Roald Dahls James and the Giant Peach Creative


Original Creative Team
Music and Lyrics
Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, known together as Pasek and Paul, are an American songwriting duo and composing team for musical theater, films, and television. Their works include A Christmas Story, Dogfight, Edges, Dear Evan Hansen, and James and the Giant Peach. Their original songs have been featured on NBC's Smash and in the films La La Land, for which they won both the Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Original Song for the song "City of Stars", and The Greatest Showman. Their work on original musical Dear Evan Hansen has received widespread critical acclaim and earned them the Tony Award for Best Original Score.
Both artists are graduates of the University of Michigan and winners of the American Theatre Wing's 2007 Jonathan Larson Award, which honors achievement by composers, lyricists and librettists.
Book
Timothy Allen McDonald is an award-winning playwright (Roald Dahl's Willy Wonka, The Musical Adventures of Flat Stanley, Jim Henson's Emmet Otter, Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach) adaptor of over 65 musicals (highlights include Guys and Dolls JR., Getting to Know...The Sound of Music, The Wizard of Oz YPE, and Les Miserables School Edition). McDonald is also an accomplished director (Dear Edwina produced by multi-Tony award winner Daryl Roth, and The Phantom Tollbooth at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts) and a leading authority on musical theater education.
Original Story
Roald Dahl has been referred to as "one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century". His awards for contribution to literature include the 1983 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and the British Book Awards' Children's Author of the Year in 1990. In 2008, The Times placed Dahl 16th on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Dahl's short stories are known for their unexpected endings, and his children's books for their unsentimental, macabre, often darkly comic mood, featuring villainous adult enemies of the child characters. His books champion the kindhearted and feature an underlying warm sentiment. His works for children include James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The Witches, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The BFG, The Twits, and George's Marvelous Medicine.