Janet Yates Vogt (Playwright, Composer, and Lyricist) has been a writer, composer and lyricist all of her life. She credits her career today to her family’s support, the guidance of many wonderful directors and producers and to her many outstanding teachers—from her first grade teacher who notated her first songs and taught them to the class to sing to her inspiring piano teachers to her professors at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM), where her studies were centered upon piano performance and music theory. Vogt is known nationally and internationally not only for her musical theatre works, but also for her numerous publications in many different musical genres, including vocal music for children and choral works for adults. Her educational keyboard books and methods have been translated into French, Japanese and German. She has been a pit orchestra member for theatre productions, a vocal coach for the CCM Musical Theatre Institute and has sung under the direction of the late Leonard Bernstein and other distinguished directors. She has served as a faculty member of the CCM Preparatory Piano Department and the CCM Alumni Board. A teacher at heart, Vogt still coaches piano and voice students, and is a featured speaker and presenter at many national music conventions and events.
Playwright, composer, and lyricist Mark Friedman fell in love with musicals at an early age. Watching his favorites—Peter Pan, Singin’ in the Rain, The Music Man (to name just a few)—on TV prompted him and his brothers to build their own theatre in the basement of their home, complete with a lighting grid and a sound system, performing for family and friends in the neighborhood. Earning a BS in Education and an MA, Friedman has enjoyed a versatile career as a successful writer, actor, director, educator and studio producer. With songs and recordings published worldwide, he has scored and scripted events for conventions, given master classes in drama and playwriting at the collegiate level and is a sought-after speaker at seminars around the country. He was a founder of the first free Shakespeare Festival in Cincinnati, created a unique lunch-theatre for children called Peanut Butter Theatre, helped to launch the highly successful ArtReach Touring Theatre, formed a theatre group for inner-city schools called The Good News Company and toured the country as an actor and musician with the Fountain Square Fools. Distinguished in 2005 as National Music Educator of the Year, he is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild, has contributed to Dramatists Magazine and is represented by the Paradigm Talent Agency in New York City. Grateful for his theatre successes, Friedman still considers his best productions to be his kids: Emily, a graduate of NYU's film and television program, living and working in the arts in New York City, and Christopher, also an NYU grad, working in a post-production audio studio in New York.
