Musical Theater

Peter Mills

Peter wrote music and lyrics for Golden Boy of the Blue Ridge, a critically-acclaimed bluegrass adaptation of J.M. Synge’s Playboy of the Western World set in 1930s Appalachia.

Peter received the 2010 Kleban Award for lyrics, the 2007 Fred Ebb Award for emerging songwriters, 2006 Drama Desk Award nominations for his show The Pursuit of Persephone (Best Music and Best Orchestrations), the 2003 Richard Rodgers New Horizons Award from the ASCAP Foundation, and a 2002 grant from the Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation.

He supplied lyrics for Iron Curtain, (book by Susan DiLallo, music by Stephen Weiner), which received the 2006 IT Award for Best Musical, was workshopped at the 2008 Eugene O’Neill Musical Theatre Conference and showcased at the 2009 NAMT Festival.

Illyria, a musical adaptation of Twelfth Night, had its regional premiere at The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey in Fall 2004, with a cast album released in April 2005. The show is now licensed by Theatrical Rights Worldwide. And Peter’s first full-length show, The Taxi Cabaret, was published by Samuel French in Fall 2004.

With Cara Reichel, he wrote The Flood, which was selected for the 2001 ASCAP Musical Theater Workshop. Marco Polo, written with composer Deborah Abramson, was selected for the ASCAP Musical Theater Workshop in 2000, and Peter and Deborah were chosen as 2000-01 Dramatists Guild Fellows.

As composer/lyricist, other shows include The Alchemists, Lonely Rhymes, The Rockae, and Honor.

Peter holds an M.F.A. in Musical Theater Writing from New York University’s Tisch School for the Arts and a degree in English/Dramatic Literature from Princeton University. He is a founding member of Prospect Theater Company.

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