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Chip Deffaa
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United States
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| Occupation(s) | Author, director, playwright, producer |
Chip Deffaa is an American author, playwright, screenwriter, jazz historian, singer, songwriter, director, and producer of plays and recordings. For 18 years, he wrote for the New York Post, covering jazz, cabaret, and theater. He has contributed to Jazz Times, The Mississippi Rag,[1] Down Beat, Cabaret Scenes, England's Crescendo, and Entertainment Weekly. He's written nine books and 20 plays, and has produced more than 40 albums. As D.A. Bogdnov noted in a lengthy profile of Deffaa ("A Walk in the Woods with Playwright Chip Deffaa...") published in TheaterScene.net on December 5, 2022, Deffaa "has produced more recordings of George M. Cohan songs than anyone living, just as he's produced more recordings of Irving Berlin songs than anyone living. And having produced more than 40 albums in total now, Deffaa has surely recorded more members of New York's theater/cabaret community than anyone living." He was born in New Rochelle, New York. Mentored by former vaudevillian Todd Fisher and studying at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in his youth, Deffaa became hooked on show business while performing as a child actor. His interests evolved into writing. He wrote his first play and first song at age 17. He graduated from Princeton University. He freelanced for various publications before finding a longtime home at The New York Post, where editors V.A. Musetto, Matt Diebel, Steve Cuozzo, and Faye Penn gave him wide latitude to write about jazz, cabaret, classic pop, and theater.
Deffaa wrote and directed George M. Cohan Tonight! off-Broadway in New York at the Irish Repertory Theatre. The cast album was released in 2006 by Sh-K-Boom/Ghostlight Records. George M. Cohan Tonight! opened September 21, 2010, at the New Players Theater on the West End in London/ Deffaa directed a production of George M. Cohan Tonight! starring Jon Peterson—star of the original Off-Broadway production—in Seoul, Korea in July 2016. The film adaptation of George M. Cohan Tonight! (by Peterson and Deffaa), made in 2022, has been honored at 19 film festivals and has recently acquired a distributor, according to the December 2022 profile of Deffaa in TheaterScene.net.
After several regional productions, One Night with Fanny Brice was produced Off-Broadway in New York at St. Luke's Theatre, 308 W. 46th Street; previews began on March 16, 2011; the official opening night was April 3, 2011. A revised version of the show opened at The 13th Street Repertory Theatre, 50. W. 13th St., NYC, on April 22, 2013. The cast album of One Night with Fanny Brice was released in September 2010 by Original Cast Records.
In 2002 he produced The Chip Deffaa Invitational Theater Festival, taking over two theaters on 42nd Street in NYC to present, with support from Chashama, more than 25 theatrical productions in a six-week period, featuring Jon Peterson, Laurence O'Keefe, Brett Kristofferson, Peter-Michael Marino, Okey Chenoweth, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Dawne Swearingen, Karen Oberlin, Deb Rabbai, and more.
For many years, Deffaa's base in New York City was the venerable 13th Street Repertory Theater. Its longtime artistic director, Edith O'Hara (1917-2020), gave Deffaa carte blanche to develop and mount at her theater any shows he wished to write and direct, and she presented productions of many Deffaa shows, including Irving Berlin's America, Irving Berlin: In Person, Mad About the Boy, Theater Boys, and One Night with Fanny Brice. Deffaa's The Irving Berlin Ragtime Revue "broke box-office records at the 13th Street Repertory Theater" (as reported by Stephi Wild in Broadwayworld.com, March 24, 2020).
Asked by interviewer D. A. Bogdanov in TheaterScene.net (Dec. 5, 2022) to name "one thing you especially like about your work," Deffaa responded, "I've gotten to work with first-rate talents: Carol Channing, Betty Buckley, Steve Ross, Anita Gillette, Stephen Bogardus, Santino Fontana, John Tartaglia, Jeff Harnar--you name 'em! I'm very grateful. I've also gotten to see some wonderful newcomers who've worked with me, like Seth Sikes and Analise Scarpaci, go on to great success."
For many years, Deffaa has occasionally sung on albums, and at clubs and festivals (from Jim Caruso's "Cast Party" at Birdland Jazz Club to appearances at the Louis Armstrong Foundation's Jazz Jams at Flushing Town Hall in Queens, New York, hosted by Carol Sudhalter). On his vocal album Chip Deffaa's Tin Pan Alley, he sings old-time favorites (including songs he learned from Carol Channing and George Burns), joined by such guest stars as Molly Ryan, Jon Peterson, Olivia Chun, Michael Townsend Wright, and Logan & Lawson Saby, with accompaniment by Richard Danley and Andy Stein. The album includes the first studio recording ever made of George M. Cohan's final statement on life, "Life is Like a Musical Comedy," an unpublished song that Deffaa found among the Cohan papers at the Museum of the City of New York. Deffaa's next vocal album, Chip Deffaa: The Good Old Bad Old Days, is in preparation now. Deffaa's two-CD set The Chip Deffaa Songbook features 40 of Deffaa's theater songs, performed by Giuseppe Bausilio, Matthew Nardozzi, Seth Sikes, Jon Peterson, Keith Anderson, Beth Bartley, George Franklin, Santino Fontana, and other Broadway and cabaret artists, with spoken words by Carol Channing. Deffaa commented upon its release: "I often think I'm the luckiest guy on Earth. I've gotten to write shows for, and work with, performers I really love. It's really a joy to have so many members of my 'musical family' on one album...." ("Chip Deffaa Releases 'The Chip Deffaa Songbook'" by Ashlee Latimer, Broadwayworld.com, Nov. 27, 2016).
Deffaa also lectures on theater and jazz. His 2007 lectures in Korea, timed to coincide with the opening of one of his plays there, were sponsored by the US State Department. Deffaa has written liner notes for albums by Chase Baird, Count Basie, Ray Brown, Ruth Brown, Miles Davis, Benny Goodman, Scott Hamilton, Dick Hyman, Jon-Erik Kellso, Tito Puente, Randy Sandke, Diane Schuur, Maxine Sullivan, and Frank Vignola.
He is a member of the Stage Directors & Choreographers Society, the Dramatists Guild, ASCAP, NARAS, the Jazz Journalists Association, the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society, the Drama Desk, the American Theatre Critics Association, and is a trustee of the Princeton Tiger magazine.
Deffaa won an ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thompson Award in 1993,[2] a New Jersey Press Association Award, and an IRNE Award (Independent Reviewers of New England).
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