Discipline: Theatre – musical theatre

Max Vernon

Discipline: Theatre – musical theatre
Region: Brooklyn, NY
MacDowell Fellowships: 2018, 2022

Max Vernon is a composer/lyricist, playwright, performer, and brooch enthusiast. Described by The New Yorker as "equal parts bohemia and Broadway," Max is a 2017 Out100 Honoree, and recipient of the Richard Rodgers Award, Jonathan Larson Grant, New York Stage and Film's Founders Award, New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship, and the JFund Award from the Jerome Foundation. He has been a Dramatist Guild Theatre Fellow, MacDowell Fellow, and an artist-in-residence at Rhinebeck Writer’s Retreat and the Johnny Mercer Writers Colony. His musical, The View UpStairs, ran 105 performances Off-Broadway and was nominated for 2 Lortel Awards, 3 Drama Desk Awards, 4 Audelco Awards, and an Off-Broadway Alliance Award for Best New Musical. It will have eight new productions around the world in 2017-2019; original cast recording on Broadway Records. His musical, KPOP, concluded a sold-out, extended run at Ars Nova in October 2018 and won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical in 2018. He composed, orchestrated, and recorded five new songs from his new musical The Tattooed Lady while in residency at MacDowell in 2018. In 2022, he completed a gut renovation of their apocalyptic musical, Show & Tell, which will now be workshopped in the coming months at Bard College's Fisher Center.

Studios

Watson

Max Vernon worked in the Watson studio.

Built in 1916 in memory of Regina Watson of Chicago, a musician and teacher, this studio was donated by a group of her friends, along with funds for its maintenance. Originally designed to serve as a composers’ studio with room for performance, Watson was used as a recital hall for chamber music for a…

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