Be Our Guest with Alexandra Conroy & Ray Hoese (Finding Helena)

Alexandra Conroy: writer, book / additional lyrics       “I was born in the wrong era.”  Growing up in NYC, Alexandra tried to see as many Broadway productions as possible while being a child actor herself. Always a story teller, she started writing very young with a musical in the 2nd grade and a movie in the 4th. The idea for this story came to her as she began college, studying acting and writing for theater. She continued to hone the idea while getting her BFA, and acting in numerous stage, screen and television roles during and since graduating. Favorite Roles include Ms. Andrew in Mary Poppins and Duke Fredrik in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Can currently be seen in HBO’s Love and Death.Ray Hoese: co-writer, book, music & lyrics   "The antidote to writer's block is dogs, bike riding and sun!” Ray is a writer. Period. Or maybe a semicolon... His degree is in journalism but his first professional gigs included an NBC sitcom and The X-Files. Also an avid songwriter, it was only after separately writing hundreds of songs and thousands of pages of scripts that he joined Alexandra to help bring this story and its music to life. Ray still has the violin his parents bought when they got him lessons in the fourth grade and he is most proud of raising children that love and play music for fun, which (as he says) is what music was meant for.  Ray's other love is flying airplanes for fun and profit.  And, of course, big, big dogs. Finding HelenaThe daughter of a Nazi officer runs away with a Jewish resistance fighter. Separated in the chaos of war, they struggle to survive and find each other.