The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

Graham trained at LAMDA (Evelyn Laye Award) and was an actor for fourteen years working extensively in regional/West End theatre, television and film with directors such as Kenneth Branagh, Matthew Warchus, Gregory Doran, John Caird and John Doyle. He then moved into directing and writing.

Graham was Associate Director on Sweeney Todd (West End/Broadway), Mack and Mabel (Criterion), The Sound of Music (London Palladium), Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (Palace).

Graham now focuses on his own creative projects. His productions range from Shakespeare, through Coward and Brecht to Musical Theatre. As Artistic Director for New Rep Theatre, he was nominated for the Peter Brook Award, 2012, for his newly scored actor/musician production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle. He enjoys supporting and developing new writing and was nominated Best Director 2013, by Broadway World for his work on the world premiere of Carol Vine’s The Spring Tide.  His stage adaptation of Julia Donaldson’s children’s book What The Ladybird Heard, had a successful run in the West End in 2017 and is currently on an international tour.

Graham regularly directs at many of the top drama schools in the UK (CSSD, Arts Ed, LIPA, BSA, Guildford Conservatoire, LSMT) and is artistic director for the Salvation Army’s annual charity concert at the Royal Albert Hall.

He has recently completed writing a musical The Colonel’s Lady (based on a short story by Somerset Maugham) and is looking forward to adapting a South African novel, Buckingham Palace, District Sixwhich covers three decades of the apartheid years, for the stage.

A playwright, lyricist and Tony Award winning librettist for musical theater, Rachel is often drawn to hybrid forms and experimental collaborations. Her work has appeared on and off Broadway, regionally and internationally, including most prominently in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, with a score by William Finn, for which she received Tony and Drama Desk Awards for Book of a Musical. 

Other productions include Striking 12, a hybrid rock concert/musical written with and for the band GrooveLily (Lucille Lortel nomination for Outstanding Off-Broadway Musical); Sleeping Beauty Wakes, originally performed in both ASL and English in collaboration with Deaf West Theatre (LA Ovation Award for World Premiere Musical); book and lyrics for Blood Drive with music by fellow GMTWP faculty member, Joel Derfner (Bridewell Theater, London) and for Serenade with music by Nils Olaf Dolven (Jaradoa, NYC). New musical works in progress include (working titles) The River to the Fjord with music by Nils Olaf Dolven and An Invisible Drunk in the Suburbs with music by Tisch Arts Professor Mel Marvin. In 2024, Spelling Bee featured in the Broadway Center Stage series at the Kennedy Center.

Rachel’s writing has been supported with residencies, grants, and fellowships from, among others: MacDowell, VCCA, Manhattan Theatre Club, The National Alliance for Musical Theatre, The Eugene O’Neill National Music Theater Conference, Goodspeed Opera House, and The Baryshnikov Arts Foundation; and at venues including Second Stage Theater; Barrington Stage Co; The Old Globe; TheatreWorks, Palo Alto; Center Theatre Group, LA; The Guthrie Theater, La Jolla Playhouse, Clubbed Thumb, and McCarter Theatre Center. 

A member of Dramatists Guild, Rachel currently serves on The American Theatre Wing’s Tony Nominating Committee. As a teacher, she loves encouraging new waves of artists to explore both craft and voice, stretching their own boundaries and that of the form. She also enjoys working as a dramaturg and mentor for earlier career writers, which she has done most recently for Clubbed Thumb, Toronto’s Musical Stage Company, and independently. Rachel is a graduate of Tisch GMTW’s Cycle 10, and previously received a BA from Brown University and an MFA in playwriting from Yale School of Drama, where she has also taught classes in libretto writing for musical theater.

William Finn was the writer and composer of Falsettos, for which he received two Tony Awards, Best Book of a Musical (with James Lapine) and Best Original Score. He also wrote and composed In Trousers, March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland (Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Musical, two Los Angeles Drama Critics Awards, two Drama Desk Awards, the Lucille Lortel Award and Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwriting).

Mr. Finn wrote the lyrics to Graciela Daniele’s Tango Apasionado (music by the great Astor Piazzolla) and, with Michael Starobin, the music to Lapine’s version of The Winter’s Tale. His musical Romance in Hard Times was presented at The Public Theater. He also wrote Painting You for Love’s Fire, a piece commissioned and performed by the Acting Company, based on Shakepeare’s sonnets.

For television, Mr. Finn provided the music and lyrics for the Ace Award-winning HBO cartoon Ira Sleeps Over, Tom Thumb and Thumbelina, Pokey Little Puppy’s First Christmasand, with Ellen Fitzhugh, two Brave Little Toaster cartoons. Mr. Finn wrote for Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and The New Yorker. A graduate of Williams College, where he was awarded the Hutchinson Fellowship for Musical Composition, Finn taught a weekly master class at the NYU Tisch Graduate Program in Musical Theatre Writing.

His other projects included Elegies, A Song Cycle (Lincoln Center), The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which had a three-year run on Broadway and has been produced nationally and all over the world, and Little Miss Sunshine with James Lapine. He also served as the Artistic Head of the Musical Theatre Lab at the Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

Contains mild strong language, references to puberty, sexuality, and inappropriate behaviour. Includes moments of emotional distress, bullying, and mild innuendo. Please be aware that items will be thrown into the auditorium.

This musical project is in a partnership and design collaboration with the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology (BIFT).

Rona Lisa Perretti 
Eloise Earnshaw 

Olive Ostrovsky
Marni Granek 

Dani Schwartz  / Jesus / Olive’s Mom
Megan Greenwood

Vice-Principal Douglas Panch / Olive’s Dad 
William Harvey

Logainne Schwartandgrubeniere 
Ava Hincks

Carla Grubinierre 
Maria Jaszewska 

Mitch 
Annabelle Situpe Jessop

Marcy Park
Megan Peck 

Chip
Aaron Reyes-Bordado

William Barfee 
George Rohan 

Leaf Coneybear 
Chenxi Zhang  

Olive Ostrovsky
Laura Bercero  

Rona Lisa Perretti 
Issey Dodd

Dani Schwartz  / Jesus / Olive’s Mom
Megan Greenwood

Vice-Principal Douglas Panch / Olive’s Dad 
William Harvey

Logainne Schwartandgrubeniere 
Sara Al Hashimi 

Mitch 
Maria Jaszewska 

Carla Grubinierre
Annabelle Situpe Jessop

Marcy Park
Neelam Rajni 

Chip
Aaron Reyes-Bordado

William Barfee 
George Rohan

​​​​​Leaf Coneybear 
Holly Sinclair 

Rona Lisa Perretti 
Grace Browning

Leaf Coneybear 
Yu-Ting Chen

Dani Schwartz  / Jesus / Olive’s Mom
Megan Greenwood

Vice-Principal Douglas Panch / Olive’s Dad 
William Harvey

Olive Ostrovsky
Phoebe Kyriakopoulos

Chip
Aaron Reyes-Bordado

William Barfee 
George Rohan

Carla Grubinierre 
Gracie Tabrar

Mitch 
Madeline Wasson 

Logainne Schwartandgrubeniere 
Charlotte Webb 

Marcy Park
Hannah Rowan West  

Rona Lisa Perretti 
Vittoria Conforti 

Olive Ostrovsky
Annabella Dawkins 

Leaf Coneybear 
Tara Farquhar  

Dani Schwartz  / Jesus / Olive’s Mom
Megan Greenwood

Vice-Principal Douglas Panch / Olive’s Dad 
William Harvey

Logainne Schwartandgrubeniere 
Jessica Tony Jane  

Chip
Aaron Reyes-Bordado

William Barfee 
George Rohan

Mitch 
Gracie Tabrar

Carla Grubinierre 
Madeline Wasson 

Marcy Park
Shanshan Wu