Variety reports that Tesori, a three-time Tony Award nominee, is currently in negotiations to pen the score for the musical based on the hit film "Shrek." Tesori was Tony-nominated for her scores to Twelfth Night, Thoroughly Modern Millie and Caroline, or Change.
In addition to her Broadway work, Jeanine Tesori won wide acclaim for the Off-Broadway musical Violet, which was produced at Playwrights Horizons and was named Best Musical by the New York Drama Critics Circle and the Lucille Lortel Awards. Tesori also received an Obie Award for her music for Violet. For film, Tesori has written songs for "Mulan II" and "Lilo and Stitch II."
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David Lindsay-Abaire, the Fuddy Meers playwright, will pen the book for the new Broadway-bound stage musical, Shrek. Scamp, the theatre and film production company run by Sam Mendes, Carol Newling and Pippa Harris, will develop the musical in collaboration with Dreamworks SKG, who produced the hit film of the same name. Bill Damaschke, Head of Creative Production for DreamWorks Animation, will supervise for the studio. Hardly a stranger to New York theatre, he appeared there as an actor in the 1987 revival of Godspell.
Jason Moore, who won the 2004 Tony Award for Best Musical for his Broadway production of Avenue Q, will direct. Shrek will premiere in New York, though no time-frame has yet been announced.
Mendes commented on the appointments of Lindsay-Abaire and Moore in a press release, saying, “To have a book writer as witty and talented as David Lindsay-Abaire is a great gift, and I am particularly thrilled that the ship is being steered by someone as young and gifted as Jason Moore. I know that they and their chosen collaborators will come up with something that is intensely theatrical, yet retains all the warmth, imagination and comic invention of the movies.”