Cheryl Kemeny
Product Manager
< Cheryl Kemeny
Co-Founder, President, Musical Director, and Playwright/Composer-in-residence
Cheryl Kemeny’s career spans over 40 years as a professional singer, musician, writer, composer and teacher. Having directed or musically directed over 140 different productions at Crystal Theatre and elsewhere, Ms. Kemeny has also written more than 33 musicals, all available here at Crystal Publishing. Many have found success Off-Broadway – “Mother Jones, Cleopatra, A Spinning Tale and more, including Hungarian Nights which has toured Europe. They are currently being performed across the country and around the world.
Cheryl began her musical career at age 14 as a singer and drummer with her father’s band, the Alexander Kemeny Hungarian Orchestra. Following formal training at the Hart College of Music and post graduate work at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, Cheryl spent the next 11 years performing around the world as half of the Kemeny Sisters Band. Later, she received her “Alternate Route to Certification” teaching credentials at Wesleyan college in 1991. In 1998 she received the Celebrate Women Award for her contributions to the community, the Moss Hart award for Ellis Island, and many others.
In 1987, the City of Norwalk asked Ms. Kemeny to teach an after-school musical program. To please the children, Cheryl wrote a show (Mother Holly) in which all the children had good roles with many lines. The program was successful and continued. And so did the writing. Thus, Crystal Theatre was launched. Today Crystal Theatre is home-based in a beautiful theater in Norwalk, CT with hundreds of students enrolled in several shows each semester along with five different summer camps. Along with an adult community theater. We like to say we’re in the happiness business” explains Cheryl, “and sometimes, when I hear the cries of glee after a show, I think we’re in the happiest place on earth”.
Shows written, co-written, or composed by Cheryl Kemeny:
Fairy Tale Musicals: Aesop’s Fables, Mother Goose Retires, A Spinning Tale, The Snow Queen, Snow White, Land of the Midnight Sun, Thumbelina, The Pied Piper, Mother Holly, 12 Dancing Princesses, Puss’n Boots, and Sleeping Beauty.
Historical Musicals: Ellis Island, The Burning of Norwalk, Mother Jones, Whistleville, Perseus, the Dragonslayer, Revolution Norwalk 1777, The Declaration of Independence, the Untold Story, The Maccabees, Cleopatra - A Life Unparalleled, Hungarian Nights, Living the American Dream, and Prohibition Norwalk, 1925.
Contemporary Musicals: Louder Than Words, Cosmic Nightingale, Without Passion Or Prejudice, Coming of Age,
Holiday Musicals: Save Santa’s Workshop, The Red Shoes, Trolls, The Three Dragons, Escape to the North Pole.
Books: Hungarian Nights, Bonds of Blood, The Fourth Level Trilogy; The Neufield Anomaly, The Emergence, First Contact
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