Warner Brown is an internationally-renowned writer whose work encompasses everything from the traditional form to the radical avant garde.  He has collaborated with composers as different as Michael Feinstein and Jim Steinman; Jenny Giering and Angelo Badalamenti.  He has just completed an off-the-wall new musical with ADDING MACHIN3 composer Joshua Schmidt, which is shortly to be announced as a transatlantic co-production.

 

Wearing a completely different hat, for BBC Worldwide Warner wrote the $40,000,000 arena show Walking with Dinosaurs - the Arena Spectacular, creating an entirely new genre of theatrical presentation which has become 'the biggest family show of all time'.  His work on this has won many international awards, including the Billboard Magazine Creative Content Award.  Two companies toured internationally - playing to 9 million people in 250 cities worldwide; an episode of CSI: Las Vegas was based on the show and it even earned the ultimate honour of being parodied on The Simpsons.

 

Warner has also 'worked' with two of the late-and-greats.  In New York, the Cole Porter Trusts granted him the stage rights to the Cole Porter catalogue for his dark original musical The Black and White Ball, directed by Matthew White, and his Dusty Springfield musical Son Of A Preacher Man recently completed a 38-week UK national tour, directed by Craig Revel Horwood.

 

Warner is part of the consortium, including Arlene Phillips and musical director Mike Dixon, for the new internet-based project Reality - The Musical.

 

Warner has also written a number of plays, including The Prospero Suite, directed by John Doyle.  He has worked extensively in Europe, particularly with Meatloaf rock legend Jim Steinman on the musical Garbo, which received its world premiere at Oscarsteatern in Stockholm, Sweden.  Warner's musical Flickers premiered at Broadway's Circle-in-the-Square Theatre and, for Dame Gillian Lynne, he wrote Dance For Life at London's Her Majesty's Theatre, starring Darcey Bussell and Derek Jacobi.

 

Warner has extensive writing credits for the BBC and was Script Associate of the BBC Classic Musicals series, for which he adapted 14 musicals and directed such artists as Anthony Newley, Tyne Daley, Steven Berkoff and Barbara Cook.  He has music publishing deals with Warner/Chappell Music, MTI Europe and Concord Theatricals.

 

Warner's first West End musical, The Biograph Girl, was written with his mentor David Heneker.  The disparity in their ages was quite a few decades!  The show has recently been revived with great success at London's Finborough Theatre, directed by Jenny Eastop.  Mr Heneker and Warner were the subjects of the BBC 2 documentary The Making of a Musical and Warner wrote the New Version of the classic Heneker/Cross Half A Sixpence, produced by Bill Kenwright starring Gary Wilmot.

 

Further work in London includes Six For Gold, a critically-acclaimed series of six one-act musical performed over a two-night cycle; his new version of Cinderella at the London Palladium and the revue Sleep With Friends, starting Janie Dee.  His musical fable The House on The Corner was reviewed as the 'class act' of the Edinburgh Fringe.

 

In October 2012, Warner inaugurated the S&S Award, in honour of his late parents.  This international award, presented in association with Leicester Curve, was judged by a panel of industry luminaries, including Kent Nicholson of Playwrights Horizons in New York, Nica Burns of Nimax Theatres in London and Nikolai Foster of Leicester Curve, and went to the best new unproduced musical of the year.  The Award was presented, at its annual London gala at The Other Palace, by Michael Ball, Don Black, Nigel Harman and Janie Dee.  The S&S Award has now become S&S Theatre Productions, a producing company for radical new musical theatre.