Bookwriter and lyricist Jenifer Toksvig writes for both youth theatre and professional adult production. Current projects include a new adaptation of David Almond's The Savage in development with YMT:UK; organising the next MThe:UK event with Liverpool Institute of the Performing Arts; working as dramaturg in the development of new musical theatre with the Danish Musical Theatre Academy; teaching Musical Theatre Writing to BA Creative Arts students at Portsmouth University; further development of The Snow Queen with the assistance of the musical theatre students at the Royal Academy of Music.
Work in 2009 included the devising of two short operas for The Arcola Theatre's Youth Opera Project 2009, The Work of Art for Grimeborn 2009, and an adaptation of The Snow Queen in collaboration with composer Alexander Rudd for the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford.
Some recent musical theatre adapations include Terry Pratchett's Mort, Sandi Toksvig's Hitler's Canary, Geraldine McCaughrean's The Stones Are Hatching.
She also guides sessions on the writing process for writers of music theatre through Mercury Musical Developments, for ChrisGradyDotOrg, and with students of the Royal Academy of Music and Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts amongst others. Jenifer is the administrator, and a member of MThe:UK, a network of institutes and individuals teaching musical theatre in UK higher education.
These sessions cover subjects such as the basic crafts of book and lyric writing, the art of collaboration, finding and developing the writer's voice, the writing process itself, as well as such things as writing for youth theatre, how to workshop new material, how to collaborate directly in a writer-actor process, and so on.
She has several shows published by Samuel French Ltd, and consequently her work has been produced worldwide. In the UK, production venues include Guildford's Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Manchester Library Theatre, the Soho Theatre in London, Arundel Festival. Her work has also been featured on LBC radio and many local UK radio stations.
Collaborators include directors David Gilmore and Clive Paget; musical director Mark Warman; composers Harvey Brough, Steve Edis, Dominic Haslam, Alexander Rudd and Cathy Shostak; choreographers Lucie Pankhurst and Sam Spencer-Lane; the Royal Philhamonic Orchestra; the Royal Shakespeare Company; actors Julie Atherton, Bonnie Langford, Nigel Richards, Rebecca Thornhill and many other brilliant performers.
(And the US Army. General Martin Dempsey, U.S. Army Training & Doctrine Command, uses Jenifer's voice in an audio recording of an extract of Lewis Carroll's Red Queen to punctuate one of his speeches. Which is the single most bizarre email request she has ever received.)
Jenifer is very interested in exploring cross-genre collaborations, and stretching the form of music theatre in new ways. She's also passionate about the writing process, and about encouraging and facilitating awareness of writers and their craft, both from the audience's point of view and also within the theatre industry itself.
Jenifer is a graduate of the Musical Theatre Writing Program at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and a Professional Writer Associate of Mercury Musical Developments.
She created the MMD website's Backstage Area, writing all of their Business Guidelines to give writers vital information about the business side of writing musicals, including subjects such as production and publishing contracts, collaboration agreements, putting on readings and workshops, and more. Some of these guidelines are now also used by the Writers Guild of Great Britain.
Jenifer currently lives in England, but has lived in New York and can also be found in California on occasion. By nationality she is English, Danish and American. Samples of her work and more information can be found at www.acompletelossforwords.com
