Theatre Festival in Kampala, Uganda, and 1 team was included in the 2020 Sundance Institute Theatre Lab’s Co//ab. In 2018 Fred composed for and sound designed Becoming Ailey, a multi-media piece celebrating Alvin Ailey for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater for their 20th-anniversary season at New York’s City Center. Fred is currently Creative Dramaturg—Words and Music on a new musical about Muhammad Ali, currently in development with a premier presentation scheduled for Fall 2025 at Louisville’s Kentucky Center for the Arts (https://thealimusical.com/) Fred is a 1991 graduate of the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program.