User:Marciaseligson

Marcia Seligson was the Founder and Producing Artistic Director of REPRISE! BROADWAY'S BEST, the fourteen year old, nationally acclaimed regional theatre company in Los Angeles that presents revivals of classic American musicals. While in charge of REPRISE for ten years, she produced over forty shows, staged readings, concerts, benefits and other musical events. She left REPRISE! in order to create and become Co-Executive Producer of THE FESTIVAL OF NEW AMERICAN MUSICALS, which was inaugurated for two months throughout Southern California during May and June of 2008. The Festival was the largest ever presented in the area – with over forty-five events in thirty-two venues – since the Olympic Arts Festival of 1984. The 2009 Festival will be underway for three months beginning in mid-April.

Marcia studied classical piano with Danish virtuoso Gunnar Johanssen at the University of Wisconsin, graduating Columbia University with a major in music. After graduation she worked for Columbia Records, where she assisted in the production of Original Broadway Cast albums. She also performed for ten years with the renowned Collegiate Chorale in New York.

While enjoying a long career as an award-winning journalist and author, Marcia wrote eight published books, and articles for virtually every major magazine in America. She taught creative writing at Antioch College, the Women’s Center and the Wellness Community in Los Angeles.

In 1980, Marcia founded and was Executive Producer of a large volunteer organization in Los Angeles dedicated to using the performing arts to mobilize individual and group action to help end world hunger. After several years of producing television specials and live events around the United States, this organization -- The End Hunger Network -- was instrumental in producing the groundbreaking LIVE AID CONCERT, broadcast simultaneously for sixteen hours around the world. The money raised by this event was sufficient to end the devastating famine in Ethiopia. The End Hunger Network continues to support this cause.

Marcia was co-producer, with Rodger Hess and EntPro Plays, Inc., of Six Dances Lessons in Six Weeks by Richard Alfieri which ran on Broadway in the Fall of 2003, after a long run at the Geffen Playhouse in L.A. It will soon be made into a film starring Shirley MacLaine and Rupert Everett, and opened in  London’s West End in November of 2006. It has played constantly since 2003 all over the world.

Marcia has been a Board member of Peace Now, the Los Angeles Stage Alliance and Friends of PEN.

Marcia Seligson lives in Marina del Rey, California with her husband Tom Drucker and their golden retriever, Mollie.