HONORS COMPOSER MEGAN CAVALLARI ON MARCH 23rd
By: Judy Shields
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 3/16/17 – “I got an email that I had won an award and I was so excited about it. I was not even aware that I was even nominated, it’s all very exciting and next Thursday, there will be a ceremony. I am so excited to be getting back into theatre,” Megan Cavallari told The Hollywood Times yesterday.
The 24th Annual Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival will honor composer Megan Cavallari with the Integrity Award on Wednesday, March 23rd at 7 pm at Barnsdall Gallery Theatre.
The Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival empowers women artists to engage and inspire communities through the production of multidisciplinary solo performances and education outreach. The Annual Festival honors the achievement of extraordinary women in theatre. The Integrity Award is presented to an artist or individual who has brought credibility and dignity to her work.
Megan Cavallari has worked on more than 50 film scores as performer, arranger, conductor or composer. She has composed for the L.A. Kings; has worked on 25 television shows; 16 stage musicals; and written hundreds of songs, jingles and assorted musical offerings. But she is so excited to be getting back into her first love, which is theatre.
She is currently working on a new musical called Kim, Kim & Zoey and is looking forward to having a live reading for that musical sometime in July. It’s a political comedy about three teenage girlfriends. Looking forward to that reading this summer.
Megan Cavallari is also working on a musical in New York about women’s relationships with cars and she is having fun working on that as well.
Film/TV credits: Nightmare Before Christmas (assistant to Danny Elfman), Triggerfish, Road Warrior (produced by Roger Daltrey), Life After Tomorrow, Dolores Claiborne, Shrunken Heads, Sex Drugs Guns, and more
Corporate clients: HBO, Showtime, Disney, Mattel, Hasbro, Universal, PBS, ABC, and Jim Henson
Animated credits: Barbie as the Island Princess, Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper (was the #1 children’s movie in America), My Little Pony, Handy Manny, Sid the Science Kid, Higglytown Heroes, Me Eloise, Big Rig Buddies, All Dogs Go to Heaven
Theatre credits: PEPITA (Hudson Theatre), THE GAME/LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES (Barrington Stage), ECHO PARK (Mark Taper Forum), MAKING THE GRADE (Theatre on the Square)
In a world dominated by men, Megan Cavallari’s critically acclaimed musicals have played at such theaters as The Mark Taper Forum, The York (NYC) Barrington Stage, 5th Avenue Playhouse (Seattle), The Ordway (St. Paul), The Under the Stars (Houston) and Living Arts Centre (Toronto).
Megan Cavallari has won three ASCAP Awards, a BMI Award, two IRNE Awards, two Cynopsis Media Award, two Telly Awards, a FAHF Humanitarian Award, a Yip Harburg Award, a Founders Day Award, a Vollenberg Grant and has two platinum albums.
She recently launched The Talk Foundation Project, where she records the thoughts and observations of children with life-threatening and chronic diseases. She also faces the challenges of raising a twelve-year old daughter with juvenile arthritis.
Check out Megan Cavallari’s website: http://megancavallari.com/
Twenty-Fourth Anniversary Champagne GALA and Awards Ceremony
Theme: STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF….
Hosted by HATTIE WINSTON and TED LANGE
Directed by ADLEANE HUNTER
THURSDAY, MARCH 23, 2017
GALA Reception 7 p.m.
Awards Ceremony 8 p.m.
BARNSDALL GALLERY THEATRE
4800 HOLLYWOOD BLVD.
HOLLYWOOD, CA 90028
Performances by ELOISE LAWS (award-winning vocalist) and
PAYTON AURORA JONES (emerging vocalist)
Honoring: ESTELLE CAMPBELL (Rainbow Award)
LESLIE K. JOHNSON (Rainbow Award)
MEGAN CAVALLARI (Integrity Award)
BARBARA MORRISON (Eternity Award)
PAULINA SAHAGUN (Maverick Award)
and posthumously DORIS ROBERTS (Infinity Award)
Barnsdall Gallery Theatre is located at 4800 Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood, CA 90027. Please visit the following website for further information and tickets: http://www.lawtf.org
The Talk Foundation
The TALK Foundation gives chronic and terminally ill children the opportunity to express themselves through sound. Each child’s words, songs, laughs, cries, and other audible forms of expression are recorded and mixed live by professional record producers and provided to the children and their families on CDs. These recording sessions are conducted in accordance with procedures developed in consultation with leading child psychiatrists. The volunteer producers (and the actors, athletes, musicians and other volunteers who sometimes assist them) approach this task with both love and humility. They recognize that each of these recordings is more precious than even the biggest hit song, and they accept the challenge of making sure that each CD tells the child’s own story.
The TALK Foundation is the creation of film score composer, songwriter, and record producer Megan Cavallari. Her passion for sound and her love of children inspire the work of the TALK Foundation and the volunteers who strive to accomplish its mission
A quote from the website below from Megan: “I want to be involved because kids like my Shoshie don’t deserve this pain. I hope there is a cure for these children who live in pain and it’s through research like that funded by the Arthritis National Research Foundation that we will find it!”
http://www.curearthritis.org/ambassadors/
About the Women’s Theatre Festival
The Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival began with a “chance meeting” of solo actors Adilah Barnes and Miriam Reed in 1993 when they met at a statewide California Arts Council Touring Roster Conference in Pasadena, CA. What drew these two talented women of different cultures together was learning that they both portray historical figures: Adilah’s being African American and include suffragist Sojourner Truth and political activist Angela Davis and Miriam’s contrasting Anglo women that include birth control activists Margaret Sanger and Susan B. Anthony.
Historical figures was the bond that united these two women in an artistic and spiritual way.
When the organizers of the California Arts Council Touring Roster conference brought the attendees together at the end of the conference and asked for announcements from the floor, Miriam had the forward-thinking idea of announcing from the podium that she and Adilah would like to assemble all female solo artists in the rear of the room following the close of the conference to see how they might collectively support each other. Adilah and Miriam were both surprised and felt empowered when bombarded with actors, dancers, storytellers, performance artists, and other multi-disciplined women who were as hungry for solo community support as they were.
At that moment, Adilah and Miriam both looked at each other and knew they had struck gold.
The Women’s Theatre Festival, the oldest solo festival for women based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, had come to Los Angeles in 1992 with the vision of creating a national women’s theatre Festival. They first landed at UCLA where Adilah performed with them, but decided not to return to Los Angeles. Subsequently, learning of this fledgling new solo festival from Adilah that had picked up the torch from where they had left off, the Women’s Theatre Festival lovingly wrapped their creative wings around the group of Los Angeles women who were moreso artists than business women and taught them the ropes needed to create a solo festival.
Thus, the Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival began in 1993 from the first gathering following the California Arts Council that took place at the Burbank Little Theatre, home of one of the Festival founders.
The first Festival took place during Women’s History Month in March, 1994 at the Los Angeles Theatre Center and was hosted by Angela Bassett. There were no grants in the early days and the Board raised the money themselves through yard sales and other fundraisers to make the maiden Festival happen at the Los Angeles Theatre Center in downtown Los Angeles.
With no budget to speak of, the founders of the Festival rotated homes in the beginning and housed the Festival’s file cabinet and other belonging in the home of Adilah Barnes. It was not until 2000 that the Festival moved into a real office and began to expand significantly.
Fast forward to 2012 and the Festival now employs two part-time staff, interns and dedicated volunteers both from the community and from the courts, independent contractors for each Festival, and the Festival has now served well over 3000 youth in the LA public schools, produced a cable tv show, and its educational outreach programming has touched hearts and spirits of seniors, at-risk youth, ex-offender women and low-income audience members who are sometimes given free tickets to be transported by the magic of theatre.
The Festival has attracted a host of government funders, official sponsors, donors and has established a membership base that many alumni have joined.
This is a theatre fairy tale that came true.
There have many performers along the way who have stood in the trenches, rolling up there sleeves to do the work that has needed to be done.
What began as a coming together of female solo artists to collectively support each other has now become the oldest solo festival for women in Los Angeles and has honored well over 50 deserving women in theatre and has brought together well over 500 solo artists from around the world who year after year join hands with the Festival to share their many heartwarming and personal stories. Audiences have become inspired, impacted and can give testimony that they are not alone in their many experiences that have been mirrored on LAWTF stages over the last nineteen years.