Be Our Guest with Pamela Weiler Grayson & Alice Jankell (Urban Momfare & The Sustain)

Musical Theatre Radio presents "Be Our Guest"

Pamela Weiler Grayson

Pam’s musical, Urban Momfare (composer/lyricist/co-book writer), won a Best Musical award, at the New York International Fringe Festival, garnered four stars and a Critics Pick from Time Out, and also played at the Fringe Encore Series. Pam’s award-winning plays and musicals have been seen on stages throughout New York and nationally, including Primary Stages, Naked Angels, Theatre Now New York, The Group Rep/Lonny Chapman Theatre (North Hollywood, CA), Southwest Theatre Productions (Austin, TX - Blue Ribbon Winner of their Rising Artists Series), Arts on the Lake (Kent Lakes, NY), Cincinnati Lab Theatre, Emerging Artists Theatre (NYC - multiple works), and The Chain Theatre (NYC). Her play Observant was the recipient of a 2024 grant from The New York State Council on the Arts and a SemiFinalist in the Jewish Plays Project’s 12th National Jewish Playwriting Contest. Her play The Club was one of three prize-winning plays of the Word Wave Lake Tahoe One Act Play Competition. She is the co-writer, with Alice Jankell, of Cicadas, The Musical, featured on Season 2 of the top-rated Amazon streaming series, The Other F Word. Pam’s songs have been performed at The Metropolitan Room, The Laurie Beechman Theatre, The Duplex, and Don’t Tell Mama. She has written for The New York Times and The New York Observer, among others. Pam is a member of Kate Moira Ryan’s advanced playwriting workshop and a board member of Emerging Artists Theatre. She was a writer-in-residence at Kervigo Ensemble Theatre (NY), for the 2020–2021 season and is an inaugural member of Theatre Now New York’s International Musical Writers Lab. Dramatists Guild member. Education: Brown University, Fordham Law School, New York Theatre Workshop, and The BMI Musical Theatre Workshop. Pam is on the New Play Exchange. See her page at newplayexchange.org/user.

Alice Jankell

Alice is a director, writer actress as well as the Artistic Director of The Philipstown Depot Theatre.
​For Disney, Alice helped to create and develop new Broadway musicals. As Associate Artistic Director of The Williamstown Theatre Festival, her directing work included AS YOU LIKE IT, DINAH WAS, and ENOUGH ROPE, the special event on Dorothy Parker starring Elaine Stritch. Alice has worked and learned in venues as varied as the Mark Taper, the L.A. Opera, The Public Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, La Mama, and City Theater, among many others, as well as in film and TV. Alice was the Creative Director of F.A.B. Women (For, About, and By Women) under The Barrow Group’s Off-Broadway umbrella, helming the company of 125 professional female writers, actors and directors. During her tenure, F.A.B. Women generated and produced 48 new plays.
With Putnam Theatre Alliance, Alice co-created Freedom Project, directed and filmed MORE BEAUTIFUL, a brand new play by Craig Lucas, and co-created and directed DIRT. Alice is currently preparing to direct Martha Pichey’s new play, ASHES & INK, Off-Broadway this fall.
Alice’s own scripts have appeared across the country, and a collection of her plays has been published by Leicester Bay Theatricals. Her play, THE SWEET SPOT, opened at Off-Broadway’s 59E59 Theaters last winter, and her musical (with Pam Weiler Grayson) about urban motherhood (Director/Co-Writer), won a Best Musical Award from the NY International Fringe Festival, was a Critic’s Choice, and garnered 4 stars from Time Out.
Her many favorite acting roles include a solo performance, backed by the L.A. Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, and a lead in the Off-Broadway premier of Arlene Hutton’s LETTERS TO SALA. Alice has taught acting at Carnegie Mellon.
Alice is a founding member of Putnam Theatre Alliance, a New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect, member of The Actors Studio PDW and PDU, and The National Musical Theatre Workshop, founding member Putnam Theatre Alliance.