Fly By Night
Conceived by Kim Rosenstock
Written by Will Connolly, Michael Mitnick & Kim Rosenstock
Dallas Column Award
Best Director of a Musical
Winner
Dallas Column Award
Best Production of a Musical
Winner
Bay Area Critics Award
Outstanding Director of a Musical
Nominee
Dallas Theater Center
Directed by Bill Fennelly
Music Direction by Zak Sander
Choreography by Joel Farrell
Scenic Design by Dane Laffrey
Lighting Design by Paul Toben
Costume Design by Paloma Young
Cast featuring Damon Daunno, Kristin Stokes, Asa Somers, Michael McCormick, and Whitney Bashor
World Premiere Production — TheatreWorks Palo Alto
Directed by Bill Fennelly
Music Direction by Michael Pettry
Choreography by Kikau Alvaro
Scenic Design by Dane Laffrey
Lighting Design by Paul Toben
Costume Design by Tanya Finkelstein
Cast featuring Wade McCollum, Kristin Stokes, Michael McCormick, Ian Leonard, and James Judy
Workshop ProductionsPlaywrights Horizons
Directed by Bill Fennelly
Cast featuring Javier Muñoz and Kacie Sheik
Roundabout Theatre Company
Directed by Bill Fennelly
Cast featuring Jessie Mueller, Kate Wetherhead, and Gabriel Ebert
Playwrights Horizons
Directed by Bill Fennelly
Cast featuring Anthony Rapp and Kate Wetherhead
Northwestern University &
American Music Theatre Project
Directed by Bill Fennelly
A Note from BillIt’s hard to know where to begin…
Fly By Night was one of the most personal and sustained artistic journeys of my career. Meredith McDonough, Associate Artistic Director at TheatreWorks in Palo Alto, invited me to join the musical as its original director when it emerged from the Yale Cabaret. I remained with it through years of development at TheatreWorks, Playwrights Horizons, Roundabout Theatre Company, and the American Musical Theatre Project, through its critically acclaimed world premiere at TheatreWorks, and through its award-winning second production at Dallas Theater Center.
The project also brought a deeply fruitful collaboration with astonishing creative partners: Meredith, our creative producer and dramaturg; writers Kim Rosenstock, Michael Mitnick, and Will Connolly; scenic designer Dane Laffrey; and lighting designer Paul Toben. Together, over the years of development, the team continued to interrogate, reshape, and deepen the musical, building a theatrical language that could hold its humor, its darkness, its romance, and its sense of wonder.
Across every incarnation, I was drawn to the same essential idea at its center: that Love, between soulmates, between parents and children, between an artist and their art, between the living and those we have lost, is an elemental force, an indivisible spark moving through the universe that ultimately connects us all.
I poured an enormous amount of my own heart into the work and into the belief that Love leaves an imprint on us that transcends time and loss.
The work was recognized with Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award nominations for Outstanding Direction of a Musical and Outstanding New Musical. In Dallas, I received a Column Award for Outstanding Director of a Musical, and the production won for Outstanding Production of a Musical.
I remain deeply proud of what our team created together, and deeply curious about where the spark of this singular musical may travel next.
