Be Our Guest with Michael Kooman and Christopher Dimond (Romantics Anonymous)

Michael Kooman (music) and Christopher Dimond (book & lyrics) received the 2013 Fred Ebb Award, a 2010 Jonathan Larson Grant, and are the first recipients of the Mary Rodgers/Lorenz Hart Award and the Samuel French Next Step Award. Between them, they have received the Burton Lane Award, the Harold Adamson Award, the KC/ACTF Musical Theatre Award, a NYFA Fellowship, and numerous ASCAP Plus awards.Their most recent musical, ROMANTICS ANONYMOUS, debuted to rave reviews at Shakespeare's Globe this fall. They also currently serve as songwriters for VAMPIRINA, an animated musical TV series airing on the Disney Channel and Disney Junior which has reached over 49 million viewers in 115 countries.Their other projects include THE NOTEWORTHY LIFE OF HOWARD BARNES (developed at the O’Neill Music Theater Conference and the Village Theater), ORPHIE & THE BOOK OF HEROES (The Kennedy Center), THE ENLIGHTENMENT OF PERCIVAL VON SCHMOOTZ (commissioned by the Canadian Music Theatre Project), JUDGE JACKIE JUSTICE(Pittsburgh CLO), DANI GIRL (Exit, Pursued by a Bear; licensed by Samuel French), GOLDEN GATE (Williamstown Theatre Festival), HOMEMADE FUSION (London’s Ambassadors Theater, Edinburgh Fringe Festival) and JUNIOR CLAUS (Orlando Repertory Theatre; licensed by Dramatic Publishing).Romantics AnonymousAngélique makes beautiful chocolates, carefully infused with all the emotion that seems to overwhelm her in daily life. Jean-René runs a chocolate factory that is running out of steam, rather like his own existence. Both seek help from the usual sources: Jean-René favours self-help tapes and Angélique joins a support group, Les Émotifs Anonymes.Romantics Anonymous is an unusual and tender love story in which the obstacles to happiness are not the usual external barriers, but those sneaky little ones we know all too intimately: the ones within.