Maryanne Melloan Woods is a playwright/author/tv writer. In her career as a tv writer/producer, she has worked on shows for networks including NBC, Showtime, ABC, Fox, the WB, Nickelodeon and ABC Family.
Her plays have been staged by theaters and programs around the country including HBO's New Writers Project and the Mark Taper Forum in L.A, and Playwrights Horizons and Primary Stages in New York. Her TYA musical Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Book?, based on the book of the same same by Lauren Child and co-written with composer/co-lyricist Jack Mitchell, premiered at Birmingham Children’s Theater in February 2025. Her musical for adults, The Storm, co-written with composer Georgia Conrad, is currently in development.
She has won the New England Theatre Conference's John Gassner Playwriting Contest, the Venice (CA) Playwrights' Festival and the Long Beach Playhouse New Works Festival. She also received a playwriting grant from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
Her screenplay Steve won “Best Comedy Feature Script” at the 2016 Nashville Film Festival. Her YA novel Lazarus, a paranormal thriller, was published by Owl Hollow Press in 2020. Her unpublished YA novel Sour Flower won the Chanticleer International Book Awards' 2023 Dante Rossetti Grand Prize for Young Adult Fiction.
Maryanne is a Librettist Member of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop in New York City. She is also a member of the Writers Guild of America, The Dramatists Guild, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.
Jack Mitchell (Music, Co-Lyrics) is an award-winning composer and songwriter based in New York City. Current projects include original songs and scoring for the first-ever Dr. Seuss podcast, The Cat in the Hat Cast (Audible/Seuss Enterprises, 2024 Ambie Award Nominee for “Best Original Score and Music Supervision”) and 8 seasons and counting as lead composer and vocal director for The Story Pirates Podcast (multiple Webby and iHeartRadio Podcast awards, 6 albums, over 150 million downloads). Recent credits include Popcorn Brainstorm (Netflix), The Plate Show (WNET), the Looney Tunes Podcast, Bugs and Daffy's Thanksgiving Road Trip (Warner Bros. Animation, streaming on HBO Max), Sesame Street, Mo Willems’ Hidden Pigeon Company, PBS Kids, SPTV (PBS), Don't Break the Rules (Pinna/Realm), and multiple commissions from The Washington Post. Musicals include Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Book? (Birmingham Children’s Theatre), The Claw (Beat by Beat Press, over 200 productions worldwide), Star Power (Beat by Beat Press), Strange! The Musical (CO/LAB Theatre Group), The Wrong American (with Alexandra Petri), and Very Christmas (in development). Jack is a proud graduate of Northwestern University and a member of the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop, The Dramatist Guild, and The Children’s Media Association. www.jack-mitchell.com
