Book by Tom & Jack Megan
Music & Lyrics by Tom Megan, with additional Music & Lyrics by Jack Megan
The Brothers Megan and musical DNA
The Kid Who Would Be Pope co-creators Tom and Jack Megan have been thinking about and playing music together since they were boys growing up in Watertown, Massachusetts. Their great-grandfather, an Irish immigrant, insisted his children have a musical education. Their grandfather, a lawyer, was a brilliant pianist and bought pianos for all his children when they had their own homes. As a boy, their father was a soloist at Trinity Church in Boston. Their mother is a pianist. All of the six kids in the family play an instrument, whether guitar, piano, trumpet, or fiddle. The boys’ primary musical influences growing up were The Beatles, Beethoven, Stevie Wonder, Tchaikovsky, Richard Rodgers, Motown, and later, Stephen Sondheim. They would fall asleep each night listening to their Mom play the piano downstairs. They would awaken to their Dad blasting Mozart’s Opera Overtures and John Phillip Souza Marches. It was a musical household!
Tom and Jack are both accomplished musicians in their own right – Tom on piano, guitar, and accordion, Jack on piano. They began working on The Kid when a close friend at a summer creative arts camp for children asked them to write a musical quickly for 50 kids. They wrote the piece in 6 weeks, Jack directed, and Tom musical directed. The response was rapturous. Then the show took on a life of its own, eventually landing at the New York Musical Festival in New York City and garnering the Richard Rodgers Award and the American Harmony Prize.
TOM MEGAN (Book, Music, Lyrics) Tom has created and collaborated on many original musicals including A Vision, Jack, Sea Change, A Town Called Civility, and Surviving Ophelia. His work has been seen at the New York Musical Theatre Festival, Playwrights Horizon, the Eugene O’Neill National Music Theater Conference, New Tuner’s Theatre in Chicago, Sacred Fools Theatre in West Hollywood, and Boston Music Theatre Project. Excerpts from A Vision, his musical about W.B. Yeats were presented at the Irish Repertory Theater’s “Yeats Project” in 2009. He is a recipient of the Yip Harburg Award, several ASCAP awards, a grant from the National Institute for Musical Theater, and along with brother Jack, the Richard Rodgers Award and the American Harmony Prize. Tom is a graduate of the NYU Graduate Musical Theatre Program and a member of the Dramatist Guild. Highlights from other shows are at: www.TomMegan.com
JACK MEGAN (Book, and additional Music and Lyrics) Over the past twenty years, Jack has co-written and composed several musicals including A Crease In The Clock, Monopoly, and The Duchess of Pleasant Hill. The Kid Who Would Be Pope, a collaboration with brother Tom, was a Next Link production at the 2011 New York Musical Theater Festival and was awarded the 2013 Richard Rodgers Award and the American Harmony Prize. Jack is Director of the Office for the Arts at Harvard University, which oversees and supports the activities of 3,000 student artists and faculty. Previously he served as director of development of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and was Executive Director of the Longy School of Music in Cambridge.