Be Our Guest with Patricia Zehentmayr & Jan Roper

Patricia has a long background in theater arts. She attended the Booker T. Washington School for Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas, TX as a performer, studied dance at The University of Texas at Austin with scholarships from The National YoungArts Foundation and the Igor Yousekevitch Endowment, and graduated from UCLA with a degree in English Literature. Her senior project was a highly praised song cycle based on the works of Edith Wharton. While at UCLA, she received the Barry Manilow Scholarship for lyric writing. As a songwriter, Patricia has collaborated with writers in a number of musical genres; from Rosie Flores (Queen of Rockabilly) to John Axelrod (Artistic and Musical Director of the Royal Symphony of Sevilla).  Her musical theater works include Wanting Miss Julie, The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, and Madwomen. Patricia’s pop music works are licensed by A Matter of Sync and she is a member of the Dramatists Guild, SAG-AFTRA, ASCAP, and Society of Composers and Lyricists. For more information, visit www.patriciaz.com Jan is a composer and music director based in Los Angeles, California. Her theater career started with the full-scale production of her own original rock opera, Jerusalem A.D. in 2006. Another original work, City of Light, was chosen for the ASCAP Stephen Schwartz workshop (2016) and the sheNYC Festival (2017), where it won Best Score. City of Light has also been featured as a “new work to watch” at Feinstein’s/54 Below in NYC after a sold out concert reading there in 2018. In 2019 Jan had a featured song in the new world premiere, Girlhood, produced by CPA Theatricals. Another new work, América Tropical, won the 2020 Raise Your Voice playwright competition, sponsored by Inclusion Media Group, and is a semi-finalist for the National Musical Theatre Group this year. She stays busy as a faculty accompanist and teacher at AMDA College of the Performing Arts, and a vocal and music director in the local theater and cabaret community of LA. She won the L.A. Scenie Award for Music Director of the Year for her accumulative work in 2019 and early 2020. For more information, visit www.janroper.com. The Path to Catherine is the true backstory of the teenage girl, Sophie, who will eventually become Catherine the Great, and the two women who shaped her. Princess Sophie, a prospective wife for Peter, heir to the Russian Empire, finds herself pulled between the desires of her mother, Princess Joanna, and Elizabeth, Empress of Russia. But her focus soon shifts from love to power, and she learns that greatness has a price; that price is family. The Path to Catherine features a cast of three women and a sung-through score with modern musical elements combining percussive grooves and soaring, emotional melodies bringing this untold, true, historic story into the 21st century. For more information, visit www.thepathtocatherine.com