Creative Team
Emily Mann (Writer & Director)
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Emily Mann has previously brought two impactful and influential documentary dramas to Broadway – Execution of Justice, and Having Our Say (Tony-nominated Best Play and Best Director). Also on Broadway, Emily directed A Streetcar Named Desire and Anna in the Tropics. Plays written by Mann include: Still Life; Annulla: An Autobiography; Greensboro (A Requiem); and Mrs. Packard. In 2020, her play Gloria: A Life was presented by Great Performances on PBS.
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From 1990-2020, Emily was the Artistic Director and Resident Playwright of McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, New Jersey, which was honored with the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theater under her leadership. The new biography by Alexis Greene, Emily Mann: Rebel Artist of the American Theater, celebrates her many contributions and innovations, highlighting her groundbreaking work in “the theater of testimony:” constructing a play based on the verbatim speech surrounding real life events.
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Awards include: Tony, Drama Desk, 8 Obies, Peabody, Hull Warriner, NAACP, Guggenheim, two Tony nominations, Outer Critics Circle nominations; a Princeton University Honorary Doctorate of Arts, a Helen Merrill Distinguished Playwrights' Award, Margo Jones Award, TCG Visionary Leadership Award, Lilly Lifetime Achievement Award, and The Gordon Davidson Award. In 2019, Mann was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame.
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"THE PIANIST is the most important story I’ve been entrusted with as a theater maker. Not only is it a stunning story about the tenacity of the human spirit and the power of art, but it is also deeply personal. Since I was a child, I’ve been haunted by my mother’s family murdered in occupied Poland during The Holocaust. When I went to Warsaw to research The Pianist, I visited the Jewish Cemetery and placed a stone on my great grandmother’s grave. At that moment, I realized I, too, was a Warsaw Jew, and I had to tell this story. Seeing fascism on the rise again both in the United States and around the world gives even greater urgency to this play. We must bring to powerful life the call to action ‘never again’." - Emily Mann
Iris Hond (Music Composition)
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Iris Hond is an acclaimed classical pianist and contemporary composer who has played to sold-out concert halls worldwide, headlined the Royal Concert Hall in Amsterdam and New Church in The Hague, and opened for superstar Diana Ross. Hond recorded an album of classical music for Decca (Iris) an album of original music composed in collaboration with legendary musician/producer Patrick Leonard (Dear World). Her personal journey from living on the streets to packing concert halls has inspired thousands in the Netherlands, where she graduated summa cum laude from the Royal Conservatory.
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Listen to the first track of Iris' score for The Pianist below:
"My grandfather, Solomon, was a survivor who lost his entire family to the Holocaust; as a child I was haunted by dreams that me and my family would be taken away and executed. The Pianist’s score is a tribute to my family." -Iris Hond
Beowulf Boritt (Set Design)
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Beowulf Boritt is currently represented on Broadway's Come From Away. He designed the Tony Award winning set for Act One, and received Tony Award nominations for his designs for Therese Raquin and The Scottsboro Boys. Other Broadway shows include David Thompson's Prince of Broadway and Alfred Uhry’s LoveMusik for Harold Prince; Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Sondheim on Sondheim and Finn and Sheinkin's The Twenty-Fifth Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, both directed by Mr. Lapine; Lin-Manuel Miranda, Thomas Kail, and Anthony Veneziale's Freestyle Love Supreme; the New York and Russian productions of Chaplin for director Warren Carlyle; John Rando's revival of On The Town; Rob Askins' Hand To God directed by Moritz Von Stuelpnage; and the long running Broadway and international hit Rock of Ages directed by Kristin Hanggi.
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Awards include: Tony, 2007 OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence in Set Design, an Audelco Award, a Barrymore award, a Live Design Award for Innovation in Scenic Design, a Broadway Beacon Award, and a St. Louis Theater Circle Award. His work has been seen in Europe, Asia, and Australia, and his designs are in the permanent collections of The Smithsonian Museum of American History and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
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"My passion for THE PIANIST - beyond it being a beautiful and incredible story- is my own family history. My father was born a Jew in fascist Hungary in 1940. He was lined up against a wall with my grandmother and my aunt with guns trained on them, yet somehow that day they were not shot. His immediate family found refuge in the basement of a Swiss embassy annex in the final months of the war as the Nazi’s deported my great-grandparents to Auschwitz. And I never knew any of it until I was a teenager. My father didn’t want to remember it all, but I feel passionately about sharing the larger story." -Beowulf Boritt
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Creative Team
Read more about Emily Mann in this inspiring article, Emily Mann: A Voice for the Voiceless.
Mark Bennett is a sound designer and composer whose work has been performed both on and off Broadway, regionally, and internationally for the last 30 years. His designs and/or original compositions for Broadway include: The Coast of Utopia, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Driving Miss Daisy, The Goat, Golda’s Balcony, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, A Streetcar Named Desire, Macbeth, and A View From The Bridge. He has composed and designed more than 150 Off-Broadway and regional productions. Additionally, he is a founding member of the Theatrical Sound Designers and Composers Association and a member of United Scenic Artists Local 829.
Awards include: Drama Desk Award (14 nominations), two Obies (one for Sustained Excellence in Sound Design) and a Bessie Award.
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Charles Coes is a sound designer whose credits include: Off Broadway: Golden Shield (MTC); Sing St (NYTW); Letters of Suresh (Second Stage); Small World Stories (Phantom Limb). Regional: Confederacy of Dunces (Huntington Theatre). Jitney, (Mark Taper Forum); Into the Woods (Ahmanson); Little Black Shadows, The Tempest, All the Way (South Coast Rep); Miss You Like Hell, Fun Home, The Christians, Soul, Animal Farm (Baltimore Center Stage); Christmas Carol, Pride and Prejudice, Murder on the Orient Express (Repertory Theater of St Louis); Sense and Sensibility, The Way the Mountain Moved (OSF); Bad Dates, Sabina (Portland Stage); Homer’s Coat’s production of An Iliad on 6 continents. He also works frequently as an Associate Designer on Broadway including Almost Famous, Girl from the North Country, To Kill a Mockingbird, Junk, and Peter and the Starcatcher.
Linda Cho is a Tony award-winning costume designer based in New York City. She is currently represented on Broadway’s Summer, 1976. Other Broadway shows include POTUS, Take Me Out, Grand Horizons and The Great Society. In 2014 she won the Antoinette Perry and Henry Hewes Design Award for the musical A Gentlemen’s Guide to Love and Murder. In 2022 she was nominated for a Drama Desk for Outstanding Costume Design of The Chinese Lady. In 2017 she was nominated for a Tony, Outer Critics’ Circle and Drama Desk for Best Costume Design of the musical Anastasia. Additionally, she has been awarded the TDF/Irene Sharaff Young Master Award, the Henry Hewes Design Award, and the Ruth Morley Design Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women.
In New York her designs have been seen at the Theater for a New Audience, Lincoln Center 3, Second Stage, Manhattan Theater Club, Julliard Theater and Opera, NY Public Theater, Asia Society, Vineyard Theater, Classic Stage Co., Labrynth Theater Co, Drama Dept, and Atlantic Theater Co. Internationally her work has been seen at; Royal Shakespeare Co. UK, Can Stage, Canada, Hong Kong Performing Arts Center, National Theater, Taipei, Stratford Shakespeare in Canada. Regionally she has designed at Arena Stage, The Ford’s Theater, The Old Globe Theater, La Jolla Playhouse, ACT, Berkeley Rep, Hartford Stage, Long Wharf Theater, Guthrie Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Goodspeed Opera, Williamstown Theater Festival, Goodman Theater, Shakespeare Theater, DC, Chicago Shakespeare, Center Stage, Huntington Theater, and Westport Country Playhouse.
Japhy Weidman is a New York City based lighting designer for theater and opera. He is currently represented on Broadway’s Summer, 1976 and Shucked. He received Tony Award nominations for his lighting design for Dear Evan Hansen, The Visit, Airline Highway, Of Mice and Men, and The Nance. Other Broadway credits include The Piano Lesson, Lobby Hero, Marvin’s Room, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Significant Other, Bright Star, Sylvia, The Heidi Chronicles, The Snow Geese, Macbeth (Drama Desk nomination) and Cyrano de Bergerac. He has lit numerous theater productions in New York City for Lincoln Center Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, Roundabout Theatre Company, The Public Theater, Second Stage and LAByrinth Theatre Company. International work includes London’s West End, Royal Shakespeare Co-Stratford, Edinburgh International Festival, National Theater of Greece and National Theater of Korea.
S. Katy Tucker is a New York based video and projection designer. Katy began her career as a painter and installation artist, exhibiting her work at a variety of galleries, such as The Corcoran Museum, Dupont Underground, The Dillon Gallery and Artist’s Space in New York City. She has collaborated with musicians like: Paul McCartney, Helga Davis, Pamela Z, Paola Prestini, Amanda Gookin and Jeffrey Ziegler. Her work in live performance has been seen around the world including The Metropolitan Opera, The New York City Ballet, Carnegie Hall, The Park Avenue Armory, BAM, Kennedy Center, San Francisco Opera, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Dutch National Opera, The Sydney Opera House, The Houston Grand Opera, and more.
Recent: Elektra with Francesca Zambello and Il Trovatore with Brenna Corner both at Washington National Opera; Letters from Max by Sarah Ruhl, directed by Kate Whoriskey at The Signature Theater; Medea with Sir David McVicar at The Metropolitan Opera; Rebecca with Francesca Zambello; The World Premiere of Castor and Patience with Kevin Newbury; The (Re)volution of Steve Jobs with Tomer Zvulun.
Daniel Donskoy (Wladyslaw Szpilman)
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Daniel made his theatrical debut in London's Camden Fringe Festival in 2014, and since then has performed at The Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation Theatre, the Arcola Theatre, the Arts Theatre in the West End, the Garrick Theatre and the St James Theatre. He played the role of Jim O'Connor in The Glass Menagerie at the Nottingham Playhouse, and he also worked in London as a theater director, theater producer, and playwright. He played leading and guest roles in the British series “Detectorists, “Casualty,” and “Victoria.”
From 2018 to 2020, Donskoy played the petty criminal and reluctant priest Maik Schäfer in the RTL series “Sankt Maik,” for which he was nominated for the Bavarian Television Award for Best Actor. In 2019, Donskoy played Ron, an overzealous violinist who joins a Israeli-Palestinian youth Orchestra in the feature film Crescendo, which premiered at the Munich Film Festival. Also in 2019, he played Israeli gangster Danny Dahan in the HBO series “Strike Back,” and in 2020, he played Princess Diana's lover James Hewitt in the Netflix series “The Crown.”
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He released his first single "Cry By the River" and his debut EP "Didn't I Say So," in 2019, and played his first club tour through Germany. He is the host and moderator of the talk show “Freitagnacht Jews” (Friday Night Jews) which was awarded the German Television Prize 2021 and The Grimme Prize 2022. In 2021, he was the moderator of the German Film Prize. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he tried to counter Russian war propaganda with the Russian song Net Vojne (“No to War”). He was the winner of season 7 of “The Masked Singer” in Germany and was the first Jewish entertainer to host the German Film Awards. The Pianist marks his American stage debut.
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